RAKKUP<\/a>, which can be purchased on the iTunes store.<\/p>\nFrom 2000 to 2004, Sovick, a Fort Collins native, went to Fort Lewis College, not just for the education in the classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I moved here, I was completely excited to get into the San Juans and spend as much time as I possibility could up in the hills,\u201d Sovick said. \u201cIt was definitely the ulterior motive to going to Fort Lewis.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his time in college, Sovick developed a strong core of friends that would regularly take trips up to the backcountry to ski the San Juans.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery once in a while we talked about creating a photographic guidebook for the area,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After graduation, Sovick said one of the friends followed through with the idea, making a photographic guidebook for several ski runs in the Teton Range.<\/p>\n
Sovick took his friend\u2019s format and applied it to ski runs in Crested Butte, where he was living at the time. A few years later, in 2014, he published the first edition of Backcountry Skiing Silverton Colorado.<\/p>\n
The guide was updated for a second edition in December 2016, and the app went live a few months ago, Sovick said.<\/p>\n
Essentially, each guidebook features aerial photographs of backcountry ski runs, which allows skiers to scout their lines beforehand.<\/p>\n
Then, the guide supplements information about trailheads, as well as ascent and descent information.<\/p>\n
Sovick\u2019s format allows other backcountry skiers to easily research and write other guides. His friend from Washington, for instance, authored a book on two popular ski areas in Washington.<\/p>\n
For the Silverton guide, Sovick and his friend and local guide Josh Kling, also an FLC grad, went up in a friend\u2019s plane to take pictures of specific ski runs around the San Juan high country.<\/p>\n
The guide features about 60 runs and is by far his best-seller, with about 3,000 copies sold. Copies can be found local bookstores, including Backcountry Experience, Maria\u2019s Bookshop, Ski Barn and Pine Needle Mountaineering.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also the first photographic guidebook of its kind for this section of the San Juan Mountains, Sovick said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere wasn\u2019t anything like this on the San Juans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Keith Roush, former owner of Pine Needle Mountaineering who has been backcountry skiing in the San Juans since the 1970s, said Sovick\u2019s guidebook and app can be a great tool, if used responsibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the problems with using a phone or GPS, if you can\u2019t already use a map or know how to navigate terrain, it can get you into trouble,\u201d Roush said.<\/p>\n
Roush said since the 1970s, backcountry skiing wasn\u2019t all that popular. On any given weekend, he\u2019d see only a half-dozen parked cars from Durango to Silverton, and because it was a small town, he knew who owned which car.<\/p>\n
But around 2008, backcountry ski gear became better, lighter and more affordable, which lead to a major uptick of people in the backcountry.<\/p>\n
Now, Roush said there\u2019s regularly 100 cars parked between Durango and Ouray.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of safety, I suppose there\u2019s not a big difference,\u201d Roush said of the increase. \u201cBut the main difference is people push to find other places, and that might cause them to make judgments that are less founded on experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen there\u2019s accidents,\u201d he said, \u201cski skills usually exceed snow travel skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sovick agreed: Anyone traveling into the backcountry needs to have a strong knowledge of snow and avalanche dangers.<\/p>\n
Sovick, 36, now lives in Gunnison. A carpenter by trade, he said he\u2019s amazed how that original group of friends has gone onto careers based on their outdoor lifestyle through college.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, it seemed to us and our parents to be a distraction from school and professional development,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s interesting that mountain lifestyle and those friendships we developed became part of our careers and education. They really do go hand in hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"release guide or ski terrain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,2740,199],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-75900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-nordic-skiing","tag-san-juan-national-forest"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75949,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75900\/revisions\/75949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75900"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=75900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}