I like to approach backcountry skiing like I approach a science experiment: I take time to plan before doing the experiment; I develop a hypothesis about what is going to happen when I perform my experiment; I conduct the experiment. And then I reflect on my experiment and learn from it.
Avatech Launches Updated Backcountry Observation App
Avatech, the Park City, Utah-based maker of proactive avalanche safety tools, launched an updated version of the Avanet app today. The redesigned app, available now through the iTunes store, incorporates route-tracking and observation-reporting functions, aiming to bring safety-information sharing to the masses.
Photo Gallery: Green Mountain Snow Soldiers
“The drill hall at Jericho, Vt.’s Ethan Allen Firing Range looks like a cluttered, dimly lit high-school gymnasium,” Tyler Cohen writes in the November 2015 issue. “And on a snowy January morning, it’s filled by more than 100 young-faced National Guardsmen, each preparing for a week of tactical and on-snow training.”
Building an avalanche dialogue: Project Zero rebranded as The Avalanche Project
Last week, The Avalanche Project emerged as the new face of Project Zero, an initiative launched in 2013 to reduce North American avalanche fatalities to zero by 2025. The revised emphasis of The Avalanche Project aims to create a collaborative dialogue and messaging surrounding avalanche awareness.
Snow Shooter: Ryan Creary
Finding the right place to call home is what brought photographer Ryan Creary from coastal New Brunswck to the mountains of interior British Columbia where he now calls home. He believes it is important to stay “centered” and “balanced,” and living and shooting in Revelstoke has helped him on his path to equanimity in art and life. We talked with Creary to find out more about his commitment to life’s Feng Shui.
Bridging the Gap: Montana’s Ridge Mountain Academy teaches students to train and live like athletes
When the five 17- to 19-year-old skiers and snowboarders from Whitefish, Montana’s Ridge Mountain Academy (RMA) landed in a helicopter at Valkyr Lodge in April for a week of touring in B.C.’s Selkirk Mountains, none of them had ever spent a night in a backcountry hut. In fact, none had even used touring equipment until three months prior. But thanks to a semester at RMA, a campus-based mountain-sports-training program for men and women ages 17 to 20, the student athletes managed their own gear, rotated 5 a.m. cooking shifts, contributed to morning guide meetings and took turns route finding and setting the skintrack.
Mountain Skills: Nine Things I Learned At The Northwest Snow & Avalanche Workshop
Last Sunday, 600 people packed into a conference room at Seattle’s University of Washington for a full day of education and insight at the revamped Northwest Snow & Avalanche Workshop (NSAW). Organized and hosted this year by the Northwest Avalanche Center (NWAC), NSAW gathered 10 presenters, from guides and avalanche educators to paramedics and a behavioral psychologist, to discuss the latest in safety, science and decision making.
Behind the Eclipse: Reuben Krabbe’s quest
Last March, photographer Reuben Krabbe’s dream was realized. He had a vision of traveling to the Arctic Circle to nab a ski photograph during a full solar eclipse—meeting that goal is captured in “Eclipse,” the award-winning film released today.
Eclipse wins Best Film: Snow Sports at Banff Mountain Film Festival
A solar eclipse is imbued with mystical meaning—many cultures believe it’s a time when demons or animals consume the sun. While astronomers have now provided us with a scientific answer for this rare phenomenon, it remains a curiosity and the inspiration for the newly released episode of Salomon Freeski TV, Eclipse.
Safe Passions remembers Andreas Fransson, teaches skiers
A year after ski mountaineer Andreas Fransson died in a South American avalanche, Fransson’s sister, Sandra, is starting an organization in his memory. An artist, Sandra has designed and is selling a poster inspired by her brother, and the artwork is printed on a pair of Salomon MTN Lab skis, available for auction. It’s all to raise funds for a youth-focused educational initiative that will kick off with a safety course in Chamonix this January, taught by Andreas’s friend, Morgan Salén, and in partnership with Salomon and Recco.
