If you want to learn backcountry ski touring, you’ll need a lot more than just good skiing skills.

One of the most satisfying things about ski touring, in my opinion, is the huge range of skills and techniques it demands. When Ski touring in Scotland, for example, hiking over boulders, cramponing on ice and navigating in whiteout are common, as well as skinning and skiing! Here, I’ll give you an overview of the skills relevant to ski touring. They cover a wide range of skiing, mountaineering and backcountry ability levels.

But first, let’s look at the main one: skiing.

It might sound obvious, but good ski skills are crucial if you want to learn ski touring.

You might have good on-piste technique, but it’s off-piste skiing that we’re interested in here. Off piste conditions are much more varied, so control of pressure, rotation and turn shape is super important. As a good intermediate skier, the following skills should be familiar:

• pole planting
• sideslipping
• stem turns

For steep and/or avalanche-prone terrain you should be an advanced skier, with good control of line and edge, helping you with backcountry skiing skills such as:

• kick turns (up and downhill)
• skidded turns
• short-radius turns
• jump turns
• ski cuts

Next, let’s look at mountain skills.

Ski tours almost always involve travel on foot in mountainous regions. So it makes sense to have skills in hiking, mountaineering and avalanche awareness.

Hiking

To enjoy safer ski touring, you should be an advanced hiker, with good personal organisation and fitness to help with:

• navigating (see later)
• keeping yourself well-fed and hydrated
• acclimitising correctly
• walking on rough/slippy terrain
• keeping warm and finding shelter
• dealing with emergencies

Mountaineering

In addition to this, we need basic winter mountaineering skills, adapted for ski-touring use:

• step kicking in ski boots
• using a lightweight ice axe
• using lightweight boot crampons
• cutting ledges

Depending on our goals, we may need to upgrade these. So, if you are planning to tour on glaciers or via steep couloirs, for example, then you will need these more advanced ski mountaineering techniques:

• skiing or skinning roped together
• baton ramasse
• abseiling/rapelling on skis
• crevasse rescue using ski anchors

Avalanche awareness

‘Avalanche awareness’ is a complex topic, taught at all levels of mountaineering and off-piste skiing. Within this, companion rescue is one of the most important drills you must learn as a ski tourer. This involves some specific training:

• using a transceiver
• using an avalanche probe
• ‘conveyor’ digging

Ski tourers also need to know at least the basics of snow science. They might gain this experience from mountaineering and hiking, or perhaps through off-piste skiing. This is a massive and complex area, involving topics such as snowpack development, weak layers and avalanche triggers.

Another important skillset is decision making in avalanche terrain – cue heuristic traps. These are well known decision-making errors that cause people to have accidents in high-risk, complex environments, and learning about them is the first step to avoiding them. When educating people about avalanches in Scotland, for example, I always ensure heuristic traps are part of the conversation.

So far, we have looked at skiing and mountain skills. Last, we will get an overview of the backcountry skills you will need.

For backcountry travel, you will need to learn techniques in addition to skiing and mountaineering. Navigation is all-important, but you won’t get far unless you know how to use specialist ski touring equipment.

Navigation skills for ski touring

It’s no good having awesome backcountry skiing skills if you can’t plan a good route. Refer to a local map and weather and avalanche forecasts to try to identify avalanche danger, skinning lines and good descents. This process of building up a detailed picture of your route will involve:

• Judging slope angle
• Working out slope aspect
• Visualising slope shape
• Understanding map symbols
• Taking a compass bearing
• Working out distances

Learning to use a map and compass is a really smart move. In good conditions, you might get away with using a phone app or GPS. But good map and compass skills allow you to navigate accurately in darkness, mist, whiteout or featureless terrain without relying on battery-powered gadgets. And crucially, it also develops your avalanche awareness.

Ski touring equipment and techniques

Our second set of backcountry skills relates to ski touring equipment and techniques. These are quite varied and involve specialised clothing and equipment:

• knowing what to wear for ski touring
• choosing what should be on your ski touring kit list
• adjusting ski touring boots
• checking for boot and binding compatibility
• using ski touring skins
• using ski crampons

Once you have got the hang of these, you are probably ready to start skinning – a fundamental ski touring skill. Skinning is something of an art form, and it pays to practise the different techniques to make things easier, such as:

• removing, storing and applying skins
• making a skin track
• sideskinning
• skinning kick turns
• downhill skinning
• transitions

If you are a backcountry skiing novice, go on a course to learn these various techniques properly. And definitely go to a good ski shop for advice on boots and bindings!

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So, there is an overview of the skills needed for ski touring, whether you ski alpine, telemark or splitboard. With good training and practise, these skills will all contribute to rewarding and varied backcountry adventures.