FAQs

We’ll limit ourselves here; we’ll focus on the silent sport of backcountry skiing and splitboarding with the occasional foray into offseason mountain travel. In other words, no chairlift content. We’ve all ridden chairlifts, but we’re not covering that scene or culture. Others already do a great job with that beat. 

Resort uphilling? We embrace that. And ski mountaineering/ski alpinism, we’ll report on and partake in that. 

The content you will see and read and hear on The High Route will include unbiased gear reviews, podcasts, essays, opinion pieces, reported stories, travel guides and trip reports, and how-tos.

Let’s put this in context, we’re covering the backcountry scene and it’s a heavy heavy world out there. We know it’s not the most important thing in the cosmos. But we love the backcountry, and if you are reading this, we assume you do as well. 

How we present the backcountry at The High Route matters too. We value honesty and we value our readers. There will be no BS. 

There are some who obtain summits by any means necessary, and others who aspire for summits, and sometimes achieve them, but place more value on good style. We’re in the good-style camp, not the summit-at-all-cost camp. In other words, style matters.

The High Route is reader supported. A login allows a reader, once they are subscribed, to access the full site. Without a login, readers are limited to ~8 free articles. 

During the subscription process, you will be asked for your first and last name, and a good email address. This where you will create your username and password. In other words, your login. Let us know if you have problems with the set up.

We have a paywall. 

Potential readers can access a few free articles, but the core of our content (besides our podcasts) is available only to subscribers. This is how we pay staff and our bills. 

We will not rely on traditional online advertising (digital ads are a tenuous model at this point) or affiliate links (a thriving model) to sustain us. We will roll out a basic tiered plan for industry sponsors who support our mission—if you are keen on seeing how that will look, check out The Surfers Journal and scroll to the bottom of their site. 

We encourage you to support the backcountry shops and brands you believe in.

The financial model sustaining The High Route is not new. In fact, it is retro. We hope you value our stories, podcasts, and reviews enough to support us.

There’s now a financial premium placed on our silent sport culture. As a group, we spend considerable dollars on new gear, travel, and related experiences. Backcountry skiers and riders are consumers. Much of outdoor media has evolved to focus on SEO content—we know it when we see it—to harness that $. That monetization strategy works. But who is the end customer? Is it the reader, the publisher, or the affiliates? 

In the case of The High Route, our readers are our customers. 

This is a nascent project. And we want to build out the best content possible. That requires talent and we want to pay for that talent. As noted, our primary revenue stream are reader subscriptions. We will consider support and partnerships from companies that believe in our mission.

To learn more, check out our industry partners and supporters page.  

We’ve been there and experienced that. We hope the member model sustains an authentic site that allows for modest growth. Let’s face it, we love backcountry skiing and know the endeavor has limited appeal. Selling the site likely means morphing the site’s mission to meet an investor’s ROI expectations. We’re not OK with that. 

We’ll stick to what we know and love: human powered skiing. No chairlift content means no chairlift content. Sure, that allows others to leverage their influence and SEO reach to capture the largest portion of the snow-sliding demographic. We’re OK with that.

Well, gifting a membership is possible, but requires an extra step on the membership platform we use. 1) Begin by going to the subscribe page for an annual subscription. 2) Here’s the extra step, you must create an account first even if you intend not to subscribe. 3) Fill in the fields for name, address, username, email, and password. (Use your information as this is the name/address used to run the card.) 4) Check the “is this a gift?” box. 5) Proceed through the checkout process, and you will be prompted to enter an email for the person receiving the gift subscription. 6) The follow-up: As the giftee, you can check your account profile—on the left hand side you’ll note a subheading for Gifts where you can find specific info regarding your gifts. Also in this Gifts subheading, you can find a link to the Gift URL and send an email to the gift recipient.  

Yes you can. Send us an email and explain your situation, and we’ll work something out. For those younger backcountry folks out there just breaking out on your own, feel free to hit us up for a deal too, we want to be part of your stoke.

Once you are logged into The High Route, there is an easy way to do this. Navigate to the bottom of the site, and locate “Account” on the bottom menu bar. Click “Account.” (Same directions for desktop/laptop or mobile.) You have the option of modifying your account settings here—including your display name.

Your default display name is your first and last name from your subscription information. Like the Shred Dawg, many prefer a less public profile—and would rather use a nickname. Here’s the relatively easy fix to change your display name.

1. Login into the site.
2. Click”Account” in bottom menu bar.
3. Computer: Click “Forum Profile” in sidebar. Mobile: Click “Forum Profile” in upper right hand menu. 
4. Click “Edit” in sidebar. 
5. Change the Display name to nickname. You also have the option of changing your nickname too.
6. Click “Update Profile” to save the settings.

We contract out for payment services. When you purchase a membership, your payment/card information is handled through Stripe and PayPal – both longstanding and secure digital payment platforms. Stripe payment methods include Apple Pay, major credit cards, and other digital wallets while PayPal offers several options too.

After subscribing to The High Route, you should receive a welcome/confirmation email with your username and password. Your password will also be stored in your computer’s password storage application. For example, on a Mac, your password will be stored in Keychain Access. However, if you have not logged in to THR yet, the password will be listed under Stripe or PayPal, depending on the payment system you chose at check out. Let us know if you have any issues. You can always reset your password on the login page too. 

Good question. We do have a record of registered users which includes your user name and email. We do license software to manage your login data, however, that data is stored locally on our web-host’s servers. Under no circumstances will we disclose or sell your information name/email and metadata to a third party. If you leave a comment, the site administrator has access to your ISP address. If we have questions for you regarding a comment, we will send an email to the email address on record. 

If you are a subscriber, first, thanks again. Second, your personal payment information is secured with Stripe or PayPal. We do not have access to your personal payment information.  

We do use an automated spam detection service for comments. Your comment and related info may run through this service.

Let’s all try to be on the same page, we want folks to feel welcome. We’d rather the comment section on each respective post and the forums remain free from dishonesty, vulgarities, abuse, defamation, violence, or even a whiff of obscene or objectionable.

To put this in more basic terms: be nice. To the Shred Dawgs and Boss McGillicuttys out there—please be humorous. Be insightful. Clarify things if we make a mistake (we’ll make some typos). 

We reserve the right to remove comments deemed inappropriate or vibing negative energy without notifying a user. After several violations, or an egregious violation, a user may be blocked from leaving comments. This is all about backcountry skiing/riding, let’s be a healthy community.

Oh, and please do not advertise in the comments.

You must be logged in to leave a comment.

Another good question. We’ll treat contributors fairly, and will discuss rights for contributed material on a case by case basis. In other words, please respect the material on the website. 

If you are using the site, you may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, display, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit our content, nor may you distribute any part of this content over any network. 

If you are interested in republishing a piece, please get in touch with editor@the-high-route.com.