Vasque has a few new boots set to come out this fall that I was able to get a close up look at during the Outdoor Retailer 2017 Winter Market, including the Snowburban II UltraDry, the Pow Pow III UltraDry, and the Breeze III. SNOWBURBAN II ULTRADRY The latest cold-weather boot from Vasque are these…
Tag: winter
Oboz Big Sky Insulated BDry Boots review
Utah is in a deep freeze and you pretty much need warm, waterproof boots to do anything outside. From walking the dog, to shoveling the driveway and hauling your ski gear across the Wildcat lot at Alta, what you wear on your feet can make or break your day. This winter I’ve been putting the…
Helly Hansen Stockholm Boots review
A trusty pair of boots are essential for winter in the Rocky Mountains. This was a fact that I only recently accepted. Let me confess: for most of my time in Utah, I wore sneakers year-round. Wet socks, cold feet, and untimely slipping and sliding around city sidewalks were just some of the Idiot Tax…
Arva introduces new airbag pack system at Outdoor Retailer
Arva, well known for their avalanche beacons, has just entered the airbag pack market. They unveiled the new Reactor System line of packs at the 2016 Outdoor Retailer Winter All Mountain Demo. I got an in-person demonstration, which I later found out was the very first North American deployment of this totally new airbag system….
New skis and gear at Outdoor Retailer 2016 All Mountain Demo
Outdoor Retailer is back in Salt Lake City, and the winter show kicked things off with the 2016 All Mountain Demo at Solitude Mountain Resort. There is so much to see and try out in a short 6 hours, and I skied as many new skis as I could, but it’s just impossible to do…
Patience and the long wait for winter
Photos of people skiing at Alta flood my Facebook feed, and my heart quickens at the sight. A week before, a large storm dropped over a foot of snow in the high country, and the die-hards are getting after it on a Wednesday morning. I like to consider myself a die-hard, but not to the…
It’s October, time to get ready for winter
October 26th, 2010. It looked more like February than early fall. That year, in the waning days of October, a three-day storm dropped 45 inches of snow in the Devil’s Castle and Sugarloaf area at Alta. Although it was weeks before the resort’s scheduled opening, a mad rush of backcountry skiers descended on Little Cottonwood…
Utah skier visits drop during 2014/2015 ski season
Go ahead, blame the weather. According to Ski Utah, skier visits to the Beehive State’s ski resorts in 2014/15 dropped 4.9 percent from the previous season. In total, this past winter’s total visits of 3,946,762 is the second worst in the last 10 years – the dubious honor of worst season belonging to 2007-2008. In…
Hiking Upper Muley Twist and the Waterpocket Fold in Capitol Reef National Park
The Waterpocket Fold is one of the most unique geological features in Utah. A nearly 100-mile long wrinkle in the earth’s crust, the Waterpocket Fold offers stunning views of the classic Wingate and Navajo sandstone formations. And because it’s in a remote section of a lightly-visited park, it offers great hiking without crowds, especially if you go in winter….
Snowmageddon 2014 shuts down Utah ski resorts
To much of a good thing? Not if you’re talking about snow… unless that snow shuts down ski resorts. Salt Lake area resorts in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon are in clean-up mode after a massive winter storm blew in with wet snow measured in feet, 100-per-mile-an-hour winds, and high avalanche danger. But while Solitude…