I definitely didn't intend to argue that Backcountry.com had created the word, only that my recollection was that the common usage of the term in the context of

I definitely didn't intend to argue that Backcountry.com had created the word, only that my recollection was that the common usage of the term in the context of ski touring was roughly correlated. I just checked the earliest (2001) Internet Archive record for Turns-All-Year.com, and it also includes the word 'backcountry', so I'll stand corrected.