Pacific Northwest skiers are a mellow lot, but if you want to get them riled up, just ask about the so-called “Seattle Skintrack.” This moniker refers to skiers who travel from the city to set a steep zigzag straight up one of the many runs that dump into Bagley Lakes Basin, located in the vicinity of Washington State’s towering Mt. Baker volcano and its ice-clad neighbor Mt. Shuksan.
Character Closeups: Austin Johnson on Gear Test Week 2019
Each year at Gear Test Week, we incorporate some new faces into the testing mix for fresh takes on the latest gear. This year, Austin Johnson, a Carbondale, Colo. native, joined the ranks to ski powder, meet some new friends and drink a beer or two. We caught up with Johnson to hear his perspectives […]
Character Closeups: Jacob O’Connor on Gear Test Week 2019
A coating of fresh snow has graced the final days of Gear Test Week 2019 at Powder Mountain, so testers have been hitting the slopes hard to find their favorite gear for this coming winter. And part of what makes our test informative is the variety of ski and snowboard style our testers bring to […]
Splitboard Tester Quick Takes Day One: Gear Test Week 2019
New this year, we’re combining forces with the annual splitboard test to make our Gear Test, held for the 11th year at Powder Mountain, a bigger, more comprehensive event. As splitboard testers get familiar with the newest boards, boots and bindings during their first test day at Pow Mow, we catch up with a handful […]
Ski Tester Quick Takes Day One: Gear Test Week 2019
Gear Test Week 2019 kicks off this week at Powder Mountain, Utah, with blue skies and toasty temperatures ringing in day one for our dedicated group of 50 ski and board testers. Their goal: find the latest and greatest skis, boards, boots and bindings for this coming season. To learn more about what’s on tap […]
The Trendsetter: How Diny Harrison, the first North American woman to earn an international mountain-guide certification, has forged her path
Diny Harrison’s list of accreditations is as deep as the British Columbia snowpack in which she guides. The first North American woman to become an internationally certified mountain guide, Harrison went from ski patrolling at Lake Louise Ski Resort to guiding for the likes of Canadian Mountain Holidays, Yamnuska Mountain School, Banff National Army Cadet […]
Consumed: A Note from the Editor in Chief
Andrew McLean submitted his story on p. 76 of the Spring Issue as a Facebook message. It was late January, and the well-known Utah-based ski mountaineer, reflecting on the 20-year history of his iconic guidebook, The Chuting Gallery, was writing from the coast of Antarctica, where he was guiding skiing from a 280-foot yacht. “For […]
Steep School: learning the tools for ski mountaineering in Montana’s Tobacco Root Mountains
It’s the end of April, and the Tobacco Roots, a quiet range 45 miles dead west of Bozeman and sandwiched between the Madison and Jefferson Rivers, are still cloaked in a midwinter snowpack rather than layers of corn. But that doesn’t matter to the four Canadians, me or the three other skiers here at Big Sky Backcountry Guide’s (BSBG) second-annual ski-mountaineering camp.
Security System: Why, even after three decades, the Voilé strap remains the most relevant tool in any kit
Today, the straps are ubiquitous among committed bc travelers. Heli operations use them to tether poles to skis while in flight; most guides carry a half dozen in their repair kit; and any tale of a mountain-bound epic involving broken bindings, buckles, skins or sleds usually incorporates some sort of ski-strap fix.
The Future Is In Your Hands
In Deep My common answer to “How’s business?” has evolved since we published our first issue of Backcountry Magazine in 2002. Then, when we were a staff of three and had just laid ourselves off in April to go back to banging nails, shooting weddings and waiting tables, it was something like, “We had a […]
