Firstly and foremost, best wishes to those of you here in the U.S. for a wonderful 4th celebration this 2017. If you happen to make the day complete by performing a few ski turns on snow, let us know.
After our recent (and nicely civil) comment thread about sexism, it occurred to me that we indeed do have something special here at Wildsnow. We can have such a discussion without it becoming a flame war, and I rarely have to moderate or delete a contribution. Amazing. Thanks all for that.
Web-wide, the issue of how to prevent bullies and other power trippers from taking over a comment system continues to be a huge issue. We do it here with a totally hands on approach. Website managers and developers in the geekosphere apparently have continued faith that soft AI can take care of the challenge. Hacker News is a good example (a daily stop for me in my web browsing). Over there at Ycombinator, they use what appears to be a rather convoluted scoring system to prevent comment wars while allowing readers to rank articles. The results are mixed, Ken Sherriff digs in on his amazing electronics and computer science blog.
Back to skiing, where indeed is the best and most accessible summer snow for those of you in the lower 48 United States? Due to this winter’s bounty, a number of Sierra resorts continue into the summer with skiable nieve. But how about backcountry? In my experience Mount Shasta fits the bill. Could be the best ski mountain on the planet, and you might even meet a Lemurian. Good article here.
For those of you who enjoy long form reading, New Yorker recently published a sweet ski story. Kick back with your iPad and check out Adventure of a Skier.
And… more pondering the ever effervescent issue of sexism. Any thinking person can not but wonder if separating men and women, in certain sports, is nothing but sexism. Consider downhill ski racing. Really, why shouldn’t everyone simply race together? Lindsey Vonn continues to state she’d like to do exactly that. Curiosity led me to googling “women reaction time” since cat-like reflexes are a big part of winning any alpine skiing event. Let’s just say the jury is still out, and you might need weeks to read all the content you’ll find.
Have a good 4th holiday.
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.