Snow Stories
An eclectic band of Argentine locals cultivates a grassroots backcountry ski community in one of the world’s most unforgiving mountain ranges.
For three women of color in Wyoming, going into the mountains isn’t about representation—it’s about reclaiming their power, together.
After years of dreaming, Nick Russell and Christian Pondella complete a clean descent on Mount Morrison in the Eastern Sierra.
After surviving calamity in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, a few skiers return to COVID-19.
Changing our dynamics with the mountains can help us be in them longer, and appreciate them more.
Predawn on April 4, 2019. There’s hardly any snow in the mountains. Worst year in recent history, the locals are saying. We’re loading boxes of food onto the ferry, preparing to board the Alaska Marine Highway from Juneau to Haines. “It’s southeast Alaska, you never know,” Ryland Bell says. “It might rain for 90 days…
A mining company owns the mineral rights to a Colorado mountain. For 42 years, the Red Ladies have been showing up—and dressing up—to keep the mountain wild.
Former Navy SEAL Josh Jespersen battles the destruction of wild places he served to protect.
As seen in the November 2019 Journal. For the recipe behind Carston’s Spicy Magic Sauce, scroll to the end of the story. Although my tongue felt as if it might melt, Carston Oliver assured me I was not, in fact, going to die. “That’s just the capsaicin,” he told me, as he calmly ordered some…
A group of four skiers moves methodically across the snow-covered Wapta Icefield ahead of me in single file connected by a thread-like rope—mothers on each end, Cheryl and Nan, and their two daughters, Roan and Sailor, in the middle. As Roan’s father and Cheryl’s husband, I’m tagging along on this five-day hut-based ski tour in…
Snow and icy rime break from the porous black volcanic ridgeline crackling beneath my feet. Gale-force updrafts from the gullied ridges below whip the skis and splitboards strapped to our backs. Each gust forces us to step toward the cornice that hangs above the caldera to our right. The temperature drops steadily and our breath…
Sampling the Offerings at Crater Lake “Go for Dirksen…” There was considerable static on my little two-way radio, but it was a small miracle we could hear Josh Dirksen at all. We hadn’t seen him since a dinner rendezvous two days prior in Bend. An agreed-upon radio channel and call time had actually worked, as…
On the west face of Mount Whitney, just off the summit of the highest peak in the lower 48, we had to traverse right. For us skiers it was no real issue, a bit of sidestepping and poling would do the trick. Yet, our group was comprised of both two sticks and singular planks, and…
When we move through the forest in winter, we’re often left wonderstruck by snow-shrouded trees bent and morphed from years of wear in silent solitude. Their depth of character becomes evident as we weave ourselves into their lives and ecosystems. But we often tell our stories and not theirs. Our new film Treeline follows skiers…
When we move through the forest in winter, we’re often left wonderstruck by snow-shrouded trees bent and morphed from years of wear in silent solitude. Their depth of character becomes evident as we weave ourselves into their lives and ecosystems. But we often tell our stories and not theirs. Our new film Treeline follows skiers…
When we move through the forest in winter, we’re often left wonderstruck by snow-shrouded trees bent and morphed from years of wear in silent solitude. Their depth of character becomes evident as we weave ourselves into their lives and ecosystems. But we often tell our stories and not theirs. Our new film Treeline follows skiers…
When we move through the forest in winter, we’re often left wonderstruck by snow-shrouded trees bent and morphed from years of wear in silent solitude. Their depth of character becomes evident as we weave ourselves into their lives and ecosystems. But we often tell our stories and not theirs. Our new film Treeline follows skiers and…
Quietly, patiently, trees endure. They are the oldest living beings we come to know during our time on earth, living bridges into our planet’s expansive past. Treeline is a film celebrating the forests on which our species has always depended—and around which some skiers and snowboarders etch their entire lives. Follow a group of snow-seekers,…
Before we could challenge the snow industry to move to recycled materials, we had to change our thinking, too. There are a number of ways to reduce a garment’s impact, but none more significant than making it out of recycled fabric. Doing so keeps material out of landfills and cuts demand for the petroleum used…
“The notion that there’s one dream that we’re all after, and agreed upon ways in which you can verify that you are indeed living that dream drives me crazy,” says Forest McBrian. “Everyone’s dream is a little bit different. If there is a dream that we all lust after, then we’re all just trying to…
On January 23, it was snowing so hard that the sound, the roaring hiss of snow hitting the ground, woke me up at 3 a.m. I threw on a jacket and walked outside into the certain knowledge that California’s nearly five-year snow drought was over. It was the deepest, most stacked I’d ever seen my…
We were off-the-couch bikers, versed in miles per hour, not miles per day. After seven days of biking to ski, we needed a rest day. Hot springs mandatory. We remembered a shortcut to the Green Church pools, which was 9 miles shorter than the highway route. Shortcuts—with deeply rutted, washboard dirt roads on bicycles loaded…
Searching for adventure right out their backdoor, a group of skiers and snowboarders set off on a bicycle powered backcountry ski adventure along the Eastern Sierra. (It's as fun as it sounds)
Jump in the van with Marie-France Roy and Alex Yoder as they weave their way through Scotland, exploring how personal accountability allows for universal land access and visiting old farm shelters that support mountain folks as they rove freely across the country.
The jacket was probably red once but it’s now more of a muddy pink with an overlay of permanent scuff and smudge. The zipper, replaced four years ago, stands out a little brighter. The interior sports a size tag (Kids XXS) but has no hand-me-down label—it predates that Patagonia tradition. Around 13 years ago, it…
I was looking for real mountain wilderness in Europe. All of the roads, ski lifts, huts, dams and avalanche safety reports make it really easy and comfortable to access great ski touring, climbing and freeriding in the central European Alps. Some of the huts feel more like hotels than shelters for mountaineers. The price we…
It started as a joke: “Do you think the interior has snow?” Marie-France Roy posed the question. She, Kael Martin, Sean Black and I were eating a stale breakfast in a Campbell River, BC, hotel lobby. It was warm and murky outside. That kind of murk which can only mean January drizzle on Canada’s west…
One Christmas, my brother gifted me a copy of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. I hate those kind of books. He and his girlfriend could both name-drop dozens of the tick-listed destinations, but I was mostly perplexed. What did you do there? Came, saw, conquered—never to look back. Judginess harshed my holiday spirit.…
“I just want to stay home and ride wind lips,” Josh Dirksen says. A simple statement. A simple goal. It was April 2014. We’d been camped out on Central Oregon’s South Sister for a couple of days. Getting to our midmountain camping spot had taken some time, but not a lot of nerve. It was…
For Canadian skiers Leah Evans and Jasmin Caton, winter is life at hyperspeed.
British Columbia doesn’t need another ski resort, especially one in the middle of the wild Purcell Mountains.