I met Vasu Sojitra last Friday while he was hiking up to ski Tuckerman Ravine. He was celebrating the end of his college career at UVM with a pack of friends, a typical thing to do on a beautiful spring day in May. Except Vasu only has one leg!

At nine months, Sojitra had his leg amputated, but he's never looked back. He climbs mountains, hikes and skies, and isn't deterred, although he does say he needs to eat more than your average person.

Listen to the most recent installment of Edging the Xtreme to hear more about the amazing backcountry accomplishments of this extraordinary young man.

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The famous Mount Washington “American Inferno” race started in 1933. It was a top-to-bottom race from the peak to the valley floor. Toni Matt won the race in 1939 when he “schussed,” or skied head-on, the head wall by accident. It was a foggy spring afternoon and Matt won the 8 mile race in a record time of 6 minutes 29.2 seconds, with an estimated top speed of over 85 miles per hour.

The 2013 race showed just how tough this competition can be, with freezing temps and high winds the competitors battled it out the entire way up and down the mountain, through Tuckerman Ravine.

Years later, Matt said that when he reached the floor of the headwall, at the transition from steep to relatively flat, he felt lucky to be "nineteen, stupid, and have strong legs."

Charlie Proctor and John Carleton were the first men to ski the steep head wall in 1931. “We skied it out of necessity, simple as that," said Proctor in an interview with me back in 1992. He said he “just wanted to get home.”

Proctor and Carleton's first tracks down the steep, icy face gave birth to a New England tradition and Matt’s record breaking run not only earned him a place in skiing history, but more importantly created international folk lore that exists to this day.

Friends of Tuckerman Ravine is an organization with a mission to “seek and preserve the historic recreational use of the Tuckerman Ravine and Mount Washington.” And it is in this light they still hold the Tuckerman Inferno pentathlon each year.

The race is open both to teams of five (one of whom must be of the opposite sex) and to solo TuckerMen and TuckerWomen competitors.

The Tuckerman Inferno pentathlon consists of an 8.3 mile run, a 6 mile kayak race down the Saco River, an 18 mile bike race north through Pinkham Notch, a 3 mile run/hike up the Tuckerman Trail to Mount Washington's Tuckerman Ravine and a 1 mile ski/hike giant slalom to the floor of the ravine.

This is an amazingly hard event, as hard as it was skiing the head wall on wooden skis and leather boots back in 1931.

For the full results of this year's race, check Facebook.

Listen to the interview on the race and on activities on the Saco River on Edging the Xtreme on RadioBDC:

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Avalanches are serious business. Even a moderate one can knock down trees, destroy houses, and virtually clean out anything in its path. The misconception is that they only happen in the back country. However, last year an avalanche in France wiped out a moving chairlift with 41 people on it.

Here in New England, New Hampshire’s Presidential Range are the most avalanche-prone mountains east of the Rockies. The website for Mount Washington states, “Since 1954 there have been 10 avalanche fatalities and many other avalanche accidents in the Presidential Range. Historical data indicate that avalanche accidents have increased in the past decade, mirroring the national trend in recreation related avalanche accidents in the United States.”

When it comes to avalanche training and information, most of it can be very technical and sometimes hard to understand, but in the last few years, there has been a trend to focus more of the information toward the growing number of recreational and advanced skiers that are venturing off into the backcountry.

Henry Schniewind has been on the forefront of this movement since the late 1980s, after he graduated from Montana State University with a degree in Snow Science.

Armed with a passion for skiing and his degree, Schniewind moved to Val D'Isere, France, where we carved out a niche for himself by creating awareness for vacationers from around the world on the dangers of avalanches.

What started out as an afternoon presentation at a popular bar in Val D'Isere has grown into a full fledged company that does presentations around the Alps and the United Kingdom. What makes Schniewind's avalanche program so different is his focus on providing useable information for the everyday skier that saves lives from the Alps to New England.

His company motto is “Ride Hard, Ride Safe." On his website, where his main theme is “Safety is Freedom," skiers and riders can find information on weather, conditions around the Alps, access his blog and watch videos all designed to keep skiers and snowboarders on vacation safe.

Schniewind is originally from Newton, Mass. and has a teenager's race at Green Mountain Valley School and at Blue Hills. Once an employee of the former Ski Market retail chain, Schniewind has been recognized as a world-wide leader in avalanche safety. He has given over 750 talks and courses in the last 20 years, including presenting at international snow science conferences. He has published many papers and articles, and is motivated by the fact that that nine out of 10 victims of avalanches trigger the avalanche themselves and their injuries could have been avoided.

In the Alps each winter there are an average of 100 deaths per year. And when you add up that figure to the deaths in North America and beyond, it's clear that avalanches present real danger. Henry’s Avalanche Talks (HAT) is an easy-to-understand voice amongst the technical and often complicated snow science information that tends to be distributed by avalanche sites and experts.

Schniewind has been a long-time friend and ski partner of mine for over 30 years and I featured him on my long-running television series Wild World of Winter.

Hear the entire RadioBDC interview with Henry Schniewind on Edging the Xtreme with Dan Egan:

Follow Dan Egan on Twitter at @SkiClinics and Like SkiClinics on Facebook.