On March 14, six Vermont Army National Guard soldiers were involved in an avalanche incident in Smugglers’ Notch’s East Gully, an event that left five requiring medical treatment. More recently, Vermont-based investigative news outlet VTDigger published a September 18 article that takes an in-depth look at the accident and the risk assessment surrounding it.

From carving smooth powder turns to busting through crud and shredding corduroy, each tester aims to test eight products per day, a task that provided us with more than 1,100 individual review to craft the 2019 Gear Guide, available now and packed with tester feedback.

It’s not all fun and games at Gear Test Week. Our 43 testers—32 skiers and 11 splitboarders—hit the slopes at Utah’s Powder Mountain with the dawn’s early light and don’t go to bed ’til the day’s reviews are complete.

With 14 years under its belt, the Winter Wildlands Alliance’s Backcountry Film Festival is a mainstay of the fall movie premier circuit. A mid-November premier in Boise, Idaho kicks off an international tour of the 90-minute show. And Backcountry Film Festival Manager Melinda Quick is excited about the potential reach of this year’s show, as she hopes to plan stops for for Europe, Australia and South America in addition to Canada and the U.S.

Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) is known for its steep, rugged backcountry ski terrain dotted with 50-degree chutes and exposed faces, all within a five-mile skintrack of the Bradley-Taggert Parking Lot. But while tourers can approach the park’s peaks with relative ease, a hidden barrier to access exists: the absence of weather reports from winter weather stations in GTNP. This deficit is one that some Jackson Hole locals are currently working to rectify through the construction of new stations within park boundaries.

Bozeman-based splitboard company Spark R&D takes pride in their soup-to-nuts production, making all of their bindings in house since their 2006 founding. And in an effort to reduce the company’s footprint and manage even more of their manufacturing needs, Spark R&D is now entering into the world of renewable energy so they can source their power in-house, too.