Category: Skiing
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Windows of opportunity
Multiday outdoor trips succeed via planning: picking a route that suits the conditions, bringing appropriate gear, having sufficiently assessed said gear prior, and being prepared (materially and mentally) for contingencies. It makes me sad to see so many trips crash and burn, or underperform spectacularly, because of rudimentary things left unthought. All last week I…
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Fischer BCX 675 boot review
In brief, a tale of woe. A good design with a few things that could be improved, which doesn’t fit and is going back to REI. The pleather fabric seems great. The sole is rigid enough for control, flexible enough for striding and walking. The cuff balances touring and turning acceptably for such a boot…
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145 Altai Hok review
To summarize and build upon my review of the 125 prototypes I skied last year: there is a domain of skiing between alpine backcountry and nordic skiing which is as of yet poorly served by the marketplace, and the Altai Hok might be the best fit yet for many people’s needs in this category. Controversy…
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Ski to die
Steve Romeo is dead. The influential backcountry skier and blogger died in an avalanche in the Tetons less than a week ago. As the Black Diamond blog put it: “Steve never wasted a day, or an hour, and he was leading the life he dreamed for himself, which is the most any of us can…
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Spring Training
There is no substitute for the real thing. I don’t think I’m in much worse or much better shape than this time last year. Less backcountry skiing for turns this year, more nordic skiing and fatbiking. I’m not serious/technical enough to have measurable benchmarks to know for sure, and in any case general fitness is…
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There are no first de(a)scents
M and Isaac playing in the mud, Robbers Roost, November 2005. In 2005 we found ourselves, during the course of an extended road trip out west, spending a long Thanksgiving holiday camped out in the Robbers Roost in southern Utah. We did a lot of great, cold hiking with ropes (aka canyoneering), cooked a spectacular…
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Primus Express Spider
Meltin’ snow. My stove “quiver” needed expanding. Last year I became enamored with the Bushbuddy, a fantastic, fully enclosed wood burning stove. For quite a while I thought such things were just expensive alternatives to fires, but eventually caved because I wanted to be able to burn wood on backcountry trips during the winter. You…
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Back to the rhythm (Fischer BCX 675 boot)
Classic diagonal striding is all I used to do, as far as skiing goes. It’s an odd rhythm, with so many gangly appendages required, but like other foreign and mechanized ways of getting through the world (riding a bike!), once it becomes habit the execution is at least as satisfying as walking. When I started…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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