Ski touring

Ski touring is climbing on skis and skiing back down, away from lifts and pisted runs. The mechanism is the skin: a strip of fabric fixed to the base of the ski whose fibres slide forwards and grip backwards, so you can walk uphill on the skis you will descend on. At the top you pull the skins off, lock the bindings into downhill mode, and ski.

The distinction that matters is not the climbing and it is not the descending. It is that nobody has assessed the snow for you. A piste has been controlled, checked and often explosively triggered before it opened; a touring line has not. Everything that makes this sport different from resort skiing follows from that one fact — the equipment you carry, the training that is not optional, the fact that you cannot do it alone, and the habit of reading a forecast every morning.

The other thing worth saying early is that the ratio is not what people expect. A touring day is mostly uphill: four hours of climbing for forty minutes of descent is entirely normal. People who love the sport tend to love the climbing, the quiet and being somewhere with nobody in it. People who came for the descent alone are often disappointed, and that is worth knowing before spending anything.

What makes it possible

Skins

What makes it different

Nobody has assessed the snow

Typical ratio

Hours up, minutes down

Never done

Alone

The first season is about the machinery: transitions that do not take fifteen minutes, skins that stay on, a pack that works, and a fitness base for four hours of climbing. Nearly all of it can be built on gentle, low-consequence terrain, and that is exactly where it should be built.

The second stage is judgement, and it is a much longer project. Reading the forecast, watching how a snowpack evolves across a season, and — the hard part — noticing when the group is talking itself into something. This is where courses beyond the introductory level pay for themselves, and where touring with more experienced people is worth more than any amount of solo mileage would be, if solo mileage were an option.

Beyond that the sport branches. Ski mountaineering adds rope, axe and crampons and objectives where the skiing is part of a climb. Hut-to-hut touring is multi-day travel across a range and is what a great many people consider the point of the whole thing. Racing is a distinct discipline on very light kit. And a good many people simply keep doing day tours in good conditions for decades, which is a complete answer.

1. 1

   Step 1: Be a confident off-piste skier first

   This is a prerequisite rather than a stage. Touring adds a pack, unpredictable snow and consequences to skiing you already need to be able to do. If descending ungroomed snow is still work, spend the season on that instead — it is cheaper and it is the actual bottleneck.

   You will know it worked when: You can ski variable off-piste snow comfortably, with a pack.

2. 2

   Step 2: Do an avalanche awareness course before buying anything

   Before the skis, before the transceiver, before the first tour. £150–£400 and it is the purchase with the highest return in the sport, because everything else is equipment for a decision you have not yet learned how to make.

   You will know it worked when: You can read a forecast and say what it means for a day out.

3. 3

   Step 3: Rent a setup and go with a guide or a club

   £40–£60 a day for kit and a guided day split between a party. You find out whether you like walking uphill for four hours before spending four figures on finding out, and you tour with somebody whose judgement you are not yet expected to have.

   You will know it worked when: You have completed a tour without being responsible for the route.

4. 4

   Step 4: Practise the transceiver until it is boring

   In a park, with a friend burying a pack. Owning a transceiver and being able to run a search under time pressure are entirely different things, and the gap between them is where the sport's worst outcomes live. Most clubs run practice sessions and they are free.

   You will know it worked when: You can locate and dig out a buried transceiver quickly, more than once.

5. 5

   Step 5: Buy boots first, then bindings, then skis

   In that order and with that priority on spend. Get the boots fitted by somebody who fits touring boots. The skis matter least and beginners always buy them first.

   You will know it worked when: You own boots that climb comfortably and ski adequately.

6. 6

   Step 6: Build a habit of reading the forecast on days you are not going

   The skill is pattern recognition over a season, and it is free. Reading the area forecast on ten days you stay at home teaches you more about how the hazard evolves than reading it on the one day you go.

   You will know it worked when: The forecast tells you something rather than just giving you a number.

• Touring bindings, which are the defining component — A binding that releases the heel for climbing and locks it for descending. Pin bindings — small metal pins engaging fittings in the boot toe — are much the lightest and are what most touring setups use; frame bindings are heavier, ski more like an alpine binding and are a reasonable choice for somebody touring occasionally off resort gear. The choice constrains the boots, so it is made first.
• Boots, which is where the money should go — A touring boot has a walk mode that frees the cuff and a ski mode that stiffens it, and it has to do both jobs adequately. Fit matters more than in any other ski discipline because you are walking uphill in them for hours; a boot that skis beautifully and blisters at hour three is the wrong boot. Get them fitted by somebody who fits touring boots specifically.
• Skins — Mohair, synthetic, or a mix. Mohair glides better and wears faster, synthetic grips better and drags more, mixes split the difference — and every tourer has opinions. They are consumable, they need trimming to the ski, and keeping the glue alive is an actual maintenance task rather than an afterthought.
• The avalanche set: transceiver, shovel, probe — Not three items but one system, and it is useless without practice. A transceiver locates a buried companion, the probe pinpoints them and the shovel gets them out — and the digging is the slow part that nobody rehearses. Buy the current generation of transceiver: search performance and battery behaviour have both moved, and this is not the place for second-hand economy.
• The skis themselves, which matter least — Lighter climbs better and skis worse; heavier is the reverse. Beginners consistently over-prioritise this and under-prioritise boots. Any reasonable touring ski in a sensible width will do everything a first two seasons require.
• Layers, and the transition problem — You will be too hot climbing and cold within two minutes of stopping. The system has to allow a full change of state in the few minutes a transition takes, which means layers that come on and off over a harness and gloves, not a single warm jacket.
• Navigation you can use in a whiteout — Map, compass and the ability to use them, plus whatever electronics you like as well rather than instead. This is standard mountain practice and touring does not exempt you from it.

The hazards that are not avalanche, which get less attention and cause plenty of incidents:

• Weather closing in — You are hours from anywhere on foot, and a whiteout removes navigation and the ability to see terrain at the same moment. The mountain weather forecast is a separate read from the avalanche forecast and both matter.
• Being benighted — Touring days run long and the climbing is slower than people plan for. A head torch and a turnaround time decided in advance are the two cheapest pieces of safety equipment in the sport.
• Cold injury while stationary — Transitions happen at the top, in wind, while wet with sweat from the climb. This is when hands and feet are lost, and it is why the layering system is a skill rather than a shopping list.
• Ordinary skiing injury, in an extraordinary place — A knee that would be a lift-served inconvenience is a rescue in the backcountry. Ski well within yourself is a safety instruction here rather than a style note.
• Terrain traps and glacier travel — Gullies, crevasses and cornices are their own bodies of knowledge, and glacier travel in particular requires rope skills this sport does not teach by itself. Both are guide or course territory.

Almost nothing about descending is new — if you can ski off-piste, you can ski a tour. What is new is the transition, and it is the skill that separates a party that moves efficiently from one that stands in the wind losing heat.

A transition is the changeover at the top: skins off, bindings from walk to ski mode, boots from walk to ski mode, layers adjusted, pack repacked, goggles on. There are perhaps a dozen small actions and every one of them is easy in a warm room and awkward in wind with cold hands. The whole craft is in doing them in a fixed order, with everything reachable, so that nothing is put down on snow and nothing is forgotten. Experienced tourers transition in a couple of minutes; beginners take fifteen and get cold doing it.

The climbing movement itself is a shuffle rather than a step — the ski stays on the snow and slides forward, because lifting it wastes energy and breaks the skin's grip. The one manoeuvre worth naming is the kick turn, which is how you reverse direction on a steep skin track, and it is genuinely awkward to learn. It is also the single most useful thing to practise on a gentle slope before you need it on an exposed one.

What this page does not describe is how to choose the line the skin track takes, because that is a terrain judgement and it belongs to the training rather than to a page. The order of the transition is a sequence and is written down here; where to put the track is not.

• Classic ski touring — Skinning uphill and skiing down, on terrain that needs no mountaineering equipment. The centre of the activity and what the rest of this page is written about.
• Ski mountaineering — Where the route requires alpine skills as well as skiing — crampons, an axe, rope work, glacier travel. A different commitment with a different training path, and the equipment list stops being a preference at this point.
• Skimo racing — Timed ascent-and-descent racing on very light equipment, on marked and controlled courses. Worth separating clearly: the hazard management that dominates the rest of this subject is handled by the organisers, which is exactly why the equipment choices do not transfer back to touring.
• Splitboarding — The same activity on a snowboard that separates into skis for the ascent. Identical terrain and hazard questions, meaningfully different transitions and a different set of limitations on flat ground.
• Nordic and backcountry cross-country — Lighter, free-heeled equipment on rolling terrain rather than steep descents. The Scandinavian tradition, and much closer to walking in winter than to alpine skiing.
• Resort and slackcountry touring — Using lifts to reach touring terrain, or skinning within a resort boundary. Popular and worth naming carefully, because leaving a patrolled boundary changes who is responsible for the hazard even when the walk is short and the car park is visible.
• Hut-to-hut touring — Multi-day routes between mountain huts, which is the form the activity takes across the Alps and Scandinavia. The logistics rather than the skiing are the skill, and it is the version most British tourers travel for.

Ski touring has an unusually serious culture for a recreational sport, and it comes directly from the consequence structure. Parties talk about decisions out loud, turning back is respected rather than mocked, and somebody voicing doubt is treated as information rather than as weakness — the safety literature calls the alternative a heuristic trap, and the culture has absorbed the point.

The social unit is the party, and finding one is genuinely the barrier to entry for many people. Clubs, guided groups and course cohorts are how most people find partners, and touring with people whose judgement you do not know is itself a recognised hazard. This makes the sport slower to get into than its equipment cost alone suggests.

There is a competitive discipline — ski mountaineering racing, on light kit and set courses — which is a different sport wearing the same skis and now has an Olympic presence. Most tourers never touch it. The mainstream of the sport is a small group, an early start, and being somewhere with nobody in it.