Even the Small Ones…
…can get you. The sledder in vid below is actually lucky to be alive. He was fully buried. A few inches deeper, and without a friend handy, the outcome would have been dire. For example, the tiny avalanche that killed a man at Snowmass Resort recently (second vid)… How many times have you passed under tiny steep banks over a trail, and not given them a thought? Or messed around with smaller “test” slopes? Myself, I’ve seen many of these sorts of slides over the years, and have become quite cautious with “cut banks” and that sort of thing. Check it out.
Black Diamond Backcountry Skiing Boots — What’s New
New BD liner is beautiful. Click to enlarge.
Trussed with an inverted Bod Harness, dot three Camalot stuffed up each nostril. I’m told that’s the punishment for lazy bloggers. Best to avoid such discomfort, so I’ll keep getting the ski boot info out to the wild. Today, Black Diamond.
For 2012/13, Black Diamond’s overlap construction AT boots in their “Alpine Tour” series retain the same names. Quadrant, Prime, Slant and Swift sport different colors and an improved power strap. More importantly the boots yield completely reworked AT liners that in the words of one BD booster “actually make these into new boot models — with the same names.” The Freeride boots (Factor 130 & 110, Shiva) remain the same, with a few small tweaks to liners.
As most WildSnow readers know, we don’t take stock ski boot liners very seriously (poor things). We think it’s impossible to make one liner that’ll fit most people near perfect out of the box — or in many cases, even after thermo molding. (By “fit” we mean truly fit for performance skiing, not just feel good on the carpet.) Read more backcountry skiing
ARVA Evo3+ Avalanche Beacon Review
Avalanche Beacons
WildSnow Beacon Reviews Intro and Index
The new for 2011-12 ARVA Evo 3+ is a three-antenna beacon with basic marking/masking capability for multiple burials. Value is impressive: at $279 MSRP the Evo3+ is at least $70 less than any other marking/masking beacon on the market. This pricing seems to be part of a trend for increasing price competition among more basic yet nevertheless innovative models at less stratospheric price points, coming after the previous feature-laden competition with very high price points. This is a trend we at WildSnow encourage, as we see that many beacon users are more about acquiring something basic and affordable so long as they’re certain it matches up well with their preferences.
Overall, if you want a relatively basic beacon in terms of features and price, yet desire a modicum of marking/masking capability for multiple burials, then this could very well be the beacon for you. Read more backcountry skiing
Shew, can I go skiing? But first, Tecnica Boots
Tecnica Cochise Pro, click to enlarge.
If someone wants to count the number of tech compatible AT boots that’ll be available next year, be my guest. But pray you have enough neurons to handle the vigintillion names you’ll need to process. In all seriousness, I hope this is one of the last boot overviews we need to do for next season, and we can start testing our top choices. Otherwise, we have descended to the lowest level of gear geekdom and will require brain cloning surgery from Greg Hill so we can remember how to actually walk uphill, instead of just think about it. Read more backcountry skiing
Boot Scrum Continues — Crispi Jumps In
Crispi is known in the telemark world (early adopter of the weird NTN system). As many of you know, they’ve also made and sold various AT boots over the years. In what appears to be somewhat of a re-launch, they’ve got a sweet little lineup of 4 new AT boots that’ll begin retailing next fall (as well as several basic F1 knockoffs that were previously available). We’ll attempt to on-snow some of these eventually. For now, first-look.
Crispi backcountry skiing AT boots for 1012 2013, left to right: Enigma, Skr!!m, Skwo:l, Synthesi. No, those funky names are not typos. I guess Crispi decided to beat the other Euros at their own weird naming game. Was thinking that double !! would cause an html interpreter error when used in my photo caption, I guess not, but I'm sure Google will not be pleased as they have a thing about too many exclamation marks in website content.
Winter OR Trade Show 2012 – Louie’s Take
This year’s OR show had a ton of interesting products. I’m probably most excited about the new lightweight stiff boots coming out from nearly every backcountry skiing boot maker. However, quite a few other interesting items caught my attention.
Can you guess what this is? I thought it was pretty cool.
