Season 4 of Aurelien Routens’ Carpe Diem

To say Aurelien Routens gets after it is an understatement. He travels the world with his splitboard and lives for adventure, mountaineering style approaches, and remote backcountry lines. Carpe Diem, now in its fourth season, chronicles his globe-trotting splitboard missions.
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Counteracting Heuristic Traps

Heuristics: types of decision making strategies (often thought of as rules of thumb) that simplify decision making by reducing the number of cues analyzed, thus reducing cognitive burden on decision makers and increasing decision efficiency
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I Heart My Avy Center Essay Contest Winner

We’d like to thank everyone that participated in the I Heart My Avy Center Essay Contest. In all, we received 25 unique essays representing 15 different avalanche centers! It was inspiring to hear all the great work that avy centers are doing in their mountain communities all over the US and Canada.
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Mission Grivola

Grivola header image
Last spring, Ettore Personnettaz, Luca Pandolfi, and an awesome team of skiers and splitboarders climbed and descended Grivola (13,000 feet, 3,969 meters) in the Aosta Valley of Northern Italy. The group spent the first night of the trip in a mountain hut allowing them to make an early start the next day for their eventual
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An Interview with Spark R&D Team Rider Rafael Pease

An Interview with Spark R&D Team Rider Rafael Pease discussing his 3-year splitboard / adventure travel documentary film: Yugen.
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Solar Powered Splitboard Bindings

We are stoked to announce that we have completed installing a 50kW solar array on the roof of Spark R&D! Like most big projects, many things had to fall into place in order for us to get here.
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Snowpit Analysis: A Refresher on Key Observations

Snowpit digging with snow saw
When you think about evaluating the snowpack, digging a pit is a direct way to observe what the snow is doing in a given area. A snowpit is a crucial tool in assessing what we think is going on and verifying it or gathering more information to answer a specific question about the snowpack. If
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The 2018 Bozeman Splitfest

It’s early March in Bozeman, Montana. I’m standing on the back porch of Map Brewing Co. which faces east offering up majestic afternoon views of the Bridger Mountains. The east aspect also means it’s shaded and under normal March conditions it might be a little chilly, but on this afternoon, I’m surprised with how mild
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To the Rescue: The Importance of Wilderness Medicine Training in the Backcountry

When you think about venturing out the gates or deep into the mountains to ride, you know that at a minimum you need a beacon, shovel, probe, partner, and of course your avalanche training. Just as important, but often overlooked is some basic to advanced wilderness medical training.
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Inside Spark: Machining Manager Ethan Marcoux

Few at Spark have a longer tenure than our Machining Manager, Ethan Marcoux. He is the epitome of the work hard, play hard mentality that is common here at our HQ in Bozeman, MT. During the winter Ethan puts as many days on snow as just about anyone in the shop. His love of the
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