A recent trip to the Dolomites in Italy lent some insight to the mature and varied European outdoor market.

With my family, we traversed the Brenta Range staying in rifugios and hiking, climbing and doing via ferratas point-to-point. We then cruised around Cortina for a few more days near Cinque Torri. If you like long days in the mountains, great coffee, wine, beer and pasta (with an occasional wiener schnitzel) this is great country. Here are some observations from the Sud Tirol.

Trekking Poles: No surprise here. Everyone uses trekking poles. Old, young, alpinists and trekkers. Trust me, your knees will thank you. I’m no Nordic walker but for mountain travel, snow and long scree descents, t-poles are the way to go. Warning – be careful of the Euro vibe as the manpri/trekking pole combo could be fateful to core status…

WTF is VF? Via Ferrata is a semi-foreign concept in North America. The “iron way” was initially used to move troops safely through the mountains during WWI when the Austrians and Italians battled to control the high mountain passes of the Dolomites. Today via ferratas make access easy to super rad terrain. In this sense the Europeans have it figured out. Make the mountains easy and enjoyable and you’ll get more people out there.

Boots: When you arrive at any hut common courtesy is to remove your boots and rucksack. As we stashed our footwear in the entry cubbies, we were consistently the only shoes on any shelf. Leather boots were the norm. Heavier, more durable, clunky. Steeped in tradition, not so sure the Euros have it right here. Sticky rubber and pair of Exums seemed to handle it all pretty darn well.

Packs: With multi-generations out there hiking you see a lot of varied packs. Most are smaller ~30L sizes, some tightly packed others loaded with ropes, crampons, ice tools and baguettes. We saw everything from old school neon Millet packs to new, sleek adventure racing models. Here’s a decidedly Deutsch review recently from ALPIN magazine where the Gregory Z-40 scores an Editor’s Pick.

Rifugios: We call them huts. In America they are fairly rustic mountain accommodations where you do you own cooking and supply your own sleeping bag. In the Dolomites, they are family run affairs that offer hand cut minestrone and pasta, beer, house wine, homemade grappa and espresso. Bring a travel sheet and your Visa. See you out there!

Last week I was fortunate to come along on the Black Diamond Equipment S12 Access Series Pack Press Trip, where our group of 20 spent two days in the backcountry of Aspen Snowmass hiking through some of Colorado’s most scenic terrain. Our contingent consisted of four members of the Backbone crew (Penn, JLD, Justin and myself), nine journalists from a broad variety of outlets, along with Colleen Nipkow and Nathan Kuder who hold positions as the Marketing Manager and Softgoods Category Director at Black Diamond Equipment.

For those who are unfamiliar with the idea of a press trip—and I was the same way about a week ago—here’s the gist: Black Diamond’s new line of packs, the Access series, is slated to become available in Spring 2012. Since the forthcoming line has a slew of new features, Backbone and BD put together an event designed to give the press an early look at what’s new and improved. Since reviews and Editor’s Choice awards are often the most highly regarded sources of information for a consumer in the market for a pack—or anything for that matter—it serves everyone’s best interest to give journalists a chance get to know the goods inside and out.

We were lucky enough to have a great group of journalists along; Christian Levesque from Espaces.com, Gwen Cameron from Alpinist, Justin Nyberg from GearInstitute.com, Jill Missal from GearGals.net, Genevieve Hathaway from AlpineAthena.com, Will Rietveld from BackpackingLight.com and David Clucas from SNEWS, plus Nancy Prichard-Bouchard and Berne Broudy who write/shoot for a variety of outlets. All of the journalist’s travel was arranged with the help and support of Ski.com.

The first evening we rallied in Carbondale for a group dinner. JLD and I had spent the day setting up the house, so each journalist, upon arrival was lead to their room with a Christmas morning-esque pile of goodies from our formidable list of sponsors. Black Diamond, the host and title sponsor was eminently generous; in addition to the awesome packs that we all carried in to the field, we all had trekking poles, an ice axe, a lantern and a headlamp.  But that was far from all. Big Agnes kept us warm and snug with a bag and pad, Honey Stinger contributed waffles and energy chews, Klean Kanteen helped out with water bottles, SmartWool pitched some awesome microweight baselayers, Polartec passed along some ultra-breathable tops, Eddie Bauer hooked up a sweet outerwear layer, Sole provided moldable footbeds and socks, and Gerber contributed a sleek multi-tool for everyone. To top it off, we all were sporting fresh La Sportiva Pamir boots, which kept us amazingly blister free, though they were fresh out of the box for the most part. After our pack presentation and a delicious tapas dinner prepared for us by Pan & Fork Supper Club, we heard about one of Colorado’s most beautiful landscapes, the Hidden Gems, from Allyn Harvey of the Wilderness Workshop. After kicking back a few more bottles of brew, compliments of New Belgium, we all hit the sack for an early start.

The next morning dawned clear and crisp. Yawning in the parking lot at 6:30 a.m. all twenty of us packed, adjusted, fiddled, unpacked, repacked, clipped and tightened. We were greeted by five guides from Aspen Alpine Guides, who offered immeasurable support throughout the trip. With a long day ahead, and fairly heavy loads, we took several extra minutes to make sure that fits were dialed and loads were balanced. It was in this moment that Nathan’s expertise really shined. As one of the primary designers for the pack line, he knew just about everything there was to know about his babies, and was instrumental in getting everyone as comfortable as possible.

In Colorado, everyone has his or her outdoor vice, and mine is most definitely climbing. This predicted my relative inexperience with all things pack related. Usually I’ll hurl most of my climbing belongings into a top loader and set off on a short approach, unmanaged buckles snagging on every passing tree. On a trip planned for the purpose of showcasing the Access Series pack’s broad range of customization options, this was not going to fly. Thankfully, a few of the more pack-savvy trip members paused to reconfigure my rig, which, I will readily admit staved off any discomfort on the long road ahead.

Under azure skies the group hiked the first few miles of the Four Pass Loop trail, and undulating 26-mile circuit that features—you guessed it—four passes. The first of these was Buckskin, which at 12,500 was the highest I’d ever been. The crossing required half mile’s walk up a moderately steep snow slope. A small cornice crowned the bowl. Trekking poles were exchanged for ice axes as the pitch steepened, and after a bit of groveling over the cornice the group found itself at the top of the pass, drinking in the full panorama of the Snowmass wilderness.

Pack straps were loosened, Stinger waffles were devoured and overly optimistic estimates of the time remaining until camp were batted around. Our final destination, Snowmass Lake glimmered below in the distance, and seemed like it couldn’t be more than an hour’s walk away, could it?

For the next three hours, we learned just how optimistic we had been. As we descended from the day’s highpoint of 12,500 feet, the snow softened. At unpredictable intervals, each of us would find one or both legs entombed in a deep posthole.  After a masterwork of route-finding on the part of our guides, we arrived at our destination around mid-afternoon. Sweaty and muddy, we arranged tents and sleeping bags, but not before a small but foolish contingent decided that it would be a wise idea to jump into partially thawed lake.

As it was JLD’s 42^nd birthday, Justin and I demanded satisfaction, and before long “Pretty Boy Johnny” was swimming in the ice bath like a champ. Justin and I rolled out the rest of his birthday gifts: a half-melted bag of Lindt truffles, Caprese salad with the finest prosciutto that money can by (at City Market), and of course, a helping of overpriced scotch. Just as the  revelries were really getting underway, the skies enforced an early bedtime with strong gales and rain.

The next morning was another alpine start for the group. Most of the crew was psyched to attempt Snowmass peak, the aesthetic that stares down at the Lake from 14,092 feet. An incipient knee problem kept me back at camp, and from a flat rock by the lakeside I watched the group meander its way up the steep snow fields the flank the peak. Reclining, I felt the warm alpine sun creep through the campsite on its morning tour. I refilled my coffee cup for the third time, and cooked up yet another plate of hash browns. Gosh, I thought to myself. Everyone must be very cold and tired. Feeling strained on behalf of the rest of the group, I returned to the tent for a long nap.

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It wasn’t long after my groggy reawakening that the rest of the group returned to camp, soggy but happy. After a quick camp breakdown, we started the long but mercifully downhill 8-mile trek to the car. As a PR intern, I’m all for plugging product, but I can genuinely say that the BD trekking poles I used saved me quite a lot of discomfort. After several hours we arrived at the lot to find a waiting stash of New Belgium beer. After a long day in the alpine zone, everyone was only too eager to dig in. And, after a long day in the alpine zone, it certainly didn’t take long to sink in.

The final stop of our trip was the Woody Creek tavern, a popular local watering hole near aspen, and the storied bar of choice for the notorious binger Hunter S. Thompson. With a history like this, it was no surprise that things got a little weird. After a few rounds of margaritas, someone came across the tavern’s stash of—shall we say—outlandish haberdashery. We’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

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For me, the trip was an absolute highlight of my internship so far. The hiking and scenery were highlights, of course, but meeting the broad variety of happy, interesting and likeminded people that I did made the greatest impression. There are few people in the world privileged enough to be able to call two nights of tramping, laughing, drinking and playing their “work.” But I came away understanding that earning such a privilege requires great sacrifice. Many of the journalists whom I had the pleasure of speaking with went through many difficult years—years of unintentional dirtbagging where queries went unanswered, necessary car repairs were forgone and luxuries were out of the question. Ultimately what drove everyone on the trip, from the guides to the PR professionals to the journalists to BD representatives, to their current position was a true passion for playing in the woods, and a will to bring that passion to other people, be that with new product or with blog posts.

As an undergrad, I’m at a point where questions of my professional development and focus loom on the horizon, yet will not be answered for some time to come. As such, it was an honor to be able to meet a variety of industry figures, and to simply listen to their stories, to ask, “How did you get here?” Of the outdoor industry, I learned about one very important trade-off: you may not be raking in what a Madison Avenue partner makes, but at the end of the day, you just might get to sit at the edge of Snowmass Lake, with the setting sun casting a warm glow on the surrounding peaks, and say, “All in a day’s work.”