Elevation Outdoors Magazine

You are browsing the archives of Doug.

Elevation Outdoors wants to help you find your secret stash with two awesome prize packs!

So what to pack when you’re headed out into the backcountry? We go over safety gear in this story on avy safety, but here’s the rest of what we recommend.
Two low-profile packs that stand out are Deuter’s Freeride Pro 30 ($149; deuter.com) and Mammut’s Nirvana Snowpack ($170; mammut.ch). Both ride well, hold just the right [...]

TELEMARK
22 Designs Hammerhead
The Hammerhead has become the hands-down favorite when it comes to tele bindings. Why? Reliability and snappy big-ski performance for one, but even better is the ability to adjust it at five different tension settings.
$225; twentytwodesigns.com
Black Diamond 01
The best tele touring binding we have tested, the O1 is easy to click into skinning [...]

BOARDS

K2 Darkside
Our go-to ski for tearing through big dumps, the Darkside looks like a waterski at 156/128/144—and it absolutely floats at high speed in deep stuff. Yet what really impressed us was how it could turn in area since the rocker is only in the tip with regular camber underfoot and in the tail. [...]

Say you don’t want to slog for hours to earn your turns but you do want deep powder, solitude and other amenities those beasts with the skins enjoy. You are a perfect candiate for the slackcountry, my friend. And we know just where you can find it.
We traversed the ridge for what seemed like more [...]

With plenty of options for untracked lines and an authentic vibe, the little town that rocks makes for a perfect close-to-home winter weekend.Salida is still a bit off the radar when it comes to backcountry goodness, but just three hours from Denver, it offers up a whole platter of powdery ski and snowboard options for [...]

Locals tackle China’s Yangtze to raise awareness of disappearing rivers.
Grand Junction resident Travis Winn’s father had been running exploratory river expeditions in western China for as long as Winn could remember, and he inherited his father’s obsession. By the time he was 16, Winn was exploring the major rivers of the provinces of Tibet, Sichuan, [...]

“We acknowledge that some items … are funny, but sometimes you have to put yourselves in the shoes of the victim and not lose sight of that.”
-Steamboat Springs Police Captain Joel Rae to the local paper after The Jay Leno Show mocked an incident that occurred in the 2900 block of West Acres Drive on [...]

The amount of energy Movement Climbing + Fitness, Boulder’s newest and greenest climbing gym, gets from solar panels and solar thermal heaters.
movementboulder.com

Uncrowded Ice at the Other Ouray
Climbers from around the world know Ouray, Colorado, for its impressive free ice park. But ask even local climbers about the Lake City Ice Park (lakecityiceclimbs.com) and you’ll most likely get a blank stare.
Blame it on tiny Lake City’s baby brother status—it only claims about a dozen major routes, ranging [...]