Oregon Descents

Discover the best places to go in the Oregon Cascades for back-country skiing and snowboarding. In his new guide, Christopher Van Tilburg explores ungroomed powdery slopes and pristine wilderness descents, with more than half the routes described for intermediate-level backcountry skiers. The 60 routes here feature overall difficulty ratings, elevation and terrain, estimated skiing times, USGS topographical maps, skill levels required, and much more. Van Tilburg includes expert advice on safety, glaciers, and avalanche precautions, and details routes from Mount Hood to Mount Bachelor to Willamette Pass, as well as southwest Washington's Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams.

CLICK HERE to download a sample advanced, intermediate and beginner route from Backcountry Ski & Snowboard Routes Oregon * Includes 120 black-and-white photos and 90 maps * Routes coverage ranges from Lassen Peak, through Oregon, up to Mount St. Helens The first guidebook in a new Backcountry Ski & Snowboard Series from Mountaineers Books, Backcountry Ski & Snowboard Routes: Oregon describes nearly 100 of the best and most classic mountain routes that will exhilarate and challenge winter backcountry seekers. Although many of these routes are geared toward intermediate and expert skiers and boarders, there are also appropriate routes for those just getting into the backcountry for the first time. Full state coverage includes more than 30 routes on Mount Hood alone, and ranges across Mount Jefferson, the Three Sisters and Bend area, Willamette Pass and Mount Bailey, Crater Lake National Park, the southern Cascades, Steens, and the Wallowas and Blue Mountains regions. There are also classic routes just over the borders -- Mount Shasta and Lassen Peak in Northern California and Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, and Muir Snowfield in Washington. Many of these routes are selected for their straightforward approaches. Sections describe avalanche safety, best resources, gear, Oregon backcountry laws, and routes by best season and skill level. This is a guidebook to get snowboarders and skiers out in the mountains for quality fun! WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT BACKCOUNTRY SKI & SNOWBOARD ROUTES OREGON: "Van Tilburg's new book provides extensive, easy-to-read information on the majority of the ski and snowboard objectives in the greater Oregon region and should be considered a mandatory addition to a local backcountry enthusiast's library." -- Off Piste magazine

Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America is a large-format compilation of iconic and aesthetic ski descents from Alaska to Mount Washington. Created by ski mountaineers Chris Davenport, Art Burrows and Penn Newhard, Fifty Classic Ski Descents taps into the local knowledge of contributors such as Andrew McLean, Glen Plake, Lowell Skoog, Chic Scott and Ptor Spricenieks with first person descriptions of their favorite ski descents and insightful perspectives on ski mountaineering past, present and future. The book features 208 pages of gorgeous action and mountain images from many of North America's top photographers. Whether you are planning an expedition to Baffin Island's Polar Star Couloir or heading out for dawn patrol on Mount Superior, Fifty Classic Ski Descents is a visual and inspirational feast of ski mountaineering in North America.

Dropping into the unknown on a rubber raft, hurled against rocks and cliff walls, only to round a blind bend, go vertical on a 10-foot standing wave, and flip over backwards into a deafening vat of near-freezing whitewater. Such is life for the brave souls who commit themselves to exploring the world’s untried rivers. First Descents collects the most enthralling tales from the world’s most respected river explorers. Vivid portrayals in the adventurers’ own words and original photographs tell of solitary efforts and major expeditions on rivers both famous and unknown, including the Yangtze River in China, the Colorado River in Arizona, Ethiopa’s Baro River, and the Braldu River in Pakistan. With stories from Royal Robbins, Tao Berman, Yvonne Chouinard, and others, this newly revised and expanded edition of the 1989 classic captures the excitement, fear, and elation of over four decades of river exploration.

Finalist for the 2023 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize "Immersive and humane." —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times A fresh history of the West grounded in the lives of mixed-descent Native families who first bridged and then collided with racial boundaries. Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin. Beginning in the seventeenth century, Native peoples—Ojibwes, Otoes, Cheyennes, Chinooks, and others—formed new families with young French, English, Canadian, and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous. These families built cosmopolitan trade centers from Michilimackinac on the Great Lakes to Bellevue on the Missouri River, Bent’s Fort in the southern Plains, and Fort Vancouver in the Pacific Northwest. Their family names are often imprinted on the landscape, but their voices have long been muted in our histories. Anne F. Hyde’s pathbreaking history restores them in full. Vividly combining the panoramic and the particular, Born of Lakes and Plains follows five mixed-descent families whose lives intertwined major events: imperial battles over the fur trade; the first extensions of American authority west of the Appalachians; the ravages of imported disease; the violence of Indian removal; encroaching American settlement; and, following the Civil War, the disasters of Indian war, reservations policy, and allotment. During the pivotal nineteenth century, mixed-descent people who had once occupied a middle ground became a racial problem drawing hostility from all sides. Their identities were challenged by the pseudo-science of blood quantum—the instrument of allotment policy—and their traditions by the Indian schools established to erase Native ways. As Anne F. Hyde shows, they navigated the hard choices they faced as they had for centuries: by relying on the rich resources of family and kin. Here is an indelible western history with a new human face.

An in-depth look at the danger of diving the Andrea Doria, the "Everest" of deep-sea diving, by an award-winning journalist and photographer. On a foggy July evening in 1956, the Italian cruise liner Andrea Doria, bound for New York, was struck broadside by another vessel. In eleven hours, she would sink nearly 250 feet to the murky Atlantic Ocean floor. Thanks to a daring rescue operation, only fifty-one of more than 1,700 people died in the tragedy. But the Andrea Doria is still taking lives. Considered the Mount Everest of diving, the Andrea Doria is the ultimate deepwater wreck challenge. Over the years, a small but fanatical group of extreme scuba divers have investigated the Andrea Doria, pushing themselves to the very limits of human endurance to explore her—and not all have returned. Diver Kevin McMurray takes you inside this elite club with a hard, honest look at those who go deeper, farther, and closer to the edge than others would ever dream. Deep Descent is the riveting true story of the human spirit overcoming human frailty and of fearsome, mortal risks traded for a hard-core adrenaline rush. Chronicling these adventures in his page-turning narrative and in dozens of dramatic photos, McMurray draws us deeper into the cold heart of the unforgiving sea, giving us a powerful vision of a place to which few will ever have the skills—or the courage—to go.

Includes 500 trails covering over 2,000 miles. Details and maps for beginning to advanced tours.