Wingwalkers: The Story of California's Redline Traverse
Release Date: 03/09/2022
Doug Stoup: The Iceman
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
From playing NCAA soccer to a successful modeling and acting career to being the top polar explorer of his time, Doug Stoup is an enigma. Host Adam Howard recently journeyed to Antarctica with Stoup, and their conversation ranges from Doug’s personal training of A-list Hollywood actors to near death experiences; adventures with Doug Coombs; and taking novice skiers to the South Pole. | |
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Tele Mike Russell: You Cannot Be What You Cannot See
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
Tele Mike Russell grew up as a sharecropper’s son in Delaware, before attending college and becoming an executive in the pharmaceutical industry. Then he watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center and decided he’d better follow another path, this one to skiing in Colorado, where he’d go on to find a family in the National Brotherhood of Skiers. | | Host: Adam Howard Producer + Engineer:
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Eric Blehm: Meet Your Heroes
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
When Craig Kelly died in 2003, the world of snowboarding was devastated. Twenty years later, New York Times best-selling author Eric Blehm returned to the site of Kelly’s death, to uncover the true story of what happened in the avalanche that killed the legendary snowboarder and six backcountry skiers in British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains. Blehm’s roots in snowboarding run deep. He started riding during the sport’s infancy, and after college became an editor at Transworld SNOWboarding Magazine. Years later, he was in a lift line when a fellow rider saw the “Craig Kelly is my...
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Chris Davenport: Plugged-In To The Mountains
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
In the skiing universe, Chris Davenport is a household name. His notoriety is due in part to the many facets of the sport upon which he’s had a lasting impact. He raced for New Hampshire’s Holderness Academy and the University of Colorado before transitioning to freeskiing and winning world championships in 1996 and 2001. He became one of the first American Red Bull athletes and found his way into more than 30 ski films. And that just scratches the surface of Dav’s decades of dominance. He eventually moved on from competitive freeskiing to focus on high-profile backcountry objectives...
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Ellen Bradley: The Original Storytellers
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
Tlingit skier Ellen Bradley is an advocate, athlete, scientist and storyteller. Fierce and thoughtful, she defies the narrative that wild Alaska is there only to be conquered by heli operations and other extractive industries. She loves to slide on snow, and wants more Indigenous people to share in her joy. Born and raised in the Seattle area, Bradley started skiing Stevens Pass at age 4. For her, skiing has always been a source of connection to both the land and her ancestors, especially because she grew up away from her traditional homelands in Southeast Alaska. Today, she’s working...
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Jeremy Jones: The Art of Schralpinism
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
From a distance, Jeremy Jones’s career looks impossible. He is, after all, a pro snowboarder, entrepreneur, activist, filmmaker and author. Does he ever sleep? Nevermind that he’s also a husband, father and active community member in Truckee, California. Somehow, he still manages to snowboard around 200 days a year. The founder of Jones Snowboards has stayed true to his passions while owning and operating one of the most innovative brands in the sport. At any given time, you might find him on a Tahoe skintrack or in Washington, D.C., advocating for the planet on behalf of Protect Our...
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Jordan Campbell: Big Mountains and Broken Heroes
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
Jordan Campbell’s relationship with Backcountry spans more than two decades. He published his first story in the magazine—about a ski expedition to Eastern Tibet—in 2002. Throughout the course of his career, Campbell has worked for some of the biggest names in the outdoor industry, including Jagged Edge, The North Face and Marmot. During that time, he found himself increasingly drawn to humanitarian causes around the globe. It was also during this time host Adam Howard found himself chasing Campbell around the mountains of Chamonix and Norway. In recent years, his focus has...
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Biff America: Beer is Great, God is Good, People are Crazy
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
Jeffrey Bergeron, aka Biff America, has spent the last 50 years living in the mountains, mainly in Breckenridge, Colorado. Yet his signature accent and brash personality—rooted in the South Shore of Massachusetts—are as rich as they were the day he moved west. Likewise, his sharp and self-deprecating sense of humor is evident through his writing and, as you’ll hear, in this episode. In addition to his columns that have run in Backcountry since 1994, he’s also published two books under the Backcountry flag. Biff’s colorful career has spanned stints on the radio and television,...
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Hadley Hammer: Love, Loss and Light
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
Hadley Hammer might just have the best name in backcountry skiing. Despite growing up in Jackson Hole, however, her path to becoming a professional skier did not follow a linear track. She dabbled in ski racing, figure skating, cross country skiing and other sports before deciding to pursue competitive freeskiing. Her career got off to a rocky start with a last-place finish at a Freeride World Tour event in Argentina. But Hammer is nothing if not determined and, as she says, stubborn. So she dedicated her life to improving her skiing, whether in the gym or following heavy hitters around...
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Dave Grissom: Behind the Curtain at Voilé
Backcountry Magazine Podcast
For more than 40 years, Voile has broken trail in the backcountry. The storied Utah brand develops and manufactures its products in the Wasatch, and innovates year in and year out. From developing tele bindings and skis to splitboards and the eponymous Voile strap, the inventors at Voile work at the edges. Their skis show up at our annual Utah ski test quite literally fresh out of the press as they tinker up to the last possible moment on a new model. While many associate Voile with characters like founder Wally Wariakois and Brett “Cowboy” Kobernick, Partner and General...
info_outlineThere’s a range in America’s most populous state that’s hemmed in by desert and people. Each year, millions come to California's Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to collectively attempt to climb Mt. Whitney or ogle Yosemite’s Half Dome or ski at Mammoth or hike the John Muir Trail. In the spring of 2016, Adam Howard, Craig Dostie and John and Tyson Hausdoerffer came here for a different reason: To ski some of the famed Redline Traverse, first pioneered in the early ’80s. Summits here tower 10,000 feet above the Owens Valley to the east, and it’s arguably on this granite and snow where both American ski mountaineering and long-distance ski touring were born. The mountain objectives and gear have changed a lot in the century since the first snow surveyors plotted these hills. But a few things have stayed the same: It’s still breathtakingly high; it can get insanely deep; and, from October to May, there’s no one here. Wingwalkers is part of that story published in Backcountry Magazine, Spring 2017; written by Adam Howard, read by Matt Richardson.
This episode of the Backcountry Podcast is brought to you by Minus33.