Backcountry Beacon

With the debauchery of the holidays over, you might feel that it’s time to repent and start training. A month of over-consumption and inactivity has left you feeling lost. Having strayed from the path, you look to the web for guidance. The Google leads to many websites, books, magazines, and blogs offering recipes for success. Dissatisfied with the current state of things, you begin to find inspiration in the testimonials and meaning in the words of those with the answers.

Thin-air squats: Crossfit at almost 19,000 feet.

Brimming with enthusiasm and the promise of salvation, you feel motivation building in the New Year as you vow to improve. “If I just do X, Y, and Z, I’ll be set. This time I’ll get it right!” you think, as the sugarplums dancing in your head (actually they probably already made it to your belly …) are now replaced with visions of killer programming and previously unimaginable physical prowess. Read More …

The road trip is a time-honored American rite of passage. In fact, failing to embark on at least one road trip per summer basically means that you hate apple pie, fireworks, and babies.  We recently embarked on a kickass weekend road trip and wanted to share our firsthand experience and a few time-tested tips on how to make your road trip a success.

Location

Where you’re going isn’t always as important as just going somewhere. Whether you are headed to a music festival in the Columbia River Gorge, to Utah’s red rock desert, or to a destination unknown, just get on the road and go. Read More …

And the peasants rejoice … well, not everyone is overflowing with stoke about the IOC’s July 4th decision to include ski and snowboard (men’s and women’s) slopestyle in the games. With more rules for competing skiers and riders, many feel that this decision puts a box around their sport. If that’s true, then that box is a television, and in 2014 it will be a polished image brought to you by the highest-paying sponsors.

Replace the X’s with rings, and this is what you’ll probably see.

Whether you’re for or against it, this inclusion was just a matter of time. Progressing a sport is one thing, but when any jibber or wanker dedicates all his or her time to competing in a well-groomed park to please sponsors and judges, then they’re missing the essence of the sport anyway. Go freeride. (Well, at least on what snow is left.)