Tabla de contenidos para December 2015 en Powder

DAKOTA BOWL, BIG SKY, MONTANA MARC H25, 2015 “I WAS EXCITED ENOUGH FOR THE FIVE OR SO INCHES THAT FELL THE DAY BEFORE THE BIG DUMP. BUT WHEN I WOKE UP WITH THE SUNRISE AND CHECKED THE MORNING SNOW REPORT TO FIND AN ADDITIONAL 15 INCHES PLUS OF SNOW, ALL BETS WERE OFF FOR THE DAY.” —BIG SKY BLOG, PATRICK LARSON Big Sky locals felt cheated—it had been months since they’d had a good storm. So when a March blizzard finally dumped more than two feet overnight, the region was rampantly afflicted with powder fever—time to cash in unused sick days. The end of the tramline to access Lone Peak stretched far up the hill. No one was going to miss this, least of all local photographer Ryan Turner and snowcat…

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 220,000 AND 430,000 YEARS AGO, a large 16,000-foot stratovolcano outside present day Flagstaff, Arizona, either blew its top or imploded. The phenomenon left behind a caldera and several 12,000-foot mountains called the San Francisco Peaks. Glaciers then moved through, further chewing up the landscape. As all of these massive historical changes took place, one geological feature inside the crater held its ground. It was a ridge that was part of the volcano’s internal plumbing—made of hardened magma—and strong enough not to collapse or be chewed away by the moving ice. Today, that feature is called Core Ridge and it juts out of the western edge of the crater and travels east. It falls off steeply on the north side, and the couloirs that have been chiseled into the…

TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR HITCHHIKING GAME: STAY FLEXIBLE BUT HAVE A DESTINATION; BUDDY SYSTEM; DEODORANT; SMILE; ROLLIES. WHEN MOM TOLD YOU NOT TO PICK UP HITCHHIKERS, she probably figured starting companies with hitchhikers was out of the question as well. But when skier Ian Seward pulled over for Graham Kraft and his wife on a stormy November drive into Haines, Alaska, he found a business opportunity that he couldn’t pass up. Kraft, 30, a former BC racer that fell in love with the Alaskan mountains (and an Alaskan girl), had been designing and building his own skis for half a decade, while Seward, 44, a master woodworker, was looking for his next project. Over 15 minutes of coastal road, the duo cooked up Fairweather Ski Works, establishing craft ski building…

KIM REICHHELM IS 50 FEET ABOVE ASPEN MOUNTAIN, applying shimmer lip balm and discussing the most practical way to fly from Fiji to Iceland—a trip she’ll take in just a few weeks. She has a place in Baja and technically resides in Oregon, but Aspen is home in the loosest sense of the term, for now. And she hasn’t been here in over a month. Instead, she taught clinics in Utah and Colorado and just spent two weeks scouting trip locations in Japan. Despite her transience, we can’t enter a single establishment in Aspen—not even this gondola—without running into someone she knows. Sure, the tall, tan blonde is hard to miss, but Reichhelm is magnetic. She bears a near-constant mischievous grin, a penchant for foul language, and the good-natured charm…

THE WHO: Last day of the season, last run of the day. Nothing to lose. The lifts are shut down and a band plays on for hundreds of costumed revelers at the base of Sun Valley, Idaho. Meanwhile, high up on the mountain, just beyond the resort boundary, 10 brave souls click into the most absurd skis you’ve never heard of, brace their edges in sloppy late-afternoon corn—or dirt, depending on the season—and prepare to race to the bottom. The first one to slam the beer waiting on the bar at Apple’s wins. THE WHAT: The precursor to snowblades, scorpion skis are the antithesis of any tool built for downhill racing. Developed in the 1970s to ski powder, these reverse-camber skinny sticks were designed with a long tip and no…

WE STOOD ABOVE OUR LINE, a dogleg couloir, and stared down its gut, which was steep enough to give pause, yet wide enough to boost confidence. To go first or to go last? I looked up to the endless blue ocean of sky and snow-capped peaks and then over to my friend, who stood on the other side of the notched entrance. Her eyes focused downward. Her smile betrayed her excitement. She wanted this line, this opportunity, this challenge, this rush. I gave her dibs. “Just take it slow,” I said. She nodded, grinned, pushed forward, hopped around one turn—not quite slow enough—another turn, and that’s when she fell. I don’t know what caused the trip, but time dropped to a half tempo. I thought she would stop quickly. Instead,…

ON AMID-SEPTEMBER MORNING, Erik Roner, the longtime Teton Gravity Research skier and Nitro Circus performer, took Kasper, his 17-month-old daughter, to weekly story time at the Tahoe City public library. It was a beautiful fall Thursday—sunny and brisk. The room was full of mothers and toddlers. According to one mom, there was Roner, the only dad in the room, with his big, constant grin—the vessel that helped him sail so gracefully through life—doing what he was most proud of: being a father. He was happy and content. Less than a week later, Roner hung lifeless from a tree in front of his Tahoe friends and family who had gathered to watch him and three others open an annual celebrity golf tournament with a group skydive. As helpless spectators awaited rescuers…

OPINION OTHER POSTERS ON OUR WALLS: LIONEL MESSI, STARRY NIGHT, ASPEN EXTREME, HOT DOG–THE MOVIE, GLEN PLAKE. I’M SURE I WON’T BE STEPPING into the confessional if I admit that as a hormoneaddled teen, my bedroom walls were adorned with posters of female celebrities posing with legs tantalizingly apart. This was not, however, part of any obsession due to the chemistry cooking my brain at the time. Rather, it was because what I truly lusted for was snow and skiing and general mountain radness, and the women papering my room—Genia Fuller, Suzy Chaffee, Penelope Street—were all top freestyle skiing stars of the day, each executing the era’s most stylish move: the daffy. My preferential interest in these particular depictions of the iconic trick over those of male contemporaries was because…

Hey Ski Media Friends, I hope you’re having a great season and your social numbers are totally pumping. Just one suggestion for the coming Content Season—please refrain from writing any of the following stories: Americans go to Japan, ski flat pow at a resort, marvel at the exotic Orient. However, I would love to read something written by or about a Japanese skier. You wouldn’t know it from the ski media coverage, but I’m pretty sure they do exist. Skiers go to Argentina, stay at the Refugio Frey hut. There has to be another cool hut somewhere in that country. Obviously, they can’t all just be an easy traverse off a main ski resort, but that’s the challenge of Ski Journalism. Suck it up and skin that extra mile—maybe even…

First morning of the trip in Jackson Hole, and the sky was gray. We stayed up late the night before, crushing Tinder and drinking red wine out of plastic cups. Four girls sprawled out on two queen beds in a hotel room. At 9 a.m. the room was stale with boozy sweat and too many bodies. I rolled over toward the center of the bed I shared with my friend, Lindsay Rider. She opened one eye, still caked with mascara, and cracked a half smirk. I called her a week ago to let her in on my plans to tour the West and tap into the ski girl revival that is taking over ski towns. “You should come,” I said. Rider hung up the phone, covered her shifts at the…

SKIER Daryl Treadway and Dave Treadway LOCATION Great Canadian Heli, Golden, British Columbia PHOTOGRAPHER Blake Jorgenson SKIER Cam Riley LOCATION Winchester, Massachusetts PHOTOGRAPHER Erik Seo/TGR SKIER Leo Ahrens LOCATION Riksgränsen, Sweden PHOTOGRAPHER Mattias Fredriksson SKIER Samuel Anthamatten LOCATION Haines, Alaska PHOTOGRAPHER Tero Repo SKIER Nick McNutt LOCATION Revelstoke backcountry, British Columbia PHOTOGRAPHER Nic Alegre SKIER Kye Petersen LOCATION Esplanade Range, British Columbia PHOTOGRAPHER Garrett Grove/Sweetgrass SKIER Tom Wallisch LOCATION Great Falls, Montana PHOTOGRAPHER Alex O’Brien/Good Company SKIER Todd Ligare LOCATION Snowbird, Utah PHOTOGRAPHER Adam Barker SKIER Mark Abma LOCATION Valdez, Alaska PHOTOGRAPHER Blake Jorgenson/Superproof…

IT’S 11:30 P.M. and Bindy Barkeep is cavorting with Thurston Howard the III, I just know it! Little does he know she’s going to rob him blind, that’s exactly the kind of thing she does. Meanwhile, over in the corner, Jack Daniels is straight up all over Izzy Islander, that son of a bitch. It’s just conquest after conquest with that guy, and a procession of broken hearts. Coconut Joe doesn’t even see it; the whole damn place is falling apart. “You’re goddamn blind!” I yell from a barstool, pointing angrily while my improvised duct-tape thong—the only thing I’m wearing—barely holds back my sweaty nether regions. Seventeen heads turn in unison and stare at me. It’s the middle of winter, we’re all dressed like it’s the Caribbean—or, in my case,…

I was alone on the col, the last to drop into the milky fishbowl. Shadows of the surrounding peaks floated in and out of view. Massive piles of stone were there for a moment, obscured the next. Far below, Rogers Pass cut a 90-mile line from Revelstoke to Golden, British Columbia, through the vast, glaciated, and alpine terrain of the Selkirk Mountains. Hundreds of peaks hid behind the fog. In between each was a swooping pass or col. Rogers was the last of three passes that photographer Bruno Long and I would explore on our nine-day trip. It’s also by far the biggest and most rugged. Three hundred miles to our west sat Duffey Lake Pass, where we skied three days before. Two hundred miles due south was Kootenay Pass…