- Grizzly bears will also usually move along if they sense a human nearby. Try to make your presence known as often as possible when you travel through grizzly territory. Human noises work best, so try to keep a conversation going, or shout “Hey, bear! Coming through!” if you see signs of a bear in your vicinity.
- When surprised, grizzlies attack more often than black bears, but the same “threat” mentality applies. Back away, speaking in a strong but soothing voice, showing the bear that you mean it no harm. Read More …
Gear Articles tagged ‘humor’
Dealing with Grizzlies: How to Prevent Attacks
By: Genevieve Mount | June 23rd, 2010Mountain Lion Tips
By: Genevieve Mount | June 22nd, 2010- Make noise while you hike. Most mountain lions will leave if they hear people coming.
- If you see a mountain lion, do not run. Running will stimulate the “chase and attack” instinct, and four powerful legs outrun two human ones.
- Do not approach the lion. Give it a way to escape. Most mountain lions will avoid confrontation (unless they have cubs with them or are very hungry).
- Maintain eye contact and face the mountain lion. Make yourself appear larger by raising your arms, opening your jacket, or holding your backpack over your head.
- Speak in a firm voice.
When You Hear A Rattle: Rattlesnake Safety
By: Genevieve Mount | June 22nd, 2010- Keep your distance from the snake – most rattlers will leave you alone.
- Go around the snake at a safe distance if the terrain allows. At best, rattlesnakes can strike a distance of two-thirds their total body length (this means a three-foot-long snake can snarf a bit of your leg within two feet of where they lie). Play it safe and give them a wide berth.
- If you can’t go around, throw a few small pebbles around the snake from a safe distance (this is not a squash-the-snake game, you’re just trying to get the snake to move).
Black Bear Attacks: What To Do
By: Genevieve Mount | June 21st, 2010- Most black bears will high-tail it when they hear or smell a human. While being loud and ripe with B.O. is a social no-no in the human world, it’s a good idea in bear country.
- If you surprise a bear on the trail, back away while speaking calmly and choose a new route or wait for the bear to leave the area.
- Avoid eye contact. This is perceived as a challenge to bears and may change their attitudes from “What’s that weirdo doing?” to “What the hell are you staring at? I’ll rip you apart, smartass!” Read More …
Preventing Animal Attacks
By: Genevieve Mount | June 21st, 2010
Happy Solstice, everyone. Now that warm weather is officially here, we implore you to be careful out there. Because along with heat of summer comes something else: deadly animal attacks!
To kick off the summer season, we’ve compiled some tips (and some shockingly realistic videos) on how to handle animal encounters. Over the next few days, keep an eye out for the advice and the video that just might save your life. Read More …
Top 10 Gape-tastic Videos
By: Beth Lopez | April 2nd, 2010
As we savor the final weeks of ski season, we at Backcountry.com have noticed the usual seasonable influx of non-ironic denim and colorblock one-pieces on the spring-breaker-flooded resort slopes. Nobody enjoys a hearty point-and-laugh from the mid-mountain patio as much as we do, and we thank the tourists who film their exploits and post them on the interwebs so we can continue to gape vicariously online. Read More …
Daylight Savings Procrastination
By: Justin Mool | March 15th, 2010
Man … Daylight savings is rough. We love the extra hour of daylight at night, but you know as well as we do, that waking up in the morning sucks. It feels more like we lost three hours of sleep. So instead of struggling through emails and trying to put together some semblance of work, we sleuthed through a few posts on the Goat Blog and came across a couple gems of daylight savings time procrastination. Read More …
Lift-Line Etiquette
By: Jeb Admire | February 26th, 2010
Lining up at the Canyons Ski Resort (mind the gap)
I lived in Germany for a couple years in the ’80s, and when I was ten, the folks took me on a ski trip to Austria. While I basically love everything about Austria—the smaller, more sophisticated and less pretentious version of its northern neighbor—I was amused and disturbed by the behavior of some of the locals in the lift line. It’s possible that I’m so sensitive to lift-line etiquette now because of the pole-whacking, one-piece-pulling, general anarchy that I experienced my first time at Stubaital. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed mulling about the lifts in Gulmarg, India (when they worked) and Zakopane, Poland (Perogis aplenty), and I’m fine with being herded into the tram at Snowbird, UT, but I will never forget the unruly Austrians hitting each other’s poles and sneakily unclipping bindings to cut ahead in line. With that in mind, here are six guidelines to remember when you are sharing the lift line with fellow winter-sports-inclined hominids.
10 Products That Never Made It
By: Hasen Pfeffer | February 25th, 2010
Over the years a handful of products have hit the outdoor market with such force that they have changed the way the game is played. Products so innovative, so practical, and so convenient that they redefine the direction of outdoor adventure—shaped skis, wicking fabrics, spring-loaded cams. Some have become so universal that they are known by their name brand rather than what they are specifically: Leatherman, GORE-TEX, Nalgene.
But beyond those life-altering innovations there exists another category of gear …
Ski-sploitation: The Best and Worst Ski Movies of All Time
By: Daniel Boccia | February 24th, 2010Hollywood’s periodic attempts to co-opt the popular image of skiing usually result in straight-to-video disasters that do more damage than good to our sport’s reputation. Many of these cinematic train wrecks fall squarely in the ‘so-bad-it’s-awesome’ category, and a select few manage to capture the inherently epic culture of skiing. With that in mind, we present to you our Top 10 picks, in (more or less) descending order of greatness.
1. Aspen Extreme (1993)
This early ’90s gem scores major points with stunt skiing by Scott Schmidt and the late, great Doug Coombs, who star side-by-side in several truly epic scenes, one of which led to the coolest ski poster ever. Sure, the drama is overly cheesed and the cast unmemorable, but this movie has it all: Guys ripping bumps in jeans, cougars with names like Bryce Kellog, cocaine addiction, villainous Euro-dicks, and heroic redemption via Powder 8 Championships.
Classic quote: “We got a renegade going OB. We’re after him.”
2. Hot Dog The Movie (1984)
Truly a classic, this comedy calls out the good-time party side of skiing with a heavy emphasis on frontal nudity, recreational drug use, and politically incorrect ethnic stereotypes. With a dangerous dose of ski ballet, stretch pants, and twister-spreads, Hot Dog won’t disappoint those looking for quality ski action either. Euro-dick arch nemesis, you ask? Hot Dog’s reprehensible Rudy all but invented the role. The film’s Chinese Downhill climax continues to encourage poor decision making by skiers around the world.
Classic quote: “Yeah, best run of the morning, man. Hey, were you on ‘shrooms or what?”
News coverage that makes climbers throw things
By: Adam Riser | June 9th, 2010No Comments »
Climbers tend to cringe whenever they hear climbing mentioned on television. I’m not talking about Cliffhanger reruns either. It seems that every time a story involves climbing (or something the media decides is climbing), the news gets a hold of it and makes all climbers seem like idiots who are risking their lives for thrills. Yeah, they’re probably right. We should just sit on the couch and complain about the people who are still outside. Maybe news coverage wouldn’t be so bad if every hiker who falls off a trail or high-school kid who stole his mom’s clothesline gets labeled as a “very experienced climber.” That kind of stuff makes me want to break a television. Maybe I should buy a TV so I have one to break. These are just a few of my favorite “climbing” stories. Makes me wonder how bad the news screws up the stuff that I don’t know anything about. Read More …
Tags: climbing, humor, media
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