Quick List

• Splitboard
• Splitboard specific binding
• Skins that fit your splitboard
• Poles with powder baskets
• Backpack with avalanche gear support
• Ski Crampons that fit your bindings
• Helmet
• Sunglasses AND Goggles
• Advanced: Air Bag
• Advanced: Ice axe
• Advanced: Crampons for your boot
• Advanced: Crevice Rescue gear

My Current Setup

• Smith Wildcats as my uphill glasses
• M3 Goggles
• Smith Helmet (straps neatly wth poacher backpack)
• Karakoram Prime
• Karakoram flex-strap
• Karakoram crampons
• Black Diamond Carbon whippets. Poles are reliable, the axe is only needed in certain circumstance.
• DAKINE Poacher 32L
• MAMMUT R.A.S. airbag, which fits inside the Poacher.
• Jones Solution (166, its too big. Go small as possible)
• Jones Skins, size D
• Petzl Ice axe
• Petzel Crampons

 

Things I learned

• Getting skins wet will lead some big foobar. Don't get skins wet, but if you do, keep it inside your jacket to melt and dry
• Don't get snow on the glue side of skin!
• Really, don't!
• I am not ready for Crevice leading
• Avy Courses are important, take at least avy 1, but if you continue into bigger missions, take more advanced classes
• Try it once with a guide see if its your taste, its hard.
• You don't really need ice axe and crampons all the time; for missions where you need those, lots of planning is required.
• Ice crampons for your ski are small, easy to carry, but might save your butt once in s awhile
• Changing your binding height during approach is pretty key to managing fatigue
• That said, your technique will count more for efficiency and fatigue
• Heat management, with layers, for me is pretty important. Its the difference between enjoying my outing vs slogging through suffering. I get into this a little more below.
• Avy gear (probes and beacon) is pretty key, practice and check on them before the season. And again during the season.
• Avalanche air bags are a good extra insurance, but they are only useful for subcases of all avalanches, and you might still bne injuered and stuck. So don't rely on it.
• That said, once you buy one, always go out with one. Not only on days you think avy will happen. Its insurance, and safety gear. Its like not wearing a helmet, cause you think you won't get injured on this day.

Heat management

• In most conditions, this is what I carry. A thin base layer, a Patagonia R1, a light insulation layer (usually packable down), and a soft shell. I wear normal shell pants, with light insulation, somtimes bring a insulation layer I can put on just in case.
• When you combine a light insulation layer with soft shell, it gets SUPER warm.
• When you wear a R1 with a soft shell, again, it gets pretty warm.
• I usually only wear the R1 + base layer when I start out the approach. Its hard work and most people will sweat balls. I do too. I need that to evaporate as fast as I can.
• As you go up, you change the layers depending on conditions, if I stop to break, all the layers go on, when I start riding down, its usualy just a soft shell over the R1, since riding is also hard work, but a lot of wind will get me cold.
• A face mask of sorts are always useful, Sunglasses for going and goggles for coming down are also useful, and different types of gloves for going up and waterproof warm for coming down is quite sueful as well.

## Skinning Its a movement pattern unique to you and something you will have to learn to figure out. Its is very unintuitive. For example, standing on a slope, you lean DOWNHILL to maximize skin contact, not lean uphill to use an edge. I will write in the future about skinning techniques. But, to say, you are gonna have to practice it and find your own efficiency.

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