When you tour thin snow on mountain passes in the fall, ski hard at the resorts all winter, and cap off your season with a lineup of ski mountaineering objectives in the spring, it’s a good idea to get some solid protection for your noggin. While a collection of helmets for each season’s activities and temperatures will certainly suffice, a quiver-of-one option that excels in all scenarios may be preferable. Enter the Carbon X from Pret Helmets, an up-and-coming Park City, Utah based company known for making versatile, high quality head protection. New for the 2015/16 season, the Carbon X is Pret’s highest spec’d helmet to date, combining multiple technologies into a single, fully ventilated and impressively lightweight package that will keep your head protected and comfortable from October to June. Read more…
When you think about it, skiing is kind of a ridiculous activity (as are most that don’t involve hunting, gathering, constructing a shelter, building a fire or running from saber tooth tigers). Add in a helicopter that flies you to the top of a mountain and it becomes the most ridiculously awesome activity on the planet. Ok, so maybe I embellished a little there, but it’s freak’n rad, and if you enjoying skiing or boarding in the least little bit I highly recommend you do it at least once in your life. Keep reading…
Ben and I had been mulling over a return trip to the PNW this spring for some unfinished business on Adams and Hood. Well mother nature and the snow levels in Washington and Oregon put the kaibash on that idea real quick. Plan B were the Tetons, but we couldn’t find enough sane lines to combine for an extended trip – all of them seemed unreasonably dangerous and the snow seemed to just stop falling once the New Year rolled around. After a huge dump in late February down South, we decided to pull the trigger on the San Juans to hopefully replicate the success we experienced in 2013. Rick, fresh off a sweet heli-trip up north in the Canadian Rockies, rounded out the group at 3 and we were off. Keep reading…
In 2011 Brian and I attempted to ski Mt. Eva from the Fall River drainage but had to turn back at treeline as gale force winds threatened to blow us into the Troposphere. What we knew at the time was that on good snow years Eva’s southeast face can offer up some excellent skiing, so we kept it in the back of our minds. This past Saturday we finally got around to heading up for a second attempt, and this time we were treated with much better weather and great skiing conditions. Keep reading…
