Breaking a ski pole is an inevitable setback for every backcountry skier. Even the best poles break. Sometimes the best poles--the ultra expensive, uber lightweight, pencil thin--are especially prone to breaking. Makes you wonder.... Here's a cheap, easy fix for when it happens to you in the backcountry.

If you have a date for a Valentine's Day tour then you've done 90% of the work already. But we at Backcountry Magazine want to share some tips and tricks to make that tour even more romantic. Here's how.

Want to move safely, efficiently and quickly through the mountains? Want to waste less time and energy on the up so you can maximize the down? Effective transitioning technique—from skinning to skiing, skiing to skinning, and skinning to booting—is an essential skill for any backcountry skier or rider.

On their first outing without their baby son Oliver, Adam Smith, wife Heather and four others left Jackson Hole Mountain Resort for a quick lap out of bounds in Granite Canyon at one o'clock p.m. on February 25, 2007. Heather wanted to see a matinee. Adam wanted to ski powder. Both got an epic.

Summer storage and tuning tips from Jack Moore, founder of Tognar Toolworks.

A mountain birch jabs at my throat. I dodge to the left but its white fingers grab my pack, snapping me backwards. I skin forward a few feet and maneuver my skis through the maze of spruce and hardwoods. But when I raise my head to meet the next obstacle, a snow-laden bough clotheslines me while simultaneously ripping back my hood and channeling its frozen load down my neck.