Welcome to Louis (Lou) Dawson's backcountry skiing information & opinion website. Lou's passion for the past 50 years has been alpinism, climbing, mountaineering and skiing -- along with all manner of outdoor recreation. He has authored numerous books and articles about
ski touring and is well known as the first person to ski down all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, otherwise known as the
Fourteeners! Books and free ski touring news and information here.
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Backcountry skiing is dangerous. You may be killed or severely injured if you do any form of ski mountaineering, skimo randonnee and randonnée skiing. The information and news on this website is intended only as general information. Due to human error and passing time, the information, text and images contained within this website may be inaccurate, false, or out-of-date. By using, reading or viewing the information provided on this website, you agree to absolve the owners of Wild Snow as well as content contributors of any liability for injuries or losses incurred while using such information. Furthermore, you agree to use any of this website's information, maps, photos, or binding mounting instructions templates at your own risk, and waive Wild Snow owners and contributors of liability for use of said items for ski touring or any other use.
Lou Dawson 😉
LOL. Nope.
Michael Kennedy?
Knut Haukelid?
chic scott?
Stuart is the closest so far, in a sort of roundabout way…
Close doesn’t cut it, how about Bill Briggs?
Stuart, you’ve got it! Congratulations! I’ll email you.
Wahooo!
Thanks so much Lou.
I knew all the time I’ve spent on your site wasn’t a waste. 😉
Too fast, do another! This is better than work.
So many people hit this blogpost this morning it crashed my super duper expnso server! So thanks everyone for the load test!!! Good prep for winter.
Steve, yeah, was that too easy?
I’ll pick one I think is a bit tougher next Friday.
Thanks everyone, and if you’ve got anything to say about Brigger, leave some more comments. Might as well keep load testing this thing.
Easy, don’t diminish my moment of glory!
The hint did help, since both guys did big traverses in Canada.
It wasn’t too easy but the really hard part was trying to get an answer up during the server crash.
My comment: I finally saw the movie “Steep” and it was awesome. Great section on Briggs. Good Dawson interview as well!
I hope it was clear my statement was in jest. I forgot the 😉
And luck helps too.. 🙂
Can anyone comment on his binding setup in the pic? Looks like a “typical” older tele rig, but what is that in front of the toepiece? Or am I just looking at it wrong?
Stuart, your humor was obvious so no problem.
Regarding the server crash. Apologies to everyone for that — luckily it was only for about 5 minutes. The folks I bought hosting from provide super support, so they’re already working on this issue. That said, if necessary I’ll change once again. Sigh. Amazing how you get punished for tiny bit of success with getting a few people to actually read a blog.
Scott, I spoke with Briggs about the bindings and vividly remember the conversation.
They used a bit older cable binding on the latest Head skis, so they had a free-heel setup that was super reliable. They basically were doing free-heel parallel but also had long thongs and side lugs if they wanted to lash down their heels. The system had little to no safety release.
The Bugs traverse took them 10 days.
I kinda feel like a “wimp” when I look at my modern BD and G3 gear and how easy it makes skiing, well sorta easy anyways…… Hats off to those guys! I’m sending you a PM regarding some jeep stuff.
Scott, my feeling exactly. Things have really changed. I love that the sport is so much more accessible, but one can’t help but enjoy thinking how elite the early pioneers were. It’s kind of like rock climbing in that way.
All, I heard back from RealWebHost about the crash this morning. They said it was simply too much traffic for the server. Amazing. And I have to thank everyone for your continued faith and participation in WildSnow.
We’ll continue to progress. Problem now is that my level of advertising payment is somewhat predicated on older stats and thus grandfathered rates that don’t support the expense of technology we now need. Raising rates is tough, as people get locked into the past and have a hard time understanding how big we’re getting, even though they’ll get what they pay for in terms of advertising impressions.
So if you all can put in a good word to our advertisers that would be appreciated. Just tell ’em you can vouch for how much traffic we’re getting, and to PLEASE support us!
Hey lou have you tried a dedicated server yet?
Is this the same Bill Briggs who co-authored the book “A Multigrid Tutorial” with Henson & McCormick? I know that *that* Bill Briggs is a bit of an alpinist, but–if it’s the same one–I never realized he had some first descents!
There is another Bill Briggs who’s a climber and such, I think the one you speak of is him. There is also Roger Briggs, who used to do some crazy stuff in Colorado on things such as Longs Peak. No relation to Bill.
Roger and Bill are brothers (the non-teton sking Bill Briggs, that is). Roger is the one who’s name is more recognizable, but Bill is an awesome climber himself. I’ve climbed with both of them and they each tend to seek out sparsely protected, really hard trad routes — there is never a dull day when climbing with a Briggs. The two of them have done many first ascents in CO together, including on Longs. Bill is a mathematician and has authored at least one teaching book on the subject. Roger was a teacher at Fairview High School in Boulder.
That is old skool!
Speaking of Bill Briggs, does anyone know where/when the article describing his Grand Teton descent (“Take Some Good Turns”) was published? Not sure he even wrote the piece.
Adam, I’ve got a couple of articles clipped, but don’t recall that one…