In 1982, 12 years before the birth of Backcountry Magazine, Austrian mechanical engineering student Fritz Barthel and his partner decided to tack the summit of Mont Blanc onto the end of an April climbing trip. Burdened by heavy gear and 200 cm slalom skis, they were exhausted by the time they reached the summit. That climb instilled Barthel’s drive to design lighter gear.

On September 30, 2018, Hilaree Nelson, 46, along with partner Jim Morrison, made the first ski descent of Nepal’s 27,940-foot Lhoste. But this achievement was far from Nelson’s first when it comes to pushing limits of ski mountaineering.

Climbers and backcountry skiers have short memories. We possess an uncanny ability to jettison the grimmest mental details of unexpectedly demanding alpine epics—the crushing loads, the numbing cold and needling winter winds—in favor of the glowing pleasantries.

We started out as competitors, Backcountry and me. My crazy newsletter, le Chronicle du Couloir, became a magazine in 1993. During the transformation to national distribution I considered renaming it Backcountry, but Bela Vadasz convinced me to stick with Couloir.

Twenty-five years? Backcountry? You’re kidding. No? That’s 175 dog years—a long stretch, regardless of your species. And yeah, it’s cliché, but what a long, strange trip it’s been.

“We don’t live in a ski town,” my friend said one night a couple of weeks ago as we sat on the deck of the Brewster River Pub and Brewery, dubbed the Brewski by locals. We were only a quarter of a mile from Smugglers’ Notch Resort, but it was off-season and still warm enough to sit outside. My response echoed off the unoccupied metal chairs: “What are you talking about?”