I'm having a lot of trouble uploading or downloading pics on my pixel 8 pro. I had no trouble downloading/loading pics to my Flickr acct on my Samsung but with my pixel 8 pro it's hit and miss - mostly miss. Is there a way to fix this - some setting I need to change? Thanks in advance if anyone has an answer.

The Peak Season Podcast is a Mountain Bureau LLC Production, based in the North Cascade Mountains. Join your Host, Steffan Gregory and Founder Mark Allen for an interview based podcast. This program will feature a line up of guests who have influenced mountain craft or have made significant contributions to our mountain culture. Listen in to our archive of the world’s most interesting and influential mountain characters.

The Peak Season Podcast can at mountainbureau.com or wherever you get your podcast or subscribe on Spotify

https://www.mountainbureau.com/peak-season-podcast

Enjoy

Hi folks!

I'm in the market for a new set up. I've been rocking the Atomic Backland bindings (now called backland pure I guess) for the last 7 years and while they've been insanely reliable, it's impressive how some of the newer bindings can offer adjustable release at a lower weight.

I'd prefer to stay without brakes, possibly looking at the ATK Kuluar LT and Plum Oazo.

One feature I really appreciated with the Backlands was how easy it was to go from flat to low heel riser with a gentle flick of the pole. With these other models it looks like you have to spin the heel piece to go between flat and risers. How have people found that to deal with? Are you able to spin the binding without bending over?

Thanks!

Like the title states, my dad wants to get into touring. He's incredibly fit for his age and would crush it on the uphill--he has a background in xc skiing/ice skating/mountain biking. However, he's decent at best on the downhill, needs some lessons, and needs a ski that's pretty forgiving.

I told him that he would have to get better at the downhill before I take him with me into the backcountry, but he just wants to buy one setup. I'm basically thinking he could ski for one season at the resort, improve his skills and would be ready to tour with me the year after.

I'm moving back to the east coast next season, so we would primarily be skiing on Mansfield/northern Vermont.

tl;dr: I'm looking for a forgiving ski that my dad can use 50:50 resort:backcountry and not break the bank.

Any recommendation/insight is greatly appreciated!

Currently in a K2 Recon 120. Love the boot and has been great the last two seasons. Considering the K2 Recon Team or Mindbender 130. But open to any brand.

I have only toured a handful of times but fell in love with it this season. Going to get touring skis/bindings as my current skis are 191 and weigh a metric shit ton but would like to stick to one pair of boots.

I have an average to large last and very flat feet. Looking for something stiff and sacrifice the flex on the uphill as long as it has a walk mode.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Hey Bozeman folks! I just learned that I’m heading to Bozeman for work this upcoming Monday and staying through the weekend. I’ve never been before and am stoked to visit. The only issue is that these are my last few weekends of the year to ski the big lines I’ve been eyeing around Colorado…

I haven’t dug into your lines or snowpack very much yet. But I’m hoping somebody can provide me some direction on what it looks like, what some big lines might be, and maybe there’s a possible partner on here?

If the snowpack allows I usually like to chase big couloirs in the 45+ range this time of year. I’m definitely conservative about avy danger. I don’t turn much down in terms of effort. I’d put in a huge day and even pack for an overnighter for a line that’s worth it.

Let me preface this by saying that while I typically go into local shops for all things boot related, none of my shops really have any dedicated touring boots. They have lots in the 50/50 category, but I can't actually try on any the boots I'm after.

Anyways, my previous touring boots were the 16/17 Scarpa Maestrale RS, which took some work to make fit. I ended up getting the 6th toe punched, and making quite a bit more room on the inside of the midfoot (just in front of the heel to the middle of the arch, roughly). Eventually they ended up working really well though, and I've been nursing them through the last few seasons just to avoid buying new boots and going through the process again.

My previous alpine boots were the Salomon S/Max 120, which seemed to fit like a glove with no work required. I also just picked up a set of Shift Pro 130s for resort use, and these fit great as well. This leads me to believe that I have a Salomon shaped foot, assuming all of their boots follow a similar fit philosophy.

Basically, I'm wondering which touring boots might have a similar 'Salomon' type fit. Obviously Salomon has the S/Lab Mtn and Mtn Summit, and I'm strongly considering just ordering the S/Lab Mtn (not the Summit). The only thing holding me back is the limited ROM compared to other modern boots, and the idea that there's something else out there that would fit just as well while performing better.

So...any advice?

They stopped selling them, so have to find used. Thx!

Maybe it's just my targeted ads, but it seems like there are now dozens of outfitters for ski and sail trips in northern Norway. Yet I can't find many reviews online. Does anyone have experience on one of these trips? Any info on trusted guides, snow quality, weather, time of year, and terrain is appreciated!

I bought these used skis and didn't notice the laminant problem at the time. I'm worried this is not a fixable problem, but would like to hear what everyone things.

https://preview.redd.it/i12o0io8ugzc1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=c085b22c0b47e2406700022bec0d7d766d8951a5

https://preview.redd.it/40wunjo8ugzc1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=249e8841626dee2d97e764e11a94bad4e18dd689

https://preview.redd.it/9cegzyo8ugzc1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=8b2f52e285dc8a71b35efed151b6be811e681945

Any thoughts on the wayback 96 for a spring/daily driver ski in the pnw?

I'm looking for something pretty unexceptional but also easy enough to maneuver at the end of the days through the trees. I'm a intermediate skier so won't be hucking cliffs or charging hard.

In before just get the the 108 tour. Anyone done it? Enjoyed it? Success? Looking to bring out on decent powder days in alps mostly for day touring. Thank you in advance!

Has anyone been to Loveland ski area recently? Can we still uphill in the AM?

Well, I'm am 45 yo, weight 67kg and 175cm height. Intermediate skier. I'm from Chile, here we have good mountains but powder is hard to find because humidity in our mountains, so you will find mainly compact snow. I bought ATK raider 11 EVO (birthday autogift in may 3 😅), skis are a bit hard to find in Chile for what I want to buy, so my choose is black crows camox freebird. Previously I have BC ova freebird with G3 ZED 9 bindings, but with 85mm waist I founded I need a little more width. So, with camox freebird (95mm) I think I would be fine based in my height and weight.

The question is.... Length of skis, I'm between more control with 171cm or a bit more flotability but maybe less control with 178cm. I will ski only in my country, with kind of snow you usually find here.

Please, let me read your comments about this, thanks in advance!

I’m fairly new to touring and was hoping to make my first visit to the Muir snowfield at Rainier this weekend. I understand that the snowfield itself is fairly low angle, but there was snowfall last weekend and significant warming coming, leaving me concerned with possible slides near the higher angled slopes at Panorama point. Someone mentioned to consider taking the summer route (I believe this is the skyline trail?) to reduce danger when conditions weren’t ideal. Does anyone know what to expect here?

Mount Shasta in early April, 2024

Amazingly, even with the massive year Mt Shasta had last year, it is looking much fatter than it did at this point a year ago! The seasonal snowfall stats are impressive and the upper mountain shows!

Who's been up there recently? I'll try to post some pics from this weekend's storm soon!

I'm in Northern Colorado. It's my first season in the backcountry here. Winter was amazing, and now that we are transitioning to spring I'm struggling to wrap my head around how to adapt.

It feels like the diurnal snowpack has not begun yet. P-slabs are out, but new snow and wind are making wind slabs pop on all the bigger lines that get ridden often. I've seen a ton of instability in wind slabs and storm slabs in the last couple weeks. Still no wet slabs in the forecast. While on the lower angle lines the snow is like cement and difficult to get going.

Is this a normal spring here for the snowpack? I'm frothing to hit the bigger lines but the risk has not been dropping since it keeps snowing. While at the same time my normal winter lines suck to ride. I always see April/May/June being prime time for bigger lines and it feels like time is running out.

The post yesterday on relative mortality got me thinking - I haven't seen any high-accuracy estimation of 'how many ski tourers are there in North America'/'how many "ski tour days" per year happen in North America'?

The figures for mortality from Switzerland come from a 2016 paper using the 'Sport Schweiz' survey, which pretty accurately assesses various sports across the whole Swiss population.

2013 survey, used in the 2016 paper - see page 36 for skitouring

I checked but wasn't able to find pretty much any equivalent survey of any relevant US population, but here's a possible metric to use (full disclaimer; it's probably just as bogus of a metric as compared to SIA's numbers of '6 million tourers in the USA'):

The Swiss (population: 8 million) avalanche forecast website SLF records about 16 million pageviews per year, compared with Colorado (population: 5 million) where CAIC gets 3.1 million pageviews per year plus an additional 230k views for CBAC.

Obviously there are differences between who checks forecasts versus who actually tours - I would personally guess that Swiss freeriders are more likely to check SLF compared to Colorado slackcountry users checking CAIC/CBAC, adding 'extra' numbers to SLF. Who knows, maybe there's even a drastic difference in the non-forecast site usage or how often forecasts are getting refreshed. Nevertheless, it's pretty interesting to see that SLF gets 3x as much per capita pageviews as the Colorado centers!

​

We can also update the mortality figures from the 2016 paper for Switzerland, since the 2020 survey (page 27 for skitouring) is now available as well.

In 2020, 3.4% of the 8.63 million (2020) population of Switzerland are skitourers, so 290,000 skitourers x 6 average days per year = 1.7 million 'ski tour days' (although 'median tour days' and 'median tour length' both went down from 2013 to 2020, so overall cumulative skitouring hours were very similar!).

From SLF, we can check fatal avalanche accidents of the last years, subselecting for only ski tourers and not slackcountry/in-resort freeriding, to get an average of 10 avalanche skitouring deaths per year since 2020 (it's decreased from 14.75 deaths per year over the entire last 20 years), so per 1 million touring days in Switzerland, there were 5.9 deaths on average. Compare this to the 2016 paper's value for skiers of 8.7 deaths per million touring days.

It would be interesting to get a high-quality picture of how many ski touring days happen in Colorado per year, for example, since the avalanche death rate there has sharply increased compared to Switzerland (up to 9 average per year since 2020 versus 6.15 average per year over the last 20 years), but there's no way of knowing the actual population of ski tourers and how it's been growing in CO.

I had a compound fracture of my tib/fib 12/9/23. I developed compartment syndrome as well. 5 surgeries later (external fixator 12/9, 2 fasciotomies 12/9, nail placement 12/22, allograft bone graft 2/26) and still no signs of healing. I am starting to seek second opinions from specialists as I am still unable to walk. I am FWB however its very painful. Upon research, I'm starting to see BKA (below knee amputation) being a possibility.

My surgeon discussed trying another bone graft (taken from my femur, maybe more effective?)

If this doesn't work, potential for a bone transport surgery (another 3 procedures)
I'm really starting to get frustrated with this whole process. I was on track to become a mountain guide and my plans have been completely derailed.

Anyone else experience this horrific healing journey? Does anyone have recommendations for a specialist?
This has been very mentally taxing and I am just looking for some light at the end of the tunnel.

https://preview.redd.it/hriu8spgv7zc1.jpg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9a9fe94bd77f29f6c9aefffed6b8d63df865220

Here is a photo of my x-ray. I also have pains in the area that my non-union fibula is. I feel like I can physically move my bone when I press on the left side of my shin.

https://preview.redd.it/ib5cszfu8gzc1.jpg?width=404&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=716b07c4b95d2e7b74fcf04ba82df58eb69fe6c6

https://preview.redd.it/3qi7jzfu8gzc1.jpg?width=379&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=07585e40de10d88dccc78b44e8ec4313de929491

Adding updated X-rays

Hi guys, I'm currently looking into buying my first pair of touring skis. Ideally, I would want to have it both for powder days and as a small touring setup (talking about half a day tours) so weight would somewhat matter.

I was looking at the QST Echo but I'm afraid that 1800g/ski would be a bit too heavy. My attention got caught by the Atomic Backland 107 which looks fairly light while excelling on powder.

I would add that I already tested the Black Crows Orb (great for uphill, not great for the downhill) and K2 wayback 106 (which I liked but felt it was a bit too soft). Overall, I would consider myself an advanced skier and I like making aggressive turns.

Other options I looked into:

• Armada Locator
• DPS Pagoda
• Blizzard 0g 105
• Majesty Supernova
• Faction La Machine

Plan to mount all of these with a good ATK binding.

Any advice? Thanks in advance

Last weekend brought the goods in the Sierra's.

I've only ever seen 1 pair of the Voile WSP out in the wild and just learned about their replacement, the Voile SR51 & SR61. Available in a smooth, traditional base as well as their BC fish scale version. I found more references here in the Backcountry group, for a total of one comment, than the Skimo group. So I figured I'd see if anyone has checked these out and how they compare to more "traditional" skimo skis. Which I can only imagine are for surviving the downhill portion of a race. The one review from Voile's site looks to be from a sponsored athlete, so it's double suspect, but I liked the gist of it. Thoughts?