Think you've watched enough online videos to know what "Backcountry" means? Don't fucking kid yourself...
The term "backcountry", like so many other action-sport related words, has reached the point where it is used so often and so hap-hazardly that it has lost the power of it's true meaning. With your average city-dwelling senior citizen has immediate access to an unlimited stream of action-sport offerings, never mind the growing popularity of actually getting out into nature, the word backcountry has come to mean something much tamer than the often forgotten truth.
Beautiful cinematography and well thought out story-telling often hide one grisly fact. That the endeavors that these elite athletes are performing are not as easy and magical as they may seem. They are accompanied by days, months, years and even decades of blood, sweat, tears, broken bones and shattered dreams. The backcountry is not some magical fairy land of adventure and happiness, it is a place you go to test yourself - your body and mind - and like all great testing grounds you come home heart broken much more often than satisfied.
Despite the fact that this video is a promitional piece for a private retailer, it does an incredible job of capturing the feeling of what I consider to be the "true" backcountry.
Kudos to the creators and enjoy.
