Team Mammut: Element beacon

Monday, January 5, 2015

SheJumps Women's Gear Clinic

Learning how to get ready and be efficient for a backcountry day can be daunting for many aspiring backcountry enthusiasts. I am still working on my systems and I have been backcountry skiing for over 10 years. It takes many hours frigging with gear and getting your skins stuck in your hair while they flap about in the wind to get it right. There is a lot of technique involved in outdoor expeditions on skis, but a lot of guess work can be eliminated by bringing good gear that has a reputation for holding up in stressful situations. For this reason, SheJumps, the nonprofit that is dedicated to getting women active in the outdoors, decided to host an event focused on helping people (and specifically women) prepare for backcountry skiing. I agreed to Emcee the event and show the women of Burlington what I have over time decided are the most important things to bring into the backcountry with me.

Friday, May 16, 2014

SheJumps Alpine Finishing School

AFS from Louise Lintilhac on Vimeo.

Something that I have always regretted is not becoming a proficient climber. As a skier, I shrugged off learning rope skills and picked up mountain biking as the summer counterpart to my winter endeavors. When I was about 23 years old, I spent a winter in Courmayeur, Italy skiing on the Mont Blanc Massif and dabbled in crevasse rescue and basic glacier travel skills, but I was inexperienced and my nervousness made it hard for me to absorb the information that I was taught. When I lived in Colorado, I spent many days in the backcountry, but I never really found the need to apply any of those skills that I had learned that winter in Europe.