A working group in Jackson Hole is ready to present its recommendations for how or if more closures should be put in place for bighorn sheep habitat in popular ski zones.
Higher Learning: The nuances of how, when, where and why to take a course
Choosing an avalanche course—whether a higher-level one or something to refresh your rescue skills—doesn’t have to be a hard decision. You just have to know what you want.
Overexposure: Chad Sayers’s Life in La Grave
In the La Grave chapter of Chad Sayer’s new book, Overexposure: A story about a skier, Sayers experiments with just how close to the edge he can live before falling off of it.
Backcountry Magazine welcomes Tom Hallberg as Associate Editor
Hallberg is the first splitboarder to hold a full-time editorial position since 2009. The former newspaper reporter is excited to bring a snowboarder’s perspective to the magazine.
Brighter Skies: How Backcountry Resorts are Changing the Game
Colorado’s Bluebird Backcountry is a fully human-powered ski area, complete with rentals, instruction, guiding and lodges and devoid of chairlifts. In a time of uncertainty and change within the ski resort business, this model, and variations of it, may be the clearest way forward.
Mountain Skills: How To Become A Better Ski Partner
Trusted partners add life-saving value to a tour, from additional eyes looking for instability to providing wisecracks and nips of whiskey. And while it’s essential to make sure your partner is attuned to you and the mountains, relationships go both ways. Here’s a list of tips and suggestions to help you uphold safety and stoke within your group on your next tour.
Go Your Own Way: Redefining The Most Important Days of Our Lives
We’d been bushwacking through dense pines for over an hour when we finally reached the snowline. Mt. Lassen loomed thousands of feet above us, patchier than it should have been after a lackluster winter across the West. It was mid-May, and volcano season was upon us. As with any good spring ski mission, it would involve a little bit of everything, smothered with a heavy dose of patience.
Gearbox: There and Back Again
Five skins for going the distance—and a reglue service to test time, not patience.
Sammy Carlson: Not Your Dad’s Powder Turn
Sammy Carlson is no stranger to the spotlight. But after competing at freeskiing’s highest stage, the Oregon native now feels most inspired filming far from distractions in the mountains of British Columbia. There, while working on his current project, Resilience, he’s continuing to define what’s possible in powder.
Should we care about ski mountaineering in the Olympics? Look to mountain biking for the answer
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed today, July 20, that ski mountaineering will be added to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina, Italy. InsideTheGames.biz reported the news from the Main Press Centre in Tokyo, where the IOC has gathered in advance of the Summer Games. This news comes after skimo premiered in the 2020 Youth Winter Olympics in Lausanne, Switzerland, and was officially proposed by the IOC executive board in June. To celebrate the news, we’re republishing a story written by Backcountry’s Adam Howard from 2014, when the IOC granted provisional recognition to the International Ski Mountaineering Federation, a first step toward the inclusion of skimo as an Olympic event.
