Ski Touring Backcountry News Roundup — Greece, Arcteryx & More

We wish our Greek friends had a better economy, but what is, is. Due to the euro/dollar currency exchange rate as well as the Greek financial situation, it is incredibly affordable to travel the land of Aristotle. But what if we want to ski instead of sun bathing and eating Moussaka until we can’t move? And how about something positive about a country that’s been so dissed of late?

We are intrigued by reports of spring skiing in Greece that involves velvet corn snow along with excellent weather on peaks with thought provoking names such as Grammos, Gamilla, Smolikas and Olympus. More, apparently winter happens down there as well!

Give the Grecians some help and check out this Kickstarter that film maker Constantine Papanicolaou is doing to get the word out on what Greece offers skiers and snowboarders.

In case you’re wondering just how you’d organize a Grecian ski trip, the trick is to contact George Klaoudatos via the travel company he works with.. He is the man to help make it happen.

Did you grow up (or grow) in a ski town during the 1970s or 1980s? Perhaps the sheriff was a bit behind the times. Perhaps you left the town of your parents behind and found a place that was paradise, then proceeded to get involved in growth control and battling evil developers. Perhaps you or your friends were living off a drug money windfall. Perhaps.

Reality or fantasy, Rob Conery wraps it all into his fictional account, “Winterland.” The protagonist is innocently fishing in Florida and gets a big “tip” from benevolent drug runners. A bar is bought in paradise. The sheriff is scary and the developers want their chunk. I found some of the situations to be overdone, but then, this is fiction and you need to keep the reader’s attention. Personally, I’ve seen or even experienced just about everything Rob includes, so let me vouch for his fictional authenticity! Stick “Winterland” on your e-reader for that next stint of downtime, see if you relate.

Our advertising partner Arcteryx just went live with another sweet video. As our style here dictates, their ads in the WildSnow sidebar don’t animate — so please explore their banners as a thankyou! I’ll also embed the vid below even though it looks better to the prehistoric bird’s eyes if they get some banner traffic. I’ll admit the skimo objective in this vid had my hands sweating, and not in a good way. That’s all I’ll offer as a spoiler, check it out for yourselves:

I got off the phone with Tecnica, stunned by how nice the new 2015-2016 iteration of Cochise ski boot sounds like it’ll be. Yeah, freeride, baby! But this isn’t hype, this is a real alpine boot that tours and gives you the beef on the down. New for this season, even the alpine sole blocks will have tech fittings. That means those of you who do such deeds as use CAST plates and alpine bindings, or a hybrid such as Kingpin, can have your cake (solid sole blocks) and eat it too (as in the face shots you will create without having wobbly rubber soles latched into your alpine bindings). It sounds like the main change other than some variations in plastic composition, and tech fittings in alpine sole, is they reworked the lasting for less volume. That can be good when the “shape” somewhat matches your foot. If not, boot fitters have their job security. Check out the 2015-2016 Cochise versions here, I’ll admit it’s a beautiful lineup and the yearly improvements are always exciting.

Not Bigger – but with more snow ;-)! This will be the 3rd edition of the SPLIT & RELAX Festival at Hochkönig. Organized by splitboarding.eu and Livingroom Hochkönig, you can test the brand new splitboard stuff from the 11th of December till the 13th of December 2015. Break out of the Christmas stress and get up to the mountains, update your avy skills and do the obligatory training at the search area. In a relaxed atmosphere and with lots of like-minded people you can exchange experiences, find new touring partners and discover Hochkönig. More info.

I’ve been saying for years that the big issue with land use for ski touring is access. The Tahoe Backcountry Alliance seems to agree.