Backcountry Magazine Podcast

From playing NCAA soccer to a successful modeling and acting career to being the top polar explorer of his time, Doug Stoup is an enigma. Host Adam Howard recently journeyed to Antarctica with Stoup, and their conversation ranges from Doug's personal training of A-list Hollywood actors to near death experiences; adventures with Doug Coombs; and taking novice skiers to the South Pole.  Backcountry...

Tele Mike Russell grew up as a sharecropper's son in Delaware, before attending college and becoming an executive in the pharmaceutical industry. Then he watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center and decided he'd better follow another path, this one to skiing in Colorado, where he'd go on to find a family in the National Brotherhood of Skiers.  Backcountry Magazine  |  Instagram  |  Face...

When Craig Kelly died in 2003, the world of snowboarding was devastated. Twenty years later, New York Times best-selling author Eric Blehm returned to the site of Kelly's death, to uncover the true story of what happened in the avalanche that killed the legendary snowboarder and six backcountry skiers in British Columbia's Selkirk Mountains. Blehm's roots in snowboarding run deep. He started ridin...

In the skiing universe, Chris Davenport is a household name. His notoriety is due in part to the many facets of the sport upon which he's had a lasting impact. He raced for New Hampshire's Holderness Academy and the University of Colorado before transitioning to freeskiing and winning world championships in 1996 and 2001. He became one of the first American Red Bull athletes and found his way into...

Tlingit skier Ellen Bradley is an advocate, athlete, scientist and storyteller. Fierce and thoughtful, she defies the narrative that wild Alaska is there only to be conquered by heli operations and other extractive industries. She loves to slide on snow, and wants more Indigenous people to share in her joy. Born and raised in the Seattle area, Bradley started skiing Stevens Pass at age 4. For her,...

From a distance, Jeremy Jones's career looks impossible. He is, after all, a pro snowboarder, entrepreneur, activist, filmmaker and author. Does he ever sleep? Nevermind that he's also a husband, father and active community member in Truckee, California.  Somehow, he still manages to snowboard around 200 days a year. The founder of Jones Snowboards has stayed true to his passions while owning and...

Jordan Campbell's relationship with Backcountry spans more than two decades. He published his first story in the magazine—about a ski expedition to Eastern Tibet—in 2002.   Throughout the course of his career, Campbell has worked for some of the biggest names in the outdoor industry, including Jagged Edge, The North Face and Marmot. During that time, he found himself increasingly drawn to humanita...

Jeffrey Bergeron, aka Biff America, has spent the last 50 years living in the mountains, mainly in Breckenridge, Colorado. Yet his signature accent and brash personality—rooted in the South Shore of Massachusetts—are as rich as they were the day he moved west. Likewise, his sharp and self-deprecating sense of humor is evident through his writing and, as you'll hear, in this episode. In addition to...

Hadley Hammer might just have the best name in backcountry skiing. Despite growing up in Jackson Hole, however, her path to becoming a professional skier did not follow a linear track. She dabbled in ski racing, figure skating, cross country skiing and other sports before deciding to pursue competitive freeskiing. Her career got off to a rocky start with a last-place finish at a Freeride World Tou...

For more than 40 years, Voile has broken trail in the backcountry. The storied Utah brand develops and manufactures its products in the Wasatch, and innovates year in and year out.  From developing tele bindings and skis to splitboards and the eponymous Voile strap, the inventors at Voile work at the edges. Their skis show up at our annual Utah ski test quite literally fresh out of the press as th...

Backcountry first caught a glimpse of Will's prototype splitboard bindings in 2008. A brief writeup in the magazine that year was the precursor to inclusion in every Backcountry Gear Guide since.  While they lacked polish in the early days the bindings showed promise. And that first generation of Spark clamps would lay the foundation for that elusive "better mousetrap." Word of Spark's bindings sp...

If you've been to a mountain town in the past decade you've seen the proliferation of Skida hats and neckies. They're part and parcel now to global ski culture.  But what about the founder of Skida? That's 31-year-old Corinne Prevot. What began for Corinne as a means of self expression in high school has blossomed into a business with 20 employees under the age of 30. Most of them are women.  Base...

We recently sat down with intrepid explorer Lani Bruntz, soon after she arrived home from a bikepacking trip in Mexico. Prior to that adventure, she was skiing and guiding in Chile. If there's one thing we learned about Bruntz during our interview, it's that she's almost always on the move.  Whether exploring her Crested Butte, Colorado backyard, or remote mountain regions around the globe, Bruntz...

In this episode, we have a conversation with backcountry snowboarder Nick Russell. Like so many of today's top snowboarders, Nick cut his teeth riding freestyle out East. He grew up in Connecticut before making his way to Vermont's Stratton Mountain School. The longtime home to the US OPEN, Stratton has produced snowboarding legends like Ross Powers and Danny Davis. Once he realized he wasn't dest...

Jason Hummel: Cascade Crusader In this episode, photographer and Backcountry contributor Jason Hummel shares his passion for exploring far-flung places in his home range and beyond.  Jason grew up backcountry skiing on Washington's glaciers and in the surrounding wild country, including his first multi day winter traverse of Mt. Rainier at just 10 years old.  Fast forward a few decades, and a life...

Bruce Edgerly, or "Edge," as he's known to the backcountry community, has been around the block. He cut his teeth in the outdoor industry by writing for Powder and Couloir in the 1980s, and traveling the globe to cover the burgeoning extreme skiing movement.  In the early nineties, Edge found himself out of a job and largely unemployable, despite having a degree in engineering. A chance encounter...

In this episode we sit down with Than Acuff, Executive Director of the Crested Butte Avalanche Center. The CBAC is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing an avalanche forecast for the community every day of the winter season.  The small forecasting team swings way above its weight, all while working in the West Elk Range, home to one of the more challenging snowpacks in the lower 48.  Th...

Angel Collinson turned the freeskiing world upside down when, at 31 years old and the height of her career, she retired from professional skiing, swapping big mountains for the ocean. Angel speaks about the similarities and differences between big mountains and big water, what it takes to master one's craft (and whether it's worth it) and when—or if—she'll ski again. This episode of the Backcountr...

There's a range in America's most populous state that's hemmed in by desert and people. Each year, millions come to California's Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to collectively attempt to climb Mt. Whitney or ogle Yosemite's Half Dome or ski at Mammoth or hike the John Muir Trail. In the spring of 2016, Adam Howard, Craig Dostie and John and Tyson Hausdoerffer came here for a different reason: To...

Given the epic demand for touring gear and the unprecedented way Backcountry Magazine had to test it last year, we pulled together some of our veteran testers to talk about their experience, because it's from their insight that our editors made selections for this year's Gear Guide. We get into those details a bit. We talk about a range of topics—from quivers of one to why tele gear hasn't changed...

Backcountry Magazine Contributing Editor Heather Hansman is a recovering ski bum. In her new book, Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow , Heather threads her own personal narrative—you know, the way she came to once call herself a ski bum—into the American story of ski bumming itself. It sounds so simple on the cover, as if any of us who've skied 100-plus days a year cou...

Like most ski bums, legendary photographer Lee Cohen was only planning on skiing at Alta, Utah, for one season. Forty years later, he's still there, shooting skiers in the Wasatch. Since his first image was published in the late '80s in Powder, he continues to be one of the top shooters in the game. One of his favorite subjects is his son, Sam, himself a professional freeskier. It hasn't always be...

A 22-year veteran avalanche forecaster for the Utah Avalanche Center, Drew Hardesty doesn't simply give the avalanche forecast for the greater Wasatch. He tells the snowpack's story. He's part scientist, part philosopher. Part skier, part poet. What other forecaster might relate a scene from Cormac McCarthy's book The Crossing to a blown avalanche forecast? How many snow scientists were Naval Inte...

In April, we reached out to gear and apparel manufacturers to get their take on what the coronavirus pandemic might mean to the outdoor industry. It ended up being our most listened to episode and, in response to the many calls for a follow-up, that's just what we did. Joining host Adam "Howie" Howard are Thor Verdonk, Alpine Technical Product Director for Lange, Rossignol and Dynastar; Jason Levi...

Like all mountain pros, Nancy Bockino has had a lot of gigs to make it all work. Unlike a lot of mountain pros, Nancy seems to do what she loves year-round. Based in Jackson, Wyoming, Nancy spends the winter ski guiding and teaching avalanche classes for Exum Mountain Guides in the Tetons. Come spring she's off to the Eastern Sierra to ply her craft guiding alpine climbing and ski touring south of...