🏔️ Six more 8,000ers?

Good morning, Stoke Crew. Hard to watch what's happening with the flooding down in southern Colorado. If you live down there or have people who do, my thoughts are with you!

In today's report

• 🏔️ Patroller raises and perks at A-Basin
• ❄️ Mammoth Mountain opens today!
• ⛷️ Vonn's ACL repair, round nine
• 🐺 A review on Colorado wolves
• 🏔️ Quick hits from the mountaineering world!

Skiing

✅ Benefits for Patrollers

🏔️ Raises, guaranteed benefits, and pet insurance for the avalanche dogs. That's what A-Basin's ski patrol locked in with its first union contract, ratified Oct. 3. The two-year deal covers this season.

• The old five level pay scale is now three levels, and the starting rate at each one went up. "Everyone increased a different amount," said Jack Western, a patroller on the bargaining committee. He pointed to raises of 5% or 25% as examples.
• A 3% cost of living raise is now guaranteed every year. Skills pay extra by the hour too, including dog handling, advanced life support, toboggan training, and speaking a second language. Veterans also got a single raise based on their years of service.
• There's now a dedicated canine program leader. The avalanche dogs get their food reimbursed under the contract, plus a yearly pet insurance policy with A-Basin paying the premium.
• Full-timers now have their health, dental, and vision coverage written into the contract. Patrollers also lost at-will status, so firing one now takes cause.

Why It Matters: Patrollers are the ones who get avalanche terrain open in the morning and the ones who sled you off the mountain when you break a leg. The whole resort leans on them. A lot of patrollers across the country are still underpaid with thin benefits, so this contract is a real step in the right direction for the people who make the mountain run.

❄️ Mammoth scrapped its Nov. 13 opener and moved first chair to today! The mountain picked up more than a foot of new snow in a week, with good snowmaking conditions on top of it. "Mother Nature has been kind to us," said Emily van Greuning, Mammoth Resorts' communications director. Lifts start at 8:30 a.m.

• The timing was a little spicy. Mt. Rose had announced a Friday, Nov. 6 opener, and its release said it "will be the first ski area open in California." Mammoth announced its Thursday date the next day.
• Colorado skiers have seen this movie. Keystone edged A-Basin to opening day in 2025.
• Rusty's, Silver Tip, and Broadway are the three runs open, served by Chair 1 (Broadway Express) and the Lower Panorama Gondola. There's no beginner terrain and no beginner lessons yet, per the opening day page.
• There's a party, too. The first 100 skiers and riders in line walk away with a free beanie, coffee and cocoa are on the house.

Why It Matters: A foot of snow in early November is never a promise of a good winter. It sure beats staring at brown slopes, though. With Colorado already spinning and now the Sierra, the season is officially on. Let's goooo!

⛷️ Surgery number nine is on the calendar for Lindsey Vonn. Doctors will take the hardware out of her left leg and repair the ACL she tore before her Olympic crash. She told Forbes she's "very motivated" and hasn't closed the door on racing. First comes six to nine months of rehab.

Partnerships

🎿 Ski Berthoud Pass? This night is for you!

🎬🍺 Beacons & Brews is back for year two! Friends of Berthoud Pass is taking over Denver's Oriental Theater on Thursday, November 12 for a night of community-made backcountry films, a short avalanche safety talk, a fundraising raffle, and a round of sponsor films to close it out. Last year's debut sold out to a crowd of 500 and became the biggest fundraiser the nonprofit has ever had!

The films come from the community. After last winter's rough snow year, they asked people to send in 90-second to 5-minute clips of making the best of a bad season. Skiing, boarding, sledding, ice climbing, whatever got you out there. The crowd picks "Best of the Fest" by applause, so bring your loudest friends.

• Where your money goes: Friends of Berthoud Pass has run free avalanche education on the Front Range since 2004, with classroom talks and on-snow sessions taught by volunteer instructors. Raffle proceeds keep those classes free and help keep access to the pass open.
• The raffle: Win some sick gear from brands like Rab, Flylow, La Sportiva, Weston, Stio, and more!
• The details: Doors at 6:30 PM, films at 7:30 PM. All ages, bar with ID. Tickets are about $21 and comes with one free raffle ticket. Additional raffle tickets are available for purchase at the venue. The Oriental Theater, Denver. See you all there!

Why It Matters: A lot of Front Range skiers and riders learned the basics of avalanche safety in a free FOBP class. One night at the Oriental helps keep those classes free for the next crew coming up. It's also a solid way to get fired up for the season and meet some cool like-minded people. Yeeeew!

🎟️ Grab tickets here!!!

Environment

🏛️ Who runs Colorado's wolves?

🐺 Colorado's wolf program is under federal review, and state wildlife officials say nobody gave them a heads-up. It's tucked into an Oct. 27 order from the Interior Secretary that's mostly about expanding cattle grazing. Fish and Wildlife gets a 15-day window to dig into Colorado's deal.

Quick Beta. Colorado runs its wolves on two federal sign-offs from 2023. A 10(j) rule makes the state's wolves a "nonessential, experimental population," the label that lets Colorado kill problem wolves. A separate agreement approved the state's wolf plan and put CPW in the lead. Both are now under review.

• Fish and Wildlife has to report on whether Colorado followed the program's rules, what changes ranchers want, and whether ranchers get paid enough for lost livestock.
• Livestock attacks are climbing. CPW had confirmed 40 this year, compared with 31 for all of 2025. Its Sept. 24 count was about 45 wolves.

Why It Matters: Voters ordered wolves back in 2020, and that mandate stands no matter what this review finds. What the review can change is the rulebook, especially around killing wolves that go after livestock.

Mountaineering

🏔️ Big moves in big ranges

🧊 Sosbun Brakk's north face now has a route. Dane Steadman, Cody Winckler and Grant Stewart topped out on the 6,414-meter Karakoram peak after five days of climbing. The route goes at M7 WI5 (hard mixed rock-and-ice climbing plus long stretches of near-vertical ice) over roughly 1,800 meters.

Click their names to check out their Instagrams. What these guys have been up to is insane, and the photos from this mission are nutty. You think you do cool stuff in the mountains, then you see this.... someones always on another level!

🎿 Meru Central's West Face has its first ski descent. Tiphaine Dupérier and Boris Langenstein summited the 6,310-meter peak in India and skied the face to advanced camp without ever having to rappel. Expect about 50 degrees up top. A heavy storm roughly 10 days before they arrived covered the face in snow.

🗻 The Nepal Mountaineering Association president wants six high points on Kanchenjunga and Lhotse counted as their own 8,000ers, which would push the world's 8,000m peaks list to 20. Nepal's own list already includes them, and it certifies summits. The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation has long counted them as pieces of the main peaks.

What else is going on

Whistler Blackcomb's summit may get nearly 100 inches of snow by Nov. 12 from up to seven storms.

A failed rappel anchor killed two Colorado Mountain College students on West Apostle Mountain, Chaffee County's investigation found.

Two helicopters clipped rotors while landing at once on the Pheriche helipad below Everest Base Camp, killing one trekker.

📚 Trailhead Trivia

The most famous mountain rescue dog ever was a St. Bernard credited with saving more than 40 people in the Swiss Alps. What was his name?

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Answer!

Barry. He was born in 1800 at the Great St. Bernard Hospice, a monastery sitting at almost 2,500 meters on the pass between Switzerland and Italy. The monks and their dogs went out looking for lost travelers every day, and Barry was the best of them. He retired to Bern in 1812 and died in 1814. He's still on display at the Natural History Museum of Bern.