Category: Featured
THR Gear Shed Podcast: The Lightweight Touring Boot Roundtable
Fabrikant, Aplin, and Hess discuss the merits of lightweight touring boots and where they see a best-fit application for these 1000g+ class boots. And as always—find what fits.
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We Need More: Avalanche Rescue Education isn’t Enough.
You’ve put in the time to take an avalanche rescue course, maybe two. You practice each year with your beacon, and the dutiful among you might even attend your annual Snow and Avalanche Workshop to continue to learn all that you can about how to avoid an avalanche. Then, one day, you find yourself in the terrible position of digging out your buried partner. You succeed in pulling them to the surface, but they’re not moving or breathing. Have you trained for this?
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Fear, Lack, and Truth: Reflections on “The Tower”
Truth can be an elusive prey. In The Tower, Kelly Cordes succeeds in tightening his grip on the truths and lies that make up the history of climbing on Cerro Torre. The subtitle “A Chronicle of Climbing and Controversy on Cerro Torre” only hints at the depths in which he researches the topic.
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Give Monogamy a Chance
Consistent touring partners are a fickle beast. Good ones—the sort you build a “partnership” with—require the confluence of several factors. It’s like dating, but maybe even harder. It’s a very Goldilocks sort of quest.
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Sister from Another Mister—A Backcountry Friendship
Mr. Walker had VHS tapes of Scot Schmidt and Glen Plake, and for sure, Brit and I didn’t just want to meet those guys;we wanted to BE those guys. I only ever had two posters of people on my wall—Glen Plake and Andy Hampsten. During the fall, when we couldn’t ski, and Mr. Walker attempted to fire our stoke, he’d get us to do wall sits to get in shape, and he’d screen those “extreme skiing” films. Maybe the most extreme part was actually getting your hands on those movies in the late 80’s in Ohio.
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The Chess Match of High Density Skiing
Inter-Party Avalanche Involvements: There is a generally accepted and often repeated assumption that the backcountry is overrun with humans. Are there more of us out there? The idea of party density and the reality of managing autonomous groups touring in the same zone, and often on the same run, is a real dynamic. To say the backcountry is a swarming hive of reckless and adaptable bipeds, each caught in their cascade of heuristic traps, is overreach. But there are crowds.
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Rock Skis
It smells like snow and I love rock skis.
I fixed a broken boot buckle, ignored a missing skin tail, and freshened up the beacon batteries. Snow line In Alaska still requires a bit of a walk or even more of a drive. The point isn’t really the turns or the vert or the line. It’s about cold fingers and premature seasonality. When I was a kid, I used to wake up in the middle of the night before my birthday to see if midnight had arrived—Fall skiing relies on the same neuro-receptors.
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Advice on Buying Used Touring Gear
‘Tis Ski Swap Season. Buying used touring gear can make financial sense. If you’re looking for a first set-up or building out the quiver, our Gear Editor Gavin Hess and Matt Zia (Executive Director of the Montana Mountaineering Association, pack builder, and guide) help us comb through the used gear to find the gems and avoid the junk.
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ZAG Adret 85 Review
The Adret 85 fits an interesting niche amidst skinny and light skis. I hesitate to call any 1100g ski “hard-charging,” but relative to its class, the Adret is quite capable at speed and in variable snow. From the inside out, the Adret starts with a Paulownia wood core, wrapped in multiaxial carbon/fiberglass and capped with a phenol reinforcement in the mountain area. Paulownia and carbon—pretty standard fare at this point. The phenol reinforced mounting area is interesting to me. I certainly prefer a metal mounting plate – something about a tapped hole through metal gives me warm fuzzies. That said, I didn’t have any issues with stripped holes or the like—the phenol plate seemed to have a solid bite with screws. A 3.8x9mm bit was recommended. I used a 3.6x9mm as that’s what I had on hand.
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Life Happens: Becoming a Ski Dad
I skied every week of the winter, and yeah, I slid down plenty of vert on skis, and of course, I set my share of skin tracks, enjoyed plenty of ridge top time, and sucked cold air through a buff with snow flying in my face…Fine, maybe I have to concede I skied a lot this year, but it was different. I didn’t get any big days in the backcountry. I didn’t venture off into the big mountains. My summits were all familiar. I never slept in a tent in the snow. I skied no dawn-to-dusk ‘full days.’
My daughter was born last fall. Along with a myriad of major and wonderful life changes, I am becoming a ski dad.
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You Should Race the PdG. Here’s Why.
September 30 is the registration deadline for the 2024 PdG. Dave Riggs expands on his experience and thinks you should give the race a go.
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A Welcome Letter from The High Route
Welcome to The High Route.
We’re guessing you found us because you thrive on moving through the mountains, especially under your own power, on skis or boards.
We wanted something different at The High Route—a place where we get granular about celebrating skinning, the climbing, and the turn making without a whole lot of extraneous noise. Or extraneous influence.
Our focus is narrow and we are sticking to it. As a site funded by the backcountry community, we understand who we are writing for. The folks behind The High Route are part of this community.
Risk is an interesting calculus. It carries a particular allure, but it’s also unnerving. We’re taking a risk and we’re hoping you help us nail the landing.
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