From Corbet’s Crown to Class VI Chaos
🔥 For people who’d rather be outside! 🌲
Whaddup everybody!
The West finally got hammered. California got buried, and the rest of us scored what might’ve been the best stretch of an otherwise chaotically warm winter.
For Winter Break, we headed back to my hometown hill — Snowbasin Resort. In three days we went from bulletproof groomers to full-on blizzard conditions to bluebird powder laps with soft turns still hiding in the trees. Not a bad reminder that winter can still show up when it wants to.
XOXOX Nico!
PS: This week’s newsletter brings you big mountain royalty, urban downhill madness, and a taste of Olympic history.
We’ve got conservation wins in Patagonia, climbing duels under a Chilean bridge, and one of the boldest paddlers alive staring into the abyss.
Let’s get into it. 👇
👑 The king & queen are crowned
📍 Jackson Hole, Wyoming
At this year’s Kings & Queens of Corbet’s, Tristen Lilly didn’t just drop in — he executed.
The entrance is a vertical handshake with consequence, and the margin for error is measured in inches. Lilly’s run blended control, amplitude, and absolute commitment, earning him the crown in one of freeride skiing’s most iconic arenas.
🎥 Watch the run:
🚵 Urban descent at full gas
📍 Valparaíso, Chile
The streets of Valpo aren’t built for hesitation.
At the legendary Cerro Abajo downhill, Colombian ripper Sebastian Holguin stitched together a near-flawless winning run — threading stair sets, rooftops, blind drops, and alleyway compressions like a man with zero interest in braking.
Urban downhill is chaos management at 60 km/h. Holguin made it look surgical.
🎥 Full send here:
🏂 Olympic spins in Italy
📍 Milan-Cortina, Italy
A historic men’s snowboard halfpipe final.
Yuto Totsuka claimed gold in Milan-Cortina, edging out Australia’s Scotty James in a battle that pushed amplitude and technicality to new heights. Japan doubled down on the podium with Ryusei Yamada taking bronze.
The future of halfpipe? In very good hands.
🎥 Watch the final:
Length: 7 minutes
🌲 Cochamó siempre
📍 Cochamó, Chile
Victory in Chile.
A coalition led by Conserva Puchegüín completed the purchase of Fundo Puchegüín, a high-ecological-value territory bordering the Cochamó Valley. The land is now permanently protected — safeguarding biodiversity, traditional livelihoods, and one of South America’s most iconic granite playgrounds.
This isn’t just a land deal.
It’s a blueprint for conservation led by the people who live, climb, and defend the valley.
🎥 Learn more:
Length: 5 minutes
🧗 Duel under the bridge
📍 Valdivia, Chile
Concrete overhead. River below.
A wild climbing duel unfolds beneath one of Valdivia’s bridges — crowd energy, and a setting that feels half illegal, half festival.
Climbing doesn’t always need alpine spires. Sometimes it just needs a bridge, a line, and two people who refuse to fall first.
🎥 Watch the duel:
🌊 “I’m scared. I’m really scared.”
📍 Patagonia, Chile
Summer in Patagonia, and its wild rivers are in full form. French kayaker Nouria Newman shows us what it takes to run rivers where many drops flirt with Class VI — the edge of what’s considered runnable.
Every scout is a calculation. Every portage a grind. Every horizon line a question mark. When she says she’s scared, you listen. Newman remains one of the boldest whitewater paddlers — pushing into terrain where mistakes carry the highest price.
🎥 Watch in awe:
Length: 15 minutes
🐘 Snare cut, life saved
📍 Tsavo National Park, Kenya
A young elephant calf was recently rescued from a brutal wire snare in Tsavo — the kind set for bushmeat that indiscriminately maims anything that wanders through.
Thanks to the rapid response of rescue teams, the snare was removed and the calf treated before infection could turn fatal. It’s a stark reminder that conservation isn’t abstract — it’s boots on the ground, cutters in hand, and people willing to step in when wild lives hang in the balance.
🎥 Full story:
Length: 2 minutes
⚡ Bonus News
Hard trad is having a moment, and Connor Herson is right at the sharp end of it. Herson put up Drifter’s Esape, a new 5.15a trad route in Squamish, possibly the hardest trad route in the world.
Also in Squamish, this the brief story of a boulder that went missing and was brought back. Portable, the missing one-foot rock, was bouldernapped and then appeared in Bishop in January.
In France, lawmakers are debating whether reckless climbers and mountaineers should be charged for costly rescue operations, igniting a heated conversation about personal responsibility versus the long-standing ethic of free mountain rescue.
Mexico’s multi-pitch testpiece La Sombra del Chamán has finally seen its first free ascent, rewriting the history books for one of Mexico’s most legendary walls. Years of projecting, micro-beta refinement, and unwavering belief culminated in a historic send.
📚 Long Reads & Watches
💙 On the “post‑trip blues”
If coming home from a week of bikes, stars, and zero responsibilities hits harder than you’d like to admit, this piece digs into why. A reflection on the post‑trip crash with mental health professionals and fellow adventurers about how to navigate that emotional whiplash.
🚵 Danger Isn’t a Bug in Mountain Biking — It’s a Feature
Maggie Slepian unpacks why risk is inseparable from progression in mountain biking — and why pretending otherwise misses the point. A smart, uncomfortable look at consequence, control, and choice.
🛶 Following Portland’s drinking water, source to sea
This short documentary from Maine Mountain Media traces Portland, Maine’s drinking water from its mountain headwaters on Songo Pond in Bethel, down the Crooked River and Sebago Lake, and along the Presumpscot River to Casco Bay—100 miles of paddling, people, and place on Wabanaki land.
🧗 Joshua Tree winter classics in the hands of a 11 year old
Reagan Rocks makes a compelling case for J-Tree as one of the best winter climbing destinations in the country, ticking off classic crack routes from 5.7 to 5.11 while confidently walking viewers through each line — what gear she placed, why she chose it, and all with enough personality to remind you that stoke has no age limit.
Watch:
🌍 Suffering the FOMO?
(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)
🧗 Middle of nowhere, Patagonian steppe
📍 Piedra Parada, Argentina
If you haven’t climbed at Piedra Parada yet, consider this your nudge.
Rising out of the Patagonian steppe like a misplaced desert monolith, Piedra Parada and the nearby La Buitrera Canyon offer hundreds of long, high-quality sport routes on sculpted volcanic tuff — steep walls, techy faces, and multi-pitch adventures in a setting that feels both wild and quiet. Spring and fall are prime, but crisp conditions and endless lines make this one of South America’s most underrated climbing arenas.
🎥 This highline-climbing clip will inspire you:
🚣 Jungle remote canyons
📍 Oaxaca, Mexcio
Packrafting in Oaxaca is the kind of trip that starts as a line on a topo and turns into a full-blown expedition.
Deep in the Sierra Madre mountains, paddlers link jungle hikes, remote put-ins, warm-water rapids, and tight limestone canyons where villages are sparse and rescue is self-managed. It’s exploratory boating at its best — light boats on your back, river maps in hand, and that feeling that you’re tracing blue lines few others have followed.
🎥 See what it looks like:
You could scroll.
Or you could book the ticket.
💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.
Before you hit “Next”… Send this newsletter to your outdoor partner and even to that guy who you know shouldn’t be following you into the backcountry!!
See you on the next send!
❤️🔥 The StokedAF fam 🤘