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50
Years of Freeride The
Employee Owners of Black Diamond
We
first began selling touring skis for approaching
ice climbs and alpine routes. In the early 60s,
skiing was a means to an end for an alpinist. But
enough of us had grown up alpine skiing that we
soon grew frustrated with the poor performance
of the skis on the way out. Adding shape and metal
edges to “backcountry” skis was a big
innovation—similar to the clean climbing
revolution and new curves in ice tools—opening
up a whole new set of possibilities.
Climbing and skiing off the beaten track has always been our passion, but just
like our climbing has evolved to include sport, bouldering, big wall, trad and
hot laps in the gym, so too has our passion for skiing evolved to include anything
involving powder.
Sure, we value the solace and tranquility of the backcountry, where the powder
is, crowds are not and our lives are in our hands. But we also love the hard
candy of resort skiing when it’s dumping sugar and the backcountry is a
time bomb, when it makes sense, whenever. And we ski everything in between: out
through gates into the sidecountry, with cats and helis when the opportunity
knocks and down the big mountains we love to climb up.
And we’re not alone. We see new friends coming into the backcountry. Now
more than ever, skiers are seeking new experiences, breaking down boundaries
and skiing wherever they find good snow. Completely redesigned and re-engineered,
our Fall 2007 Freeride skis are built for skiers who know no boundaries. Riders
who won’t compromise on performance and ski like there’s no tomorrow.
Who believe, as we do, that it’s all about the down.
Our full offering of ski gear is designed to enable your search for powder, wherever
you find it. From the revolutionary 01 telemark binding, standard-bearing Fritschi
Diamir Freeride bindings to our snow safety gear, innovative AvaLung packs and
new line of gloves, our ski gear is designed and tested for your fresh, white
edification.
Though the gear has changed over the last 50 years, it’s our fire that
remains the constant. It’s that fire, the burn to get up by headlamp and
ski till dusk that keeps us innovating. It keeps us pushing the boundaries of
what’s possible in ski design in the same way we have to ski whatever Mother
Nature throws at us. We do it because, like you, we live for the pounding inside
that comes from the simple joy of linking turns and being one with the fall line.
It's
All About the Down BD's
Ski Development Team
The
tele vs. alpine wars are over. Skiing in the area
can be as much fun as skiing in the backcountry.
And more and more folks are skiing through gates
and riding the plush sidecountry in search of the
fresh. This is Freeride. An approach to skiing
that is all about the down, wherever you can find
it. The boundaries between in-area and backcountry
are crashing and skiers are breaking through
to the other side. We built our 2007 lineup
of Freeride skis to help break down these
boundaries and let you ski where you want.
At Black Diamond, we only build a product if we believe we can make it better
than anything else out there. So our all new line of skis began with this dare.
Could we build the best skis for how people ski today? Not just the best telemark
ski or best alpine touring ski, but the best skis that we and our friends would
draw from the quiver time and again, because they ski the best, wherever. Once
we decided to accept this challenge, we applied the same mindset that’s
been driving our innovative climbing, mountain and backcountry ski gear for 50
years.
In order to make our skis the best they could be, we decided to start from scratch,
skiing everyone else’s ultra-light to ultra-beefy sticks before coming
up with our ideal performance characteristics. First we had to agree on why we
build skis—for climbing up, racing, skiing the groomers or pow? Pow,
of course, but when we thought hard about it, we settled on the thread that ties
all of our skiing together, the skiing we like to do most of all and it’s
all about the down. Our skis have been designed, engineered and manufactured
to make good on this commitment.
Then we identified our favorite attribute in the skis we liked: torsional rigidity.
Skis that hold their edges in high G-force turns—when we’re carving
at speed or tip-toeing through trouble—powerful skis like these make
us believers. Using several different technologies and constructions including
3D CNC wood cores, Torsion Bow and Dual Torsion Bow geometries, as well as 3D
torsion box construction, we’ve achieved smooth and nimble boards that
keep your edges on snow with torsional power that lets you pull high-speed carves.
For many of us, going up is also part of going down. Others love early tram laps
or duck ropes and rip the sidecountry, with a little help from the quad. We knew
that trying to build a few skis for all of these personalities would get us mush.
Better to build individual models to be the best big mountain, powder fiend,
all mountain, ski mountaineering, purist backcounty, enduro traverse tour skis
we could. And let these ski personalities be themselves.
They are all about the down, but our Fall 2007 Freeride skis are divided into
two collections. Efficient Series skis are all about the backcountry and lower
energy input, emphasizing lighter-weight constructions, while still having the
guts to rock solid on the down. Power Series skis emphasize powerful constructions,
with no compromise. These skis are torsionally precise and deliver dynamic performance
lap after lap. All together, our Efficent Power skis are built for aggressive
skiers who ski with passion and believe in taking the path less traveled to powder
and beyond.
Countless hours of prototyping, field testing, problem solving, innovating and
flat-out skiing have gone into making this the best line of skis we’ve
ever built, and we believe the best skis out there. You can trust our Efficient
Power technology will keep you on track. And we encourage you to find out for
yourself.
Whistling
with Cheerios Jake
Bogoch
Rain
was tearing holes into snowbanks in town and I’d come down with the 26-ounce
flu. But Mark and his girl were in town from
America and had been rained out of Canada
twice this year. Now they were ready to write
off my country forever. Normally I’d
sleep it off and make anything with eggs
in it. But the Flames weren’t going
to start losing until 6:30 and I had nothing
else to do. So we got a late start in the
rain.
If it’s pouring in Whistler Village
and it’s a hair above freezing, skiers
who don’t know any better seem to stay
home and cuddle with their PlayStation. But
2,000 vertical feet up the mountain—barely
halfway up the gondola—the rain usually
turns to snow. And it did.
We abandoned the hill immediately, traversing
to the ropes for a walk in the whiteout.
The traverse was good and deep, and I tasted
the early pangs of victory, but mostly a
mix of puke and Cheerios.
The 20-minute skin up became 30. I couldn’t
see a thing and hadn’t a sniff where
I was going. But I was breaking trail and
responsible for Mark and his girl. There
were two feet of new snow so I took my ski
pole and gave the snow a few half-assed whacks
to check for slabs. Nothing.
I kept skinning, unable to see beyond my
ski tips, scribing a high line through the
cirque. I’d been to the col 20 times
in the past. But now I couldn’t find
it through the murk. So I said I can’t
find the col through the murk. Mark, who’d
never been there, said Are you looking for
that col? And he pointed at it, 200 feet
to our west and 100 feet below us.
Somehow, they still trusted me and asked
me to keep leading. We skied down and around
the peak, across the crevasse bridge (didn’t
see that either) and traversed to a notch
in the cirque (missed that too). I eventually
found it and boot packed to the cirque rim
to head up and over to the couloir on the
other side. There were no tracks and no one
else in sight, mostly because there was no
sight. There was nothing to see or hear,
nothing but graupel clicking against my jacket.
It’s a 2,000-foot couloir, about 40
degrees steep and as wide as the Love Boat.
They couldn’t possibly botch the route
finding. In the name of etiquette, I let
my guests drop in first. I also didn’t
want them to watch me dry heaving. Three
turns in, they disappeared into the nihility.
My first turn was an explosion. I tried yelling
Woo. But I breathed into the face shot. I
introduced humid snow to my bronchial tubes,
which feels like snorting a line of Dijon.
I coughed myself into paroxysms but wasn’t
stopping. The whiteout was assuming shades
of gray and black. I let my skis accelerate
anyway, letting them run before burying the
bases and throwing everything I had into
the belly of the turn.
Three faceshots tells you that you are, in
fact, getting it good. But after your tenth,
it’s just plain irritating. But then
I remembered that 11,000 others were skiing
tracks in bounds. After 30 minutes of up,
I was nailing the line of my month, skiing
a line I never saw.
Jake
Bogoch
Jake
Bogoch is the senior editor at Skiing magazine. He
chose not to name the couloir because enough people
hate him in Whistler as it is.
Pyramid
Scheming Neal
Beidleman
It
was 1 am, mid-january, 1982 and I was eating a
bowl of cereal. It had been a normal day in my
first post-college winter: skied Aspen Mountain,
then bussed tables till midnight. Just then, Banks
flew in my door with a “Let’s
GO, man!” We had hatched a simple but
ambitious plan to ski Peak, a stellar local
14er. Chris Landry had skied it several years
before by the now legendary East Face. That
was good enough for us.
If our reconnaissance wasn’t all that thorough, at least we had good gear.
I sported a pair of broken-down leather tele boots that fit in my mountaineering
setup of Silveretta cable bindings mounted onto Bonna touring skis complete with
wooden base and edges. Gordon styled with funky ultra-narrow, metal-edged, P-tex
based teles.
After skinning the seven-mile summer road we began the ascent. By dawn, we had
gained the main amphitheater below the impressively steep north face. Deep winter
sunlight cast a cold pall on the upper rock bands while we kicked steps to the
13,000’ saddle. The very nature of the climb changes here, especially in
winter. Immediate exposure with corniced ridges and long precipitous drops demand
your attention.
And the January Colorado snowpack did not disappoint—thin, dry and unconsolidated.
Looking up, I groaned how nice it’d be to have my alpine gear, but there
wasn’t enough coverage to think seriously that we could have managed a
ski descent. Gordon and I left the Bonna’s and funka-tele’s stuck
in the snow right there.
Higher up, the conditions got really special. The snow turned into four feet
of sugar. Snow crystals poured down around us from our every movement burying
us to our armpits. We excavated huge channels to wiggle up. Finally, the summit
came as a sweet winter reward. I peered down the steep furrow we had plowed to
the top of Landry’s ski line and imagined the face with beautiful corn.
I was still spooked by the thought. We down climbed carefully to the waiting
Bonna’s and tele-hacked our way down.
A few hours later, trying to go mostly unnoticed,
I was back at work, unshowered with a thick
layer of deodorant borrowed from an amused
waitress, bussing tables and scarfing down
pieces of uneaten veal cutlet.
Fast forward 24 years. With Chris Davenport and
Ted Mahon, I found myself on top of Pyramid again
with ski intentions. This time it was April and
the snow was solid underfoot with a 6-inch topcoat
of late winter cream. We clicked firmly into
Fritschi’s, locked and loaded the AT boots
and gripped our trusty Whippets. Grinning wildly
at each other, no one had to say a thing—this
was gonna be friggin’ GREAT!
The top few hundred feet are the most gnar, easily surpassing 55° with a “you-better-not-fall” beginning. “Okay,” talking
to myself “ball of your foot, balance, be precise.” In just a few
turns, I was over the exact spot I had snow-trenched up years ago. Our skis knifed
into the skin of the slope, cascading away the powder in long, graceful sloughs.
I didn’t miss the old wooden Bonna’s for one microsecond.
We reeled off a thousand vert of perfect, steep pow, then another, only stopping
to watch and enjoy each other’s turns. At the crest of the final crux,
I peered around the corner into a steep choke. This is where Landry had to down
climb, but we were fortunate here too—it was filled in. A couple of quick
hop turns and let ’em run and we shot out onto the broad slope below. Like
a dream, the 4,400’ descent was over too quickly.
Landry was way ahead of his time with his visionary descent. Twenty-eight years
had passed without a repeat and it was good to finally tap into that Pyramid
power ourselves.
Neal
Beidleman
Neal
Beidleman knows a little about balancing work and
play. His careers as a product designer/engineer,
photographer and writer have kept him on the sharp
end climbing, running and skiing the world over.
When not getting after it, Neal calls Aspen his home
and delights in weekend camping trips with his family.
Save
Our Snow Alison
Gannett
Brace
yourself for some bad news—recent
predictions show that skiing is going to
be hampered, if not gone, by 2050. According
to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, consisting of 133 countries, including
the U.S., we can brace ourselves for stronger
storms, alternating drought, and temperatures
that will change our snow to rain. While
I can’t imagine not floating on fat
skis through powder, the real tragedy is
that half of the world depends on snowmelt
for their drinking water, including almost
all of us skiers.
So how can we save our snow? While it is great that people are starting to change
bulbs and add solar panels, we are going to need cuts of 60-80% of our emissions
to save our snow. Now that even our government agrees that there is a problem,
we need to focus on solutions for reducing our energy use of fuels that produce
carbon dioxide. Ultimately we will each need to each reduce our “carbon
footprint” by at least half.
A simple way to get started is CROP. This acronym contains steps for making change
and saving snow. C—calculate your carbon footprint; R—reduce
your carbon footprint; O—offset the carbon you can’t reduce; and
P—Produce
your own power through wind, solar, and mini hydro. By following this plan, you
can be a part of the solution, saving our snow and drinking water.
I try to CROP each area of my life—home, business, transportation, food
and goods that I consume. For the “R”—Reductions, I started
small 17 years ago, changing bulbs to compact fluorescents, riding my bike when
possible, keeping my car tires properly inflated. Then I started tackling bigger
issues: insulating my house, getting an energy audit, buying a car that got better
gas mileage, and riding to the trailhead instead of driving. Ten years ago, I
went for the harder stuff—building a straw bale super-insulated non-toxic
house, buying all organic food, and installing solar hot water panels.
While many are hip to the impacts of transportation, many do not know that 30%
of our carbon footprint is in our buildings. And you can shave another 30% off
your carbon footprint by consuming organic and local products. Everyday savings
in my life consist of reducing airline travel, purchasing sustainable clothing
and goods, finding green hotels, even selling my snowmobile and quitting heli
skiing.
There are plenty of ways to get creative and be more responsible at the same
time. We’re all hypocrites to one extent or another, but with a little
effort, you can begin to make some of these changes. And then maybe you’ll
catch the bug and go for it. I’ve now reduced my carbon footprint by 80%,
and I offset 100% of what I can’t reduce. While I have had to make some
tough choices and change my lifestyle a bit, I believe these are small sacrifices
for a potable future and one with white fresh.
MAKE IT HAPPEN: The web is a hotbed of how-to information for learning what you
can do about global warming. Visit www.terrapass.com or www.nativeenergy.comto calculate and offset your own carbon footprint. At www.green.yahoo.com you
can make your own customized reduction plan and see how much carbon you save
with each selection. Knowledge is power.
Alison
Gannett
For
more info or to contact Alison, drop by www.alisongannett.com or visit her two non-profits dedicated to saving
our snow and planet at www.saveoursnowfoundation.org
or www.resourceefficiency.org.
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