How Consolidation and Affiliate Marketing Upended Outdoor Media

For nearly twenty years, a single blog about backcountry skiing—named for untouched powder found well beyond the bounds of any ski area—inhabited a certain lofty place in the outdoor psyche: Lou Dawson’s WildSnow.com.Expansive in its breadth, the site stood as the high-water mark for the discussion on skiing’s most cachet-rich discipline; a human-powered approach to wild, steep snowriding whose weighty nature rivaled that of activities like surfing as the pinnacle of mean