Back Forty

Quinn Keating grew up surfing in Southern California, then traded coastlines for ridgelines when his family moved to Oregon at sixteen, where he spent his teenage winters snowboarding at Mt. Hood. College swimming took him to Maine, then Jackson Hole and Alaska followed, before a job at Mad River Glen brought him to Vermont and meant learning to ski from scratch. He's spent the 25 years since running patrol at Bolton Valley, teaching Tech Ed to middle schoolers, and disappearing into the woods around home on skins whenever the snow allows. His years of research into what makes a great backcountry ski, tip-to-tail balance, radius, weight that works on the skin track and the frontside, became the brief behind his custom Back Forty.