Readers of The High Route…welcome. The summer, although somewhat less smoky than in summer’s past, brought with it the usual ups and downs. The downs revolved around building out a new site. The ups, primarily, came late in the game. We brushed aside snafus and coding doom to (fingers crossed) present a simplified site and final proofs for the second issue of The High Route Journal.
So let’s channel our inner Wizard of Oz and go behind the curtains.
We built the site from the ground up in the summer of 2023. The premise was simple: develop the site ourselves (with some key coding advice here and there) so we mostly understood what was under the hood. If something went awry, the fix, most often, proved easy. The site crashed once and was offline for roughly 24 hours over nearly two years. We’ll take that as a win.
On the design front, we had too many categories. Although we’ll miss the VPR section—Volume, Proximity, and Repetition, a time-honored argument technique—it has been retired. The header menu is semi-simplified. There’s a heading for Latest, which remains a chronological listing of all our stories. The gear we use for skiing, riding, staying dry, etc., is categorized under the Gear heading. Click that beast and you are directed to our Gear Shed—where you’ll find all things gear.
All things related to avalanche education and forecasting are housed within the Avalanche Department. You can find a comprehensive list of regional-specific avalanche and weather forecasting sites. Mountain Dispatches is the home for pretty much all our news, more creative writing, and podcasts. We are almost there. Backcountry 101 directs readers to stories presenting key skills for those new to the endeavor or in need of a refresher. Lastly, Podcasts are the most basic—you can find all our podcast episodes here. For most, this is simply a reference—you’ve heard it a million times, so you know the drill. You can find The High Route Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts.
The comments are still there, however, they do not appear on a sidebar. They reside at the bottom of each respective post. Since we migrated the site a few months ago, we did lose some comment posted over the summer. You can repost those if you’d like. And apologies for comments lost during the site migration.
As always, we are open to suggestions to improve pretty much anything and everything. Please let us know the site modifications/updates you would like to see or if something isn’t working as expected.
As with anything new, where we envision leaving old problems behind, we’ll likely encounter new problems with the new system. If you have a concern, please reach out.
Why the New Site
The reason for the new site is twofold. First, it’s always nice to get a design refresh. Second, we had two subscription management systems: one for the website and the other for print. Moving forward, we have consolidated into a single subscription system. Some of you may have noticed that we canceled auto-pay subscriptions during the transition. Now, on the new site, when your website subscription expires, you will need to resubscribe to continue to access the site. (This new transaction is set up as an annual auto-pay, presuming you select the annual website subscription.)
To be clear, when we canceled the auto-pay, your subscription was not terminated, and this will not result in additional charges. You will have access to our website for the full term of your original subscription. (In most cases, when migrating data to the new site, we extended website subscriptions for a few weeks to a month.) If you believe we made an error, please reach out; we will remedy it.
We will release two issues of The High Route journal (print) this year. Issue 2 is on pace to be delivered at the beginning of November. Issue 3’s delivery date is the beginning of February. Subscription options that include print are the bundle (print + website) and print only.
Discount Codes
This is key, so perhaps focus in here: If you are a current website subscriber and would like to subscribe to the print version, please contact us for a discount code. We want you to pay the same discounted subscription price for print that the bundle offers.
- Discount code requests and questions can be sent to editor@the-high-route.com.
- If you are a certified guide or work in the avalanche industry, you, too, are eligible for a code. Same deal, email editor@the-high-route.com, and we’ll send a code.
Gift Subscriptions
More news on the subscription front. In our opinion, we made it easier to gift a website or print subscription. You simply purchase a gift card for a specific product, and a gift code is sent to the designated giftee. For more information on gifts, please visit gifts.
And Onward
Deep breath here. There were moments this summer when we thought this might not all come together. It turns out that data migration is a finicky thing. Lastly, we have two new sponsors for The High Route this year. We are proud to partner with Patagonia and ATK. And we are sending a digital fist bump to Blue Ice—their crew has supported our endeavor since the start.
Coming full circle since we began in September 2023, we aspire “to be everything to someone, not something to everyone.” Behind the scenes, we can assure you that these companies share our values of a commercially quiet site that serves readers.
Thanks for reading. And if you do not subscribe to The High Route, take a moment and consider supporting us.
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