Utah Avalanche Center Podcast

How Healthy Is Utah's Backcountry Culture?

April 4, 2026·44 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

What happens to a community when the mountains get more crowded but the snowpack gets thinner? Ski guide and avalanche educator Jenna Malone and IFMGA mountain guide Chris Brown join guest host Brooke Mauschund to dig into the state of Wasatch backcountry culture, how it's changed through the years, what's been lost, and how we can cultivate it going forward. It's about skin track etiquette, the gap between skiing ability and actual backcountry competence, and making sure scarcity and individualism don't erode the communal ties that keep people safe out there. What it really boils down to is the social contract of the mountains, an unspoken agreement that when things go sideways out there, we're each other's first line of help.

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