Who Has The Right To Information In The Outdoors? The Guidebook Dilemma

By most measures, Buffalo Pass in Colorado is not the pinnacle outdoor arena.



While the area's rugged and gritty mountain bike trails have a classic allure, they don't quite hold the gravitas and renown of Crested Butte's 401 Trail off of Schofield Pass, a proving ground framed by the iconic, crumbling red peaks of the Maroon Bells.



And though skiers have for decades enjoyed the long spine of Soda Mountain at the summit of Buff, the skiing isn't held in the same regard as places like Cameron Pass, a few ranges over, where a narrow road cuts through a secluded set of crags and chutes that many make long journeys to reach.



But Buffalo Pass has always harbored the one thing skiers pine for: Snow. And lots of it.



These rolling mountains, mostly peakless and topping out modestly just above ten-thousand feet, see more of it than most anywhere in the state. It's a resource that has long attracted users and operators. And the search for fresh turns here has recently become complicated by another asset dear to skiers and outdoor enthusiasts alike: information. It's something so precious that it has led to lawsuits and wider questions about who should have access to knowledge and to the outdoors.



That debate reached a climax here just a few years ago when Steamboat Powdercats, a local snowcat outfit that has operated in the area for decades, was pitted against former employee and guide Stephen Bass, who was slated to publish a treatise on the area with Beacon Guidebooks.



The backcountry skiing book was planned to include run names long used by the Powdercats, providing this information to many regular users in the physical guidebook and in digital form through partner websites. In reaction, Powdercats sued to delay publication of the book, citing those run names as trade secrets integral to their operation.



It had all the hallmarks of a foundational question in outdoor culture: in a modern world bursting with digital and physical information, who has the right to information, especially on publicly accessible lands?

Before Andy Sovick was building houses and skiing in Crested Butte, he had discovered a classic backcountry skiing resource: the Jackson Hole Ski Atlas.



"That ski atlas had helped me make better decisions and just get inspired and excited about skiing in the Tetons when I was ski bumming and couch surfing up there many, many years ago," Sovick says. He set out to create a similar aerial atlas for Crested Butte.



But Sovick wouldn't stop there. What began as a pet project tapped into a larger movement coalescing in the backcountry skiing community.



"As we started creating other ski atlases for other places, it quickly occurred to me that there was a need and a desire from the backcountry ski community to have terrain atlases that would help [skiers and educators] understand the terrain better," Sovick says.



Sovick founded Beacon Guidebooks in 2013 during a time when the backcountry skiing movement was entering a new era. Modern equipment had revolutionized the practice, but in the wake of incidents like the Tunnel Creek avalanche, a renewed focus on safety had materialized.



The small publishing house thus positioned itself to offer information that was crucial to decision-making. Beacon has since released dozens of backcountry skiing guides and has partnered with digital mapping company onX Backcountry–a well-known digital mapping app that also owns community-driven sites like Powder Project and MTB Project–to digitize the content.



Former Steamboat Powdercats guide Stephen Bass' work on Buffalo Pass was to follow in that vein, though it would be created in a more complicated context. The snowcat-powered guide service, born in 1983 when founders Barbara and Jupiter Jones received clearance from the forest service to begin taking clients to the pass' snowy slopes, wasn't in need of detailed maps or avalanche safety resources; they already had them. Moreover, 2020, the year the book was slated for release, marked an inflection point in the outdoor world, where stay-at-home orders instigated by the COVID pandemic drove many to the mountains.



Regardless, Sovick says he took his usual approach in creating the book. "We said, ‘Hey, we should probably tell Steamboat Powdercats about this. We should probably let them know, see if they want to buy an advertisement, see if they want to weigh in on the run list and the names and things like that," Sovick says. "So when we did it, they reacted in the strongest way, seeing it as a massive threat, an infringement on their trade secrets, and started a lawsuit."



Steamboat Powdercats declined to comment on the Buffalo Pass guidebook for this article. "We have put this guidebook that Stephen created behind us," longtime Powdercats employee Kent Vertrees said over email. "We are focused today on continuing to provide a safe and enjoyable experience for our guests. We wish Stephen all the best and remind backcountry DIYers to ensure they have the proper equipment, experience, and training to be safe when skiing in the backcountry on Buffalo Pass and beyond."



Sovick says Beacon's guidebooks are occasionally met with pushback, but Steamboat Powdercat's response to the Buffalo Pass version was unique. "We've published 27 products at this point, and that's the only time that someone responded with the lawsuit," he says.



Information and who has the right to it were central to the lawsuit Steamboat Powdercats initiated. The civil complaint filed by the outfit in the fall of 2020 noted that "Defendant's continued use of these trade secrets is willful and malicious, and Steamboat Powdercats is entitled to damages." Jason Blevins of The Colorado Sun further noted in November of 2020 that "the company's director, Eric Deering, said the lawsuit is about proprietary information and not about shutting down publication of a guidebook."



Powdercats' attorney, Tony Clapp, further elicited divergent views on how information should be shared in the backcountry. "What's really concerning is that the guidebook for that area has too much information and will give a false sense of confidence to the potential user and could very well lead to trouble in the backcountry versus enjoying the backcountry," Clapp told Jason Blevins.



Sovick felt otherwise. "Honestly, my hunch is they don't really care if we use their run names. I think they just don't want the guidebook published for this zone," Sovick was quoted in the article.



Eventually, the two parties came to terms, with Beacon Guidebooks agreeing to publish the book without Powdercat's run names and instead creating their own. Though that process seemed symbiotic, questions remained, especially regarding hypothetical search and rescue operations where Powdercats' run names–titles used by many who frequent the area independently–could possibly cause confusion with names used in the guidebook.



Though complicated, Steamboat Powdercats had seemingly won the battle to keep their knowledge privileged, something they are far from alone in pursuing.



"I'll say from the start that there are places that I love to go backcountry skiing that I don't share with many people. I share with only a few people, and I feel like they are well-kept secrets, and I enjoy that," Andy Sovick says. "That being said, if more people show up and start skiing there, I'll greet them with a smile and stoke."



It seems many backcountry users' first reaction is to guard their most prized local haunts, leaving the question of when information should be available fraught.



Sovick is aware of that paradox. "The really hard part is knowing when to share the right information and the right way to share the right information," he says. But as a publisher, he sees the question of how information should be shared as a matter of process. "It shouldn't be a question of should we create a guidebook or should we not create a guidebook. Should we create a Facebook post or should we not create a Facebook post. The question should be, what's the best way to talk about this subject? What's the best way to share the information?"



Stephen Bass, the author of the guidebook, also declined to comment for this article.

Information on access has long been safeguarded in outdoor sports. But while this practice has lately been labeled as ‘gatekeeping,' a perspective that ties the approach to privilege, many outdoor pursuits have also begun grappling with a participation boom that has made an economy out of knowledge.



And the culture long held a certain modesty of disclosure as sacrosanct.



"Publicizing certain surf spots, and especially ones off the beaten path, is similar to violating the first rule of Fight Club. You just don't talk about certain surf spots," Adam Elder wrote in his 2022 New York Times article "The (No Longer) Secret World of Surf Spots." The piece detailed how surfing's ethos of secrecy had run headlong into the modern landscape of online oversharing, often exposing otherwise little-known breaks.



Ever held in high regard, surfing and its scarcity of good waves long exemplified the ideal that inside information–and the right to act on it–came not as a given, but something earned.



Backcountry skiing–also held in high esteem and naturally harboring a finite resource in fresh snow–has itself been thrust into a modern world where various user groups all vie for the same snowy terrain, and all use information–whether personally learned, handed down, or consumed–to access it.



As social media has become an influential source, a new information paradigm has catalyzed all the more; content-rich, digitized, and with plenty of eager consumers, which together have accelerated participation in backcountry skiing, a pastime long framed by solitude.



"Early on, there were so few of us it didn't matter. I mean, there was nobody complaining back in 1985 when Lou came out with his little guidebook that 10 people read," eminent skier and writer Lou Dawson says cheekily as he remembers his early forays into guidebook writing.



Since then, the modern outdoor world has changed markedly. Countless locations exposed to the masses via the internet and social media–like Colorado's Conundrum Hot Springs and Hanging Lake–have exploded in popularity, and many now require reservations. And anecdotes reign over winter trailheads and parking lots, once quiet, now teeming with users.



As the dispersal of outdoor information has modernized, with many utilizing digital mapping tools, guidebooks, and even social media to find their next adventure, Buffalo Pass has come to epitomize the ever-present friction between those who wish to keep information closely guarded and those more willing to spread it.



Weekend warrior Sprinter vans now dot the once mellow road all summer. And the rocky climbs and gritty descents of the area's mountain bike trails–many completed just in the past few years–attract local riders, only to be overrun by leaf-peeping tourists come fall, a time when most residents avoid the area.



Interest in the area has grown enough that the forest service recently updated and expanded parking at Dry Lake, the main winter access point to the area named for an adjacent ephemeral pond, to accommodate the ever growing numbers of snowmobilers taking to the pass.

But while Dawson has witnessed the outdoor world evolve in ways that mirror the evolution of Buffalo Pass, the eminent ski mountaineer and guidebook writer prioritizes evangelism. "I've always loved ski mountaineering and felt like it was something I wanted to share with as many people as possible in terms of helping them to enjoy it and making suggestions on how it could be enjoyed," he says. "And that's been a big motivator."



But the sharing of information, whether in print, online, or in hybrid formats, has been met with some backlash. "A lot of it is based on scarcity, obviously," Dawson says. "You get a heavily used place such as the Wasatch-the stuff you get off the road, which is where most people ski. And as soon as you start sharing routes…you start publishing routes and stashes, there's going to be people that feel like their personal fiefdom has been violated."



In a skiing world where elitism and unaffordability have become intertwined with a subculture that once defined itself by freedom of movement and choice, many skiers have come to feel that their entire lifestyle is under siege. That hasn't been lost on writers like Dawson.



"I think there's some validity to that. When you've got a really cool culture going, you hate to see it get desiccated," he says. "And maybe that same feeling of disappointment comes when somebody publishes a guidebook with a bunch of so-called secret routes and then a bunch of newcomers come and ski those routes."

After a paltry and warm winter, Steamboat Powdercats closed operations nearly a month early this year. Now the trails and woods at Dry Lake–typically still snowbound this time of year–resemble their namesake; the parking lot is dusty and parched while moose browse in the already flooded intermittent tarn. Throughout town, skis have already been swapped for mountain bikes as locals get their fill on the dried trails, for now, quiet.



It's but a respite before the crowds return for summer, reviving the ever-present discussion of how many is too many in an outdoor world where few secrets seem sacred anymore.



Much of the debate over how information is disseminated in the outdoor world is a simple question of participation. To some, places are loved to death. To others, it's a question of accessibility and equality. But that's only part of the issue. Another frictionoccurs between user groups that profit in some way from that information, whether they share it or not.



The keyword is guide. Guidebooks and guided tour operators hold their data dear as an asset to sell a backcountry experience. But even social media influencers loosely guide users to places, and they can profit in the form of likes and followers–and perhaps paid partnerships–from posting locales that before may have been little known.



That all is to the advantage–or expense–of the general user. While many clearly benefit from that information, allowing access to beautiful and wild areas they wouldn't have known about otherwise, existing users are subject to a diminished experience of a finite resource, whether that is good waves, fresh snow, or the solitude of a quiet trail.



So who actually has the right to privileged, often community-based information on terrain, conditions, and even typically local knowledge?



With the modern, often digitized way information is now shared, secrecy–a tenet that pursuits like surfing or backcountry skiing once held close–has become vestigial. Whoever has information at any time is no longer bound to an isolated subculture nor an agreed-upon set of norms.



And this all has a nebulous but distinct impact on the outdoor subculture. Because the current landscape incentivizes not a broader moral code nor a modern ethos, but instead a completely individualized approach. Barring a lawsuit, any one person can decide how they want to share the information they harbor at any time. And they have the means to spread that information in ways never before seen. Territoriality seems little poised to fight such a battle. The people will come–and have come–regardless. The only option left may be to concede that information is no longer privileged at all in the outdoor space, just as solitude and respect aren't guaranteed.



Still, the perception of earned and local privilege clashes with the right anyone has to access public lands, or even publish information on them. All the while, many mourn once quiet trailheads now overrun. Solutions can seem hopelessly out of reach in such a mire.



Though to eminent writer and legendary mountaineer Lou Dawson, they don't seem so.



"What did we do about it?" he asks himself while reflecting on how others eventually encroached on his solitude at another well-known mountain pass. "We just had to deal with our feelings. I know those other people had just as much right to be there as we did, and hopefully they were enjoying themselves just as much as we enjoyed ourselves. And I just kept that in the front of my mind."



"And now it's days gone by; not a big deal."

About The Brave New World of Skiing Column

This article was written by POWDER writer Jack O'Brien for his bi-weekly ‘Brave New World of Skiing' column. Click below to read the previous column, ‘Does It Matter If You Ski Well?'

Related: Does It Matter If You Ski Well?

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This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 2:43 AM.