March 2012 archive

Sierra Spring Ski Season in Full Swing

March has arrived and is almost gone but finally the heavens are letting loose on the rains from above. It hasn’t been so much as to make up for lost moisture and for many of you it is too little too late. However, for core backcountry skiers at least, better late than never.

Review: Marquette Backcountry skis

When the concept of the Marquette Backcountry ski was first explained it sounded like a great idea. Kudos to the marketing department for truth in advertising. The sticker adorning the ski says these planks are 30% snowshoe, 70% ski. After having ski toured with them I concur one hundred percent with that assessment. One of …

Keep making backcountry turns

PSA: Unified Avalanche Website format?

The Utah Avalanche Center is applying for a competitive grant to fund a major project to help unify our website, email, SMS, and social media alerts and create an open source platform that could be used by any avalanche center. This could lead to more ways to get the advisories, an easier-to-use website, and more …

Keep making backcountry turns

Review: Telemark Tech System (ver. 2.0)

If you’ve been waiting for TTS to grow up a bit, it has. The chubby cable posts and ill fitting heel posts are more slender, functional, and adaptable. Equally importantly the heel lever got the nose job it needed to snap onto the heel step of any compatible boot. Weight matters. Power matters. Why carry more than you need to?

Techniques: Kick Turns on Steep Terrain

One variety, the snap-kick turn is useful in deep snow, and practically essential on steep terrain. Without the snap-kick turn you can be in a rather precarious position when it comes to changing direction on a skin track, especially in glacial terrain where the consequences of a fall might be fatal.

Truckee Conditions 23mar12

My tour for the morning, a simple workout tour to get a sweat for the day, revealed the bane of all good tours – breakable crust – was everywhere. It was the perfect blend of being thick enough to almost hold you, but not quite. As soon as you put your weight on it, it …

Keep making backcountry turns

Voile ceases production of CRB

Although sales of the CRB are small, that doesn’t mean Voile is turning a blind eye to interest in a releasable binding. Grissom went on to add that, “I do think a Switchback release binding would sell very well.”