Wildsnow, any good alternatives?

[Benneke10]

I looked into it more and its official, Wildsnow is part of the "All Gear Digital" conglomerate. https://allgeardigital.com/

Jason Albert has been canned, replaced by David Wilkinson

[LeeLau]

That's a shame. Lou's curmudgeonly approach was always an honest take.

newschoolers,com (there I said it) has supported long-form articles with criticisms on their front page and I've placed gear reviews with them for that reason. So has Cy.

Used to place reviews on TGR frontpage but the editorial was inconsistent and unresponsive so gave up on trying to work with them.

[grinch]

I think youtube is probably the best platform for reaching readers. More people are probably going go see it with any of their random yt searches. Lou didnt seem to focus much on yt. I wish he did. He's missed

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[Huskier]

Heard that Wildsnow got sold to Outdoor Gear Lab, makes sense that the only two sites who write half-baked reviews of touring gear decided to join forces to sell more crap.

Borf. RIP Wildsnow

[Trackhead]

Lou was the OG of ski blogging with many copy cats in the early-mid 2000s. The guy was ahead of his time on many fronts, and also quite pleasant in person.

[Tri-Ungulate]

LOL I remember arguing with Lou on rec.skiing.backcountry in the early 90's. Curmudgeon indeed. But as TH sez, nice guy in person.

[PinyonJuniper5]

Lou was good, then when CCB took over the site it was REALLY good (for a handful of seasons) I especially enjoyed the articles written by the late Gary Smith.

Some of the new reviews by Gavin Hess have been pretty dang good as well, but it sounds like the future is bleak for the site.


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[Sutter]

The Cripple Creek guys should start their own blog/ site. I like listening to them on their pod.

They have the potential to include training/ nutrition/ gear reviews and some good humor all in one place. Their "Dina-fit" vs "Deena-fit" ad is funny.

[homemadesalsa]

I looked into it more and its official, Wildsnow is part of the "All Gear Digital" conglomerate. https://allgeardigital.com/

Jason Albert has been canned, replaced by David Wilkinson

Mmmmm not so. Jason quit when he wouldn't tout the gear and Ikon pass material of the new overlords.

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[John_B]

Good for Jason. I had posted a suggestion as Jason was getting the new layout figured out and got an email from him asking to give me a call to talk through my comment. I was impressed.

Also I agree with the earlier comment regarding Gavin Hess's well written reviews. It has been clear he's put a lot of thought into thinks.

I'm curious to see what the future of Wildsnow looks like but based on what HMS has to say it sounds a bit grim.

I saw that All Gear Digital also owns Gearjunkie. It seems like there is a lot of fluff there but I spend a lot of time hunting in the fall and I've been impressed with Gearjunkie's coverage of hunting influencers who've been convicted of various poaching crimes. Hopefully WS keeps a bit of that and doesn't totally roll over to the Ikonic overlords

[XXX-er]

I forget what it was but jason e-mailed to complain about the tone of a pretty innocuous comment ( no swearing nothing about anyone's mom, perhaps some sarcasm ) i made so i told him it was his site so just delete if he didn't like it and so he did

[Meadow Skipper]

LOL I remember arguing with Lou on rec.skiing.backcountry in the early 90's. Curmudgeon indeed. But as TH sez, nice guy in person.

Same here. And I was at that wedding (toured over from BCC w/ the Silver Fork Hermit) and met LD there too. Also Nick Paumgarten, who was interesting/opinionated too. And WRA too, of course. Slightly legendary.

I quit reading Wildsnow when LD sold it. Besides, he was always bagging on tele gear.

Nice nostalgia thread, don’t know how I missed it until now.

/oldfuckbabbling

[Tri-Ungulate]

I didn't know Paumgarten was there, (wouldn't have recognized him anyway), though I think the New Yorker article came out after the wedding.

The Hermit is still in Silver Fork, but his house is now surrounded by 5000-10000 sq foot McCabins.

[XXX-er]

I think almost ever one who read the site got into a bun fight with Lou at some time but he was pretty good for beta on gear

[Benneke10]

I forget what it was but jason e-mailed to complain about the tone of a pretty innocuous comment ( no swearing nothing about anyone's mom, perhaps some sarcasm ) i made so i told him it was his site so just delete if he didn't like it and so he did

He sent me some weird emails getting all offended by some of my comments I thought were innocuous, and he deleted some as well. All his reviews were mostly useless. The site hasn't had decent reviews since Gary Smith, RIP. Looks like the site has been dormant for the past several weeks.

[Benneke10]

Mmmmm not so. Jason quit when he wouldn't tout the gear and Ikon pass material of the new overlords.

Seems like the site has been gear shilling for a while up until this point? I don't remember reading anything critical of any piece of big-brand equipment in years.

[homemadesalsa]

Seems like the site has been gear shilling for a while up until this point? I don't remember reading anything critical of any piece of big-brand equipment in years.

Ya I hardly spent any time there these days, but then he quoted Chabot quoting Ron Perla and I got interested. Jason, Perla, and I ended up having several lovely conversations; you can find the questions we devised for Perla and his replies on Wild Snow and in the next Avalanche Review.

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[XXX-er]

He sent me some weird emails getting all offended by some of my comments I thought were innocuous as well, and he deleted some as well. All his reviews were mostly useless. The site hasn't had decent reviews since Gary Smith, RIP. Looks like the site has been dormant for the past several weeks.

ya he said something about having kids and this was not a good example for them, I have made enough posts on the WWW to know when I crossed a line but I wasn't even close to the line but whatever man

I found the artical where he asked users to rate their gear pretty useless

[Meadow Skipper]

I didn't know Paumgarten was there, (wouldn't have recognized him anyway), though I think the New Yorker article came out after the wedding.

I didn’t recognize him, but we got to talking randomly and he told me he was an editor at the New Yorker. I was impressed. I hung out with him a little at Snowbird and introduced him to Bob Athey (WRA).

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...dangerous-game

Obthread: ^that article mentions LD presiding at the wedding.

The Hermit is still in Silver Fork, but his house is now surrounded by 5000-10000 sq foot McCabins.

I just traded messages with him about that slide in BCC. He’s got a place in town now too and holes up there when the weather’s grim…or night life calls I suppose. I was his date for the wedding.

[garyfromterrace]

Thread drift perhaps but that article on McLean by Paumgarten was good. Thanks for the link Mr Skipper.

[NWFlow]

Agreed. Great writing, really enjoyed that. Thanks!

[alpinevibes]

He sent me some weird emails getting all offended by some of my comments I thought were innocuous, and he deleted some as well. All his reviews were mostly useless. The site hasn't had decent reviews since Gary Smith, RIP. Looks like the site has been dormant for the past several weeks.

Hot take but I'm 100% with you on that.

[Jonathan S.]

I forget what it was but jason e-mailed to complain about the tone of a pretty innocuous comment ( no swearing nothing about anyone's mom, perhaps some sarcasm ) i made so i told him it was his site so just delete if he didn't like it and so he did

He sent me some weird emails getting all offended by some of my comments I thought were innocuous, and he deleted some as well. [...]

And here I had been thinking all along that it was just me!

My initial comment last year was, in its entirety:
"Picture shows full-length skins with tail hardware for the nordic backcountry EMGT?"

In response to that single sentence, I received a fairly long email from Jason denouncing my comment, my attitude, my skimo races, etc.

I replied to him with:
"I'm sincerely impressed that you wrote over a dozen sentences attacking me for perceived actions and attitudes that are entirely a function of your own imagination, all in response to a single sentence that was clearly focused exclusively on the inclusion of full-length skins with tail hardware in an otherwise fairly light (albeit with slightly odd mix & match elements) all-out skimo race setup."

I didn't even bother commenting -- either via email directly or on-line publicly -- on the absurdly of the recurring main theme of the piece:
https://www.wildsnow.com/31738/grand...p-double-take/
... which is kind of relieved astonishment that skimo race bindings designed (and proven) in the most whacked-out European skimo races can survive the EMGT for which nordic gear is still used (and often comes close to podiuming).
The bike analogy would be someone astounded that a lightweight xc mountain bike doesn't break in a gravel race.

[PinyonJuniper5]

Sounds like Jason had plenty of free time to reach out to commenters. I replied to one of the Gavin Hess reviews saying that I wanted to see more content like this on the site. He emailed me directly asking why I didn’t like the other content that was posted on the site. I can’t remember if I emailed him back or not, but I was pretty surprised.


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[XXX-er]

Et tu Jonathan S ?

but seriously folks I think jason was just not ready for ANY on-line community and collectively we drove him off

anybody advertising on Wildsnow or TGR is trying TO sell gear, I think the gear shilling is fine, IMO its up to the site owner to drive conversation in the right direction which I think Lou did, he got us front row seats for new products in yurp , i don't know if we will still see those ?


but mostly everyone wants to know who makes the best 2 piece ski pole