Outdoors & Rec

Throughout the winter, we’ll weigh the options and bring you each weekend’s most magical mountains. Think of us as sherpas, only with keyboards and web browsers instead of ice picks and beacons…

I got all nostalgic a few weeks ago and downloaded an Atari 2600 emulator and the old Activision Skiing game. Then I remembered Ski or Die on the Nintendo NES. Then I was just three old-school games away from a top five list!…

Snow bunnies and Backcountry Betties everywhere, take heed: Freeskier and Lange are launching the Local Lange Girl ’09 contest. Four regional winners — two from each coast and two from the mountains in between — will be chosen to represent Lange at on-snow events across the country. In return, they’ll…

The history of outdoor companies is filled with people who started with little more than a good idea and persistence. The mighty Patagonia was the softgoods company of Chouinard Equipment, which in turn was started by itinerant Yosemite rock climber Yvon Chouinard, who made chrome-moly steel pitons with a second-hand…

You see Klaus Wolter’s name in the paper every winter. The German native is a climatologist with CU’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences and one of the top experts on El Niño. Since El Niño is back warming up the water in the South Pacific, Wolter predicts,…

We’re just now getting the full scope of everything Simon Dumont got up to last year, now that his footage for Riley Poor’s Transitions, Poor Boyz Productions’ Every Day Is Saturday, and Matchstick Productions’ In Deep has been unleashed on the world (as if winning the Winter Dew Tour event…

This week, Silverton Mountain announced new early season mid-week dates, effective for today’s December 2 opening date, to help meet demand on the Western Slope now that Purgatory has gone to a weekend-only (Friday-Sunday) schedule. If you’re heading to the San Juan Mountains for some of the sickest powder Colorado…

Not far outside of Denver lies the town of Evergreen, a quaint little hamlet probably best known as the place where your parents go to drink when Morrison’s too busy. But Evergreen has more than overpriced Chiantis: Thanks to the excellent stewardship of Jefferson County Open Space Parks and Denver…

This story in Saturday’s Summit Daily News makes it clear: Aggressive skiers and riders are a higher-priority law-enforcement target in Breckenridge this year, and the Colorado Ski Safety Act will be enforced. But the story also notes that the Breckenridge police department’s jurisdiction ends 150 yards up the mountain, and…

Last week’s Q&A with Mt. Crested Butte Mayor William Buck raised the ire of several of his opponents on the issue of Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s proposed expansion onto Snodgrass Mountain. Buck said that the U.S. Forest Service decision not to move into the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process…

Part of the fun of alpinism comes from knowing its history. Climbing and skiing are both very well-documented, and the stories create a timeline in sport that might be unrivaled by anything except baseball, with its legions of devoted statisticians. The year 1971 proved to be a landmark year for ski…

The above trailer for Beyond Midnight: The Grand Traverse, a documentary covering the most recent Elk Mountains Grand Traverse, the annual backcountry ski race from Crested Butte to Aspen, makes me want to see more. Based on mining-era mail routes, the race’s course covers forty miles with plenty of elevation…

The tupperware mountain in our refrigerator is almost as enticing as the high country, where more resorts are open than not at this point. We bring you three of the best for your weekend escape from consumer hell…

This year, instead of bringing some crappy side of green bean casserole to Thanksgiving, I’m just going to just show people this video, which is way more tasty. Herein, French speed rider (that’s skiing with a parachute on) Antoine Montant avoids a massive avalanche by taking to the skies. It’s…

Earlier this month, the U.S. Forest Service killed Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s plan to enter the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process to expand onto Snodgrass Mountain with an additional 276 acres of predominately intermediate terrain that has been pegged for skiing in Forest Service plans since 1978. The denial…

Go easy on the Thanksgiving feast this year, skip the Black Friday shopping melee, and head for the hills instead: Copper Mountain is tentatively scheduled to open its Superpipe later this week, in advance of the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix, December 9-12, and is also hosting its 8th Annual Leftover…

They’re only three volumes in, but The Ski Journal has already distinguished itself as the type of publication that takes a deep-think approach to the sport. Like The Alpinist for mountaineering, it ditches copious ads in favor of luxurious paper stock, drool-inducing photography, and thoughtful articles that reflect on the…

Level 1 – Refresh Teaser from Level 1 on Vimeo. Level 1 Productions’ new flick Refresh is a celebration of the Denver-based production company’s decade of badass freeskiing filmmaking, a simultaneous look back and glimpse of the future. Native New Yorker Josh Berman, Level 1’s mastermind, started shooting his buddies…

While glossy ski-resort brochures often show pictures of wide open bowls and endless powder, many dedicated skiers know that the trees are where it’s at. Tight, technical, often magical, tree skiing can be a place where there’s powder to be found days after a storm. On bad light days, trees…

The lifts started turning at Vail on Friday, and photographer Soren McCarty was there. See more photos after the jump…

We stopped by the Art Institute’s Rail Jam on Saturday, and it was pretty sweet: Lots of people, lots of rail-jamming, and a festive atmosphere, as evidenced by the photo above. For more such photos, check out Aaron Thackeray’s slideshow…

If Hollywood determined proper climbing technique, everybody would walk around with backpacks full of nitroglycerin and believe they could clear just about any jump as long as they yelled hard enough. You can witness this sensibility in the hilariously annotated video, “The Vertical Limit Guide To Climbing”: Note to self:…