Ski Touring for Beginners: A Seasonaire's Introduction

When the lifts close or the resort feels small, skins open a different mountain entirely

Most seasonaires don't think about ski touring when they arrive for a first season. By month two or three — somewhere around the 40th time you've taken the same chairlift to the same run — it tends to come up. A colleague mentions an early-morning tour they did before work. You see a group of people walking uphill with skis attached, looking unhurried. Someone posts photos from a zone you didn't know existed.

This is how it usually starts. Not a planned decision — more a gradual curiosity that builds as the resort's terrain becomes familiar.

What ski touring actually is

Ski touring means attaching skins — strips of mohair or nylon with a directional pile — to the base of your skis. The pile grips the snow on the uphill, letting you walk up a slope without sliding back. At the top, you peel the skins off, stash them in your pack, and ski down.

The "touring" part is just that: you're choosing your own route up. Sometimes this is through a forest. Sometimes it's a long ridge. Sometimes it's a couloir you've stared at from the lift for three months. The reward is terrain that no lift-served skier reaches — untracked snow in places that exist completely outside the resort experience.

Depending on your setup, touring is done with either dedicated touring boots (which have a walk mode, freeing the heel for the uphill and locking it down for the descent) or adapted bindings on resort skis. Both options exist; more on that below.

Why seasonaires specifically get into it

The terrain familiarity point is real. When you've skied the same mountain for 60+ days, you know every run, every cat track, every patch of ice that forms by Thursday. Touring opens a completely different relationship with the mountain — uphill as well as down, slower pace, genuine exploration.

Beyond that:

The social element. Touring groups in most major resorts form naturally within the seasonaire community. Post in the resort's Facebook or WhatsApp group asking for touring partners and you'll find takers within hours. The culture is collaborative — people share route knowledge freely, and the learning curve is flattened considerably by going out with experienced people from the start.

The fitness benefit. The uphill is demanding. A two-hour tour will leave you more genuinely tired than a full day on the pistes. After a few weeks of regular touring, the improvement in your general mountain fitness is noticeable — and your skiing tends to improve with it.

Off days when the resort isn't working for you. Icy pistes after a week without snow, a weekend when lift queues are 20 minutes everywhere — these are days when the resort feels like an obstacle. If there's been a small overnight snowfall that didn't add enough to the pisted terrain but settled into sheltered trees uphill, touring to it feels completely different.

Quiet. After months of lift-line noise and busy mountain restaurants, there's something to be said for a morning that's just you, two or three friends, and a mountain that isn't full of people.

The equipment

You don't need to buy a full touring setup to get started. Understanding what each piece does helps you make a sensible first decision.

Skis

Dedicated touring skis are lighter than resort skis — sometimes significantly lighter. Weight matters on long tours where you're climbing for two or three hours. For short introductory tours close to the resort boundary, though, you can tour on your regular resort skis if you have compatible bindings. Start with what you have and upgrade later if you continue.

Bindings

This is the decision that opens or closes options. Tech (pin) bindings are the efficient standard — the boot clips into two pins at the toe and two at the heel. On the uphill, the heel pivots freely; for the descent, you lock it down. Light, strong, and designed specifically for touring. Most modern touring setups use these.

Frame touring bindings are heavier — they mount on a frame that sits between your boot and the ski — but they'll take a wider range of boots and mount on standard alpine drill patterns. A viable entry option if you want to tour on existing resort skis without buying a new set of ski boots.

For a first season of occasional touring, frame bindings on your existing skis are a cost-effective starting point. If touring becomes a serious habit — and it often does — upgrade to a dedicated setup in season two.

Boots

Touring boots have a walk mode: a mechanism that frees the cuff from the shell, allowing a natural walking stride on the uphill. Alpine boots don't have this. You can do very short tours in alpine boots — people do it out of convenience — but for anything more than 30 minutes of climbing, the locked-cuff walk is tiring and affects your technique. Walk mode isn't a luxury; it's the feature that makes touring sustainable.

Skins

Skins come in your ski's width and attach via an adhesive base and a clip at the tip and tail. They're simple to maintain: keep the adhesive dry and clean, store them skin-to-skin (folded on themselves) so the adhesive doesn't pick up debris, and keep them away from ice. Looked after correctly, a set of skins lasts several seasons.

Safety equipment

Any tour that goes beyond the resort's controlled boundary requires three pieces of safety equipment — beacon, probe, and shovel — carried by every person in the group, not just one.

A beacon (avalanche transceiver) is worn transmitting against your chest at all times in the field. If someone is buried, the group switches to search mode and uses the signal to locate them. A probe — a collapsible pole — confirms exact burial depth once the beacon search narrows the area. A shovel digs them out. Avalanche debris sets to something resembling concrete; you cannot dig fast enough without a metal shovel.

None of this matters unless you also know how to use it. See Avalanche Safety Basics for Ski Seasonaires for a fuller picture. The short version: take an avalanche awareness course before your first independent tour. Most major resorts offer half-day group sessions for €30–80.

Your first tours

The right first tour is guided or with experienced friends on a route that's been assessed before. This isn't overcaution — it's how the skills transfer properly. You learn beacon use in a scenario where someone actually knows what they're doing, you see how a confident tourer reads terrain, and you get a feel for the physical demands before committing to longer routes independently.

Practical starting points:

Resort-run guided touring days. Chamonix, Verbier, Arlberg, Revelstoke, and Whistler all offer guiding or structured backcountry introduction sessions through their ski schools or affiliated guides' offices. These are usually day trips and cost £80–150.
Marked touring itinéraires. Some French resorts publish marked touring routes that go outside the pisted area but within a defined, assessed corridor. These offer a middle step between staying on-piste and full backcountry touring — you're off the marked runs but on a route that's been considered by someone who knows the terrain.
Seasonaire touring groups. As mentioned above — most major resorts have an informal touring community within the seasonal worker population. Going out with people who know the local routes and snowpack is the most common way that first tours actually happen.

The honest version

Ski touring is not a passive addition to a season. The uphill is physically demanding. The decision-making required off-piste — reading snow, identifying loaded slopes, choosing when to turn around — takes time and experience to develop. A good first tour with the right people is enormously enjoyable. A poorly planned independent tour in an area you don't know, with equipment you haven't practised with, in avalanche conditions you haven't assessed, is a different thing entirely.

The seasonaire community around touring is one of the best things about it. Go out with people who know what they're doing, invest a day in an avalanche awareness course, and the rest follows naturally. Most seasonaires who try it once don't stop.