As Backcountry’s 2015 Editors’ Choice awards roll out, a trip down AT boot memory lane is in order. Crack open Issue 3, BCM’s first-ever Gear Guide, and you’ll find the typical AT and the performance free-heel boots of 1995….

Avalanches have always been a hazard in the backcountry, and our response to sliding snow has constantly evolved. But the most recent life-saving tool, the avalanche airbag, might be older than you think. The first airbag was introduced in 1985 by ABS founder Peter Aschauer. Backcountry first covered the technology in January 1997, Issue 10.

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, ski films meant big hair, Iron Crosses and rock music. And Greg Stump was the master of them all. The New York Times called Stump “a maverick film maker in the ski business,” and The Atlantic wrote, “Stump… does not make G-rated, safe-and-sane ski travelogues with elevator music. What he does make are wildly original, nonstop ski action films with comic and dramatic subplots and original scores.”

Do you remember your first backcountry setup? Backcountry’s staff does. And nothing compares to the feeling of sliding a brand-new, or new-to-you, bc setup uphill…except maybe the feeling of flying down on it afterwards.

To most people, the late Carl Skoog was known as a talented skier, mountaineer and photographer. His skills in the mountains made him a role model for many, and his images were featured nine times on the cover of Backcountry. To the people who knew him best, Skoog was more than just a great skier with an eye for photography—he was a loyal friend, compassionate teacher and clean-living lover of life.

No matter how many GoPro Xtreme YouTube videos you watch this week at work, you’ll never find something as effortlessly cool as the good looks and badass hop turns the ’90s brought us.

Rossignol: Emphasizing the benefits of tele for free-heelers everywhere since 1907.

In the words of Doug Coombs, the man, the myth, the legend, “There is no such thing as too much snow.”

When our intern, Amos Horn, stumbled across this gem of an advertisement while flipping through Issue 20 in the kitchen-turned-office, he muttered, “What’s the policy on nudity? What are they even advertising?”

Back in 1999, when this ad ran, the Iron Cross was still cool and Voilé was king of all things outernet. More than 15 years later, we still think the Iron Cross is pretty rad…when the timing is right.