Off-Piste Skiing & Freeriding

Best Off-Piste Skiing in the Alps

Whether you call it “off-piste”, “freeriding”, “piste hors”, or “backcountry skiing”, more and more skiers and snowboarders are venturing onto the ungroomed slopes beyond the safety of a ski resort’s piste markers. Here’s our pick of 10 of the best ski areas in the Alps. Read more >>>

Extreme Off-Piste Descents

Here is our choice of ten classic extreme off-piste descents in Europe and North America, and a word of warning: at the risk of stating the obvious, do not ski off-piste without safety equipment and ideally only with a qualified mountain guide. 
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Why Ski Off-Piste?

Why ski off-piste? If you already know the answer, you should be interested in the contents of these pages, and if you don’t know why yet, but are an adventurous piste skier, then this could be the first step to skiing off-piste and doubling your fun.
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Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain

The number of avalanche fatalities is steadily rising, with over 40 avalanche fatalities per season in North America and even greater numbers in Europe, largely because more and more skiers and boarders head off into the backcountry.
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Avalanche Awareness

When it dumps snow early season and you can’t wait to be skiing fresh tracks it’s time also to be reminded of the risks of skiing or riding off-piste, to learn from the past and to improve your avalanche awareness.  
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Types of Avalanche

If you’re looking for the killer, then the slab avalanche is your man. This is the White Death, the Snowy Torrent, the Big Guy in the White Suit. Dry slab avalanches account for nearly all of the avalanche deaths in North America.
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Caught in an Avalanche

In November 1978, Bruce Tremper-then 24 years old and fresh out of college-was helping to build chairlifts at the Bridger Bowl Ski Area in Montana. Here’s how he got caught in an avalanche and survived to tell the tale.
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Buried by an Avalanche

If you are completely buried in an avalanche the odds of survival are slim, unless you wear a transceiver (beacon), your partners escape and they have the right gear and experience. Statistics show that the chances of them rescuing you alive are about one in ten.
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First Descent of Reindalstinden

After a five year wait for the right conditions, Graham Austick and Ali Street enjoyed the finest ski tour and steep descent of their careers to date with slopes up to 55 degrees 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle.
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