I want to paint a picture for you, and it’s not a pretty one. It’s 30 degrees, and lightly snowing with a crisp, 15-mile-per-hour wind blowing in my face. For the last hour, I’ve been kneeling next to my Airstream holding a hair dryer, trying fruitlessly to thaw the black tank dump valve, which had frozen overnight. 　　This was a...

　　Avalanche safety, like sex ed, isn’t really about abstinence. People are going to venture into the mountains, so the challenge is to minimize risk, take appropriate countermeasures, and understand when conditions are too dangerous to proceed. Still, things sometimes go wrong even if you’re following best practices, at which point the objective shifts to maximizing your odds of surviving and...

　　It is fairly terrifying to trust a strip of fuzzy fabric to keep you from careening backwards down a steep, snowy ski hill while trying to climb up it. That fuzz’s friction is all I could think about the first time I splitboarded up Steamboat, Colorado’s blue runs at seven a.m. while my family was still nestled in their beds...