Backcountry Magazine 154 | The Blue Collar Issue Print or Digital?:Print Issue

Backcountry Magazine 154 | The Blue Collar Issue Print or Digital?:Print IssueOn the Cover: With dramatic relief and a knife edge ridgeline, Mount Smuts (9,639) is known in the summer months to be one of the most difficult climbing scrambles in the Canadian Rockies. But its a different story when the snow begins to fall. With a powder padding to ease his journey, Bryan Fenske follows the summit ridge bootpack toward Smuts, with the hopes of skiing the peaks nearly 50 degree south face, one of the classic lines in Albertas

Back when bike parks were largely considered a "dumb-ass investment" by resort owners

boots and poles at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center on a 4 km loop of manmade snow combined with the dregs of the winter's natural precipitation

and a journalist finds extreme protection

visualization and reflections of life behind the lens

But after 30 years of continuous reinvention

Joe Josephson unveils the 85 years of climbing history surrounding Canada's highest point

that's a good thing

On a Wing and a Pedal

we're diving headfirst into the whimsical imagination that our athletes embrace to turn improbable mental images into reality

with Nordic events

As a darkness began to cast its shadow across the winter landscape

To recapture a sense of discovery