Your first season of ski touring
Most people overthink the gear and underthink the avalanche education. Here's what the first season actually looks like — the skills that matter, the mistakes everyone makes, and when it starts clicking.
By The JustBeginning Editors · Published May 28, 2026
Ski touring has a way of converting people permanently. The resort skiers who try it once, find untracked snow in a quiet mountain drainage three hours from the nearest lift, and come back the following winter with a full kit — this is a story repeated thousands of times every season.
The sport is also more serious than it looks. The same terrain that produces that untracked powder produces avalanches. Knowing the difference, reading the snowpack, making good decisions under peer pressure on a cold morning — that’s the real skill the sport demands of you, and it takes a full season to begin building it.
This is what that first season actually looks like.
Before your first tour: take an avalanche course
This is not the thing most people want to hear first. They want to know about the gear, the skintrack technique, the gear again. But the single most valuable investment you make in your first season is an AIARE Level 1 avalanche course — two days of classroom and field time, $300–400, and available through most mountain schools and outdoor education organizations.
You need it before your first real backcountry tour, not after. Here’s why: the skills aren’t just knowing what to do when a slope releases. They’re about learning to read terrain — which aspects are loaded, which run-out zones are dangerous, what a high-danger day looks like on a specific snowpack. None of that clicks from YouTube. It clicks from standing on a slope with an instructor, digging a snow pit, and watching what the layers do.
After the course, check your regional avalanche center’s forecast every time you go out. Not sometimes. Every time.
The first skintrack: what to expect
Your first few hours on touring skis feel strange. You’re walking on skis. The skins grip the snow on the way up and let you slide forward but not backward. The heel of your binding is free, so your heel lifts with each step like a very large hiking boot. You lean forward slightly, keep the ski flat (don’t edge), and find a rhythm.
What surprises most beginners:
It’s aerobic. Even a mellow touring pace gets your heart rate up in a way that resort skiing doesn’t. Dress in fewer layers than you think — you’ll be drenched in sweat within fifteen minutes if you start too warmly. The rule of thumb is that you should feel slightly cold when you begin skinning. You’ll warm up fast.
Kick turns are the hard part. On steep sections where you need to reverse direction, you do a kick turn: plant your poles, swing one ski 180 degrees uphill, shift weight, swing the other. It feels unnatural and awkward for the first few sessions. On a narrow skintrack with exposure below you, it can be genuinely scary. Practice kick turns on flat terrain before you need them on a slope.
The pace matters more than the fitness. Skinning at a pace where you can hold a conversation is sustainable for hours. Skinning at a pace where you’re breathing hard is unsustainable for twenty minutes. Go slower than you think is correct. The mountain will still be there.
Most beginner tours climb 300–600m vertical over 3–5km. That’s two to three hours of skinning. For your first outing, pick a mellow, south-facing slope on a low-danger day, go with someone more experienced, and aim for half that distance.
Taking your skins off and skiing down
The transition from ascent to descent — skinning mode to ski mode — takes time to feel smooth. You’ll stop at a safe, flat spot near the top, pull your skins off (warm them under your jacket first in cold weather so the glue stays sticky), fold them sticky-side-to-sticky-side, stuff them in the dedicated pocket of your pack, and click your binding heels down into ski mode.
First-time transitioning skiers often:
- Forget to click the heels down and wonder why the skis feel wrong
- Drop a skin on a slope and watch it slide away
- Overheat standing still after a sweaty climb, then get chilled in ski mode — have a mid-layer ready
The descent is where the sport pays off. Untracked snow, no lift lines, no other people. It’s also ungroomed, variable, and often harder to ski than you expect. The ski runs shorter than you’d like at first. The ratio of two hours up to fifteen minutes down can feel absurd until the fifteen minutes becomes extraordinary.
What you’re actually building in your first season
Avalanche awareness is the slow-building skill. After an AIARE Level 1, you know the framework. Over a season of checking daily forecasts, reading terrain, going out with more experienced partners, and starting to recognize danger signs (shooting cracks, whumpfing sounds, recent avalanche activity nearby), the framework starts to feel like intuition.
Skintrack efficiency improves quickly. After ten days of touring, the kick turn feels natural. After twenty, you’ll find your rhythm and stop thinking about your feet.
Route-finding comes slowly. Choosing the right line up a mountain — where the slope angle is reasonable, the terrain trap exposure is low, the aspect is less loaded — is judgment that builds over seasons, not weeks. This is why going out with guides and experienced partners in your first season matters more than your gear.
By the end of your first season, you’ll have:
- A handful of routes you know well enough to lead yourself
- A sense for your own fitness ceiling and how to pace within it
- Opinions on what gear actually matters and what was marketing
- The beginning of a mental model for avalanche terrain
You won’t be a backcountry skier yet. You’ll be someone who has done it enough to understand what it takes to become one, which is a different and more useful thing.
Common first-season mistakes
Ignoring the forecast. The avalanche forecast is not a suggestion. A considerable danger rating (3 of 5) kills experienced skiers every season. Know what you’re accepting before you leave the car.
Touring with people who push too hard. The social dynamics of ski touring are real — it’s easy to follow a more experienced group into terrain that’s above your decision-making level. Pick your partners carefully. It’s fine to say the slope looks wrong to you.
Buying everything at once. Rent skis, boots, and bindings for your first season. Your preferences will change dramatically after five tours, and the ski that fits your touring style at tour twenty is probably not the ski you’d have bought on day one.
Underpacking. The backcountry is not the resort. Extra layers, water, food, a basic first aid kit, and your emergency communication device (a satellite messenger like a Garmin inReach) should be in the pack every time. Weather changes fast at elevation.
What to do in your second season
By mid-first-season, you’ll know if touring is your sport. If it is:
- Take an AIARE Level 2 course (more field time, more complex scenarios)
- Find a touring partner who’s one or two seasons ahead of you and willing to mentor
- Buy the gear that your first season told you you actually needed
The sport compounds. Each season’s decision-making experience builds on the last. The mountains don’t change; your ability to read them does.
Ready to buy your first kit? See our ski touring gear guide for what to buy first, what to rent, and the one item you should never borrow.