A federal judge in Idaho ruled that the U.S. Forest Service’s failure to create laws specific to snowmobile use was illegal and ordered them to create laws specific to the vehicles within 180 days. Winter Wildlands Alliance brought the lawsuit, essentially saying that the Forest Service’s decision to exempt snowmobiles from the same rules that [ more... ]

Ski mountaineering is the fastest growing segment of the winter sports industry, and in part that’s because of superior technology: There are far better bindings, boots, skins, and skis than in the past. But it’s also a matter of critical mass. Lou Dawson is a legendary backcountry skier, the first to ski all of Colorado’s [ more... ]

A massive stretch of more than 1,000 acres in Vermont’s Green Mountain are for sale, and the Vermont Land Trust is trying to raise $1,850,000 to ensure it stays protected and free to use for backcountry skiers. The stretch shares a boarder with the Mount Mansfield State Forest and includes a 300-mile ski trail that [ more... ]

It’s hardly the Wasatch or Teton Pass, but backcountry skiing in the East has history at least as old as venerable western spots. In the 1930s Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps cut hundreds of trails, some of them for skiing, including the Thunderbolt, a slash down Massachusetts’s Mount Greylock that even today is steep and scary [ more... ]

We kinda could’ve told you so. Despite calling it “side country,” not sidecountry, the Wall Street Journal does a good job at balancing the issues involved with ski-area-adjacent backcountry, from the recent overflow of ski resorts opening access to terrain in nearby USFS land to the fact that those gates are opening precisely because it’s [ more... ]

Two backcountry skiers were killed Sunday afternoon in unrelated avalanches in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, near Jackson Hole. Elizabeth “Liza” Benson, left, was part of a group of skiers caught in an avalanche off Clause Peak in the Cliff Creek area. Benson was swept into a tree by a six-inch break at approximately 9,200 feet [ more... ]

Word of Arc’teryx’s patent for an avalanche “Vaporbag” backpack leaked out last summer, but is getting new attention with the Outdoor Retailer trade show coming up. The bag deploys automatically, no rip cord required, and wouldn’t need the bulk of a canister to fire. The patent describes how the unit can deploy 50 times between [ more... ]

Originally announced last year, Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows are continuing the backcountry pilot program (in partnership with the Forest Service), that links the two resorts via a gate behind KT-22. Squaw, which has been slow to embrace O.B. at best, warned, “Once an individual leaves either boundary, he or she is on their own [ more... ]

Rep. Keith Ginger of Jackson, Wyoming is pursuing legislation that would allow the sheriff’s departments to bill people they rescue from the backcountry. He says that last year Teton County alone spent $14,000 for rescue of snowmobilers. The Wyoming Search and Rescue Council normally reimburses the sheriff dept for rescues, and that money comes from [ more... ]

On Wednesday backcountry skiers will head to court in Boise, Idaho to ask a federal judge to tell the U.S. Forest Service that it must initiate a plan to limit where snowmobiles can go on public land. Since 2005, the Forest Service has limited where motorized wheeled vehicles can go, but snowmobiles have always been [ more... ]