RYAN STUART
Last year was a tough snow year in most places. But not on Vancouver Island, where pack tested Stuart lives and plays: Mount Washington and the hills surrounding his home received some 45 feet.
INGA HENDRICKSON
Not only did Hendrickson shoot everything in this issue, but she also shoots nearly all the gear you see in ϳԹ magazine. Note to manufacturers: she gets most excited about shooting stuff that's orange.
DREW POGGE
Pogge, who ran this year's backcountry ski test, is the deputy editor of Backcountry magazine. Last winter he logged more than 80 backcountry days in the Tetons, North Cascades, Beartooths, and Absarokas.
EDIE DILLMAN
Freezing hard goods like running shoes and skis in blocks of ice is pretty easy. Jackets and packs? Not so much. Air bubbles form, the ice shifts around … but somehow Buyer's Guide art director Dillman pulled it off.
MIKE HORN
Horn, our snowboard-test director, is the editor of Kronicle, a magazine about backcountry snowboarding, and StokeLab, a site focused on action sports. He lives in Crested Butte, Colorado.
JEFF BURKE
Burke, a ski patroller at Wyoming's Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, has skied on three continents (Europe and both Americas) this year. He once again oversaw our telemark and alpine-touring boot test.
KATE SIBER
Last winter was a good one for running-gear tester Siber. She got engaged at the top of a lift on a powder day, named a brand-new ski run at British Columbia's Bearpaw Heli (“You Suck, Dad”), and won the annual Sledding Olympics in Silverton, Colorado.
JUSTIN NYBERG
Former Buyer's Guide executive editor and Gear Institute founder Nyberg got a late start testing winter shoes. As a result, he wrote most of his running-shoe reviews from the front seat of Toyota Tacoma on Colorado's Monarch Pass.
ALI CARR TROXELL
At this year's snowboard test, in Crested Butte, Buyer's Guide managing editor Carr Troxell drank too many sake bombs one evening at the Lobar. The night ended, as such nights often do, with karaoke—in her case, Salt-N-Pepa's “Push It.”
STEPHANIE PEARSON
To whittle down this year's crop of 70 jackets, each morning of testing, Pearson would throa the jackets in a big black bag in the trunk of her car, and then watch as her crew fought over who got to try which one.
MARC PERUZZI
Over the past two years, alpine-test director Peruzzi has broke his ribs three times, most recently while racing in the Breck Epic, a three-day stage race in Breckenridge, Colorado. He's the editorial director of Mountain magazine.
KYLE DICKMAN
ϳԹ assistant editor Dickman tested splitboards during a week-long trip to British Columbia's famed Fairy Meadows Hut and a three-day trip to Colorado's Opus Hut. He's every bit as serious as he looks in this photo.
MOLLY LOOMIS
Loomis, who reviewed winter camping gear, is a contributing editor at Climbing magazine. A recent Shipton Tilman grant recipient, she'll soon be packing her bags for some exploratory high-altitude climbing in Asia.
STEPHEN REGENOLD
To test this year's multi-use jackets, Regenold, among other things, hiked California's Lost Coast in a raging storm, competed in a ski-mountaineering race in Vail, and raced in a winter alley-cat bike race.
JOE JACKSON
Single-radius nonprogressive sidecuts. Double-layer fleece-lined foam. Pre-preg carbon-fiber sandwiches. There are quite a few gearheads in the office, but none of them go as deep at Buyer's Guide assistant editor Jackson.
ALLAN ROMERO
Behind every brilliant idea—in this case, freezing gear in ice—is someone like Romero, the dairy manager at La Montanita Co-op, a grocery store near ϳԹ's offices. He graciously allowed us to freeze a dozen rubber bins of water and gear in his storeroom.
EILEEN RHINE
As vice president of manufacturing, Rhine oversees all aspects of getting ϳԹ into print. Rhine, who has worked at the company for 25 years, is one of a handful of people in the office who followed the magazine from Chicago to Santa Fe in 1994.
ARI GOOSEN
Goosen, our alpine-boot-test director, advises ski racers, teams, and shops on boot fitting. He also travels the world selling 20th-century masterpieces of gems and jewelry and is thus the world's foremost (and perhaps only) boot fitter-gemologist.