In 1978, a designer named Chuck Barfoot built himself a snowboard. He had already been working with his friend Tom Sims on some different shapes, and the latest rendition—made of fiberglass and foam—needed some field testing....
It’s late July, and a tan Cody Townsend takes a sip from a Yeti mug. It couldn’t be further from midwinter, and the nearest skiable patch of snow is hours away, but sitting outside Sugar Pine Cakery on Tahoe’s North Shore, the professional skier from...
When Orland Bartholomew pushed off his rake-handle ski poles and began shuffling his hickory skis north toward the jagged peaks beyond Cottonwood Pass, the magnitude of the journey ahead must have been overwhelming....
Alex Honnold is hunkered down in an airport in Detroit, preparing for a flight to Seattle. He’s been doing a lot of waiting for airplanes to take off and land as of late, going to various events to promote the documentary based on his historic...
In the early 1990s, acclaimed cinematographer and former pro skier Tom Day found himself captivated by the brimming talent of a young snowboarder named Noah Salasnek. But it was a seemingly benign aspect of his riding that clued Day into his elite abilities....
Mount Rainier rises like a wayward iceberg from the green sea of moss, fir and ferns that drape both sides of the White River. Towering 10,000 vertical feet above us, it is a disorienting and intimidating glacial behemoth creased and crinkled by yawning crevasses and...
Bob Howard had been benched. Again. For five games in a row, the college football coach had stared hard at the lanky running back from Hug High School and jerked a thumb at the sidelines. What am I doing here? Howard thought, pacing down Mendocino...
Almost anyone facing Alenka Vrecek’s situation would have retreated into survival mode. But when her body was battered by cancer, her husband diagnosed with Parkinson’s and her daughter bouncing back from a devastating car wreck, Vrecek pedaled more than 2,500 miles over 158,000 vertical feet...
When Spider Sabich and Claudine Longet first met at a celebrity ski race event in Bear Valley, California, they both carried their respective worlds in the palms of their hands. Sabich was a lauded professional skier from a small town just outside of Lake Tahoe, regarded...
Those who experienced Tahoe’s 2018-19 winter will not soon forget it. After a modest start, Old Man Winter socked the Tahoe region with one powdery storm after another in January and February, blanketing the mountains in a thick coat of white and treating skiers and...