Stepping Stones towards Ski Touring

Lou Reynolds IFMGA British Mountain Guide and BASI ISIA Level 3 Skiing Instructor shares her top tips on developing your skiing and taking those first steps (slides?!?) towards ski touring.

The WAAC Backcountry Basics course has been developed for those who are comfortable on red pisted runs and have recent skiing experience. You will spend time developing off piste skiing technique and building confidence in difficult snow before starting to put this together with uphill travel. It also covers backcountry snow safety including avalanche awareness.

This course can be an ideal stepping stone towards our Intro to Ski Touring Course.

However, getting the piste experience to give that base of skiing ability can be hard to know where to start. Here are Lou’s thoughts…

Before jumping into Ski touring, it is good to have four or five weeks of piste/resort skiing under your belt. I would suggest some ski lessons as part of this to get you started. I know this can be expensive, but long term it is worth it for giving you more enjoyment of Ski touring in the future. 

In the UK there are some snow domes up and down the country which are brilliant places to get some shorter group lessons to learn the basics and practise before a holiday. 

Scotland also has some skiing in the winter, although this can be hit and miss with the snow. The Lect is a great small resort that has some good beginner terrain as well as Cairngorm, Glen Shiel and Nevis range. I would recommend organising this last minute but it can be a good place for some practise when there is snow depending on how accessible Scotland is for you. 

For resorts out in the alps I would recommend booking to go to some of the higher bigger resorts. This will have good lifts and terrain for learning and the higher resorts are more reliable in the changing climate leading to less icy pistes. 

Some ideas are: 

Les Arcs

Tignes

Avoriaz 

Ischgl 

Courcheval 

Cervinia

Local to where I live near Chamonix, I can recommend checking out some of the smaller resorts of Combloux, Megeve, Le Tour for easier beginner terrain. A lot of these resorts have local ski schools ESF which are good for some cheaper half day lessons to get you started. In France UCPA can often have some good package holidays as well, with accomodation, lift passes and ski instruction, so it is worth checking out UCPA for more information. January and march, either side of the school holidays, will give you quieter pistes and likely cheaper accomodation and travel options. Most resort skiing stops in mid April and can be a bit patchy by then. 

A few female Ski Instructors that I can highly recommend who are based near Chamonix are: 

Alison Thacker - Homepage | Off Piste Performance

Rachel Kerr - rachel@rachelkerr.me

Shona Tate - book@basschamonix.com 

Ali Gibb - Morzine

Hopefully this gives you some ideas on where to start! The WAAC WhatsApp community has groups on it where other women are looking to develop skiing and plan trips so make sure you check that out. If you are not in our community and would like to be, please email jenny@womensalpineadventureclub.com