2 Backcountry Skiers You Need to Follow This Winter
If you look outside you can see that leaves are changing, you can smell it in the air, winter is on its way. But if you’re like me that’s not enough. You need some entertainment to keep you tied over until the snow actually starts to fly.
To help keep you entertained until ski season arrives here are three backcountry skiers you should follow this winter.
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Cody Townsend
Cody Townsend became famous for his parts in iconic ski movies skiing pow out of a helicopter and the side of a snowmobile. But last season his m.o. changed and he started The Fifty Project.
The Fifty Project is his attempt to ski The 50 Classic Ski Descents of North America. His goal is to ski all 50 of these descents self-propelled and document each ascent and descent. To do this he is traveling around sleeping in his truck and bringing a filmer along with him.
Right now he is a little over halfway and still has some challenging routes ahead of him this season. Some routes he has yet to conquer include:
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Mt. Robson/Yuh Hai Has Kun, North Face, BC
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Skyladder, Mt. Andromeda, BC
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Combatant Couloir, Mt. Combatant
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University Peak, South Face, AK, USA
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Mira Face, Mt. Saint Elias, AK, USA
Be sure to subscribe to Cody’s YouTube channel to watch as he checks off lines this season.
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Nikolai Schirmer
Nikolai Schirmer is a Norwegian skier riding for Black Crows. He spends the majority of his winters in Chamonix, France. During the summer he works as a filmmaker and what’s cool about this is that he uses that talent to self-document his skis season.
Starting in the 2017/2018 season Nikolai has put out numerous very high-quality videos per year documenting his ski season. The first videos he published were titled Schirmir in The Field and documented his season in Revelstoke.
Following that year he produced Endless Winter, a three-part video series that looked at how he could cut his carbon footprint and still ski pow all winter. I highly recommend watching this series. Last season he did not put out any full series but released videos documenting his ski mountaineering adventures. If you aren’t following him on YouTube or Instagram he is one to watch.