The Snowbusters Blog
Trip dispatches, coaching notes, gear breakdowns and destination guides — written by the guides and coaches who actually run the trips.
Read latest articlesFresh off the snow
Read the thinking, places, and people behind the next good day in the snow.
Dreaming of cat skiing in the Balkans or touring in Norway, but not sure your riding is up to it? Three days on snow with coaches who will tell you straight is the best level check there is.
13 stories
Two runs on a demo ski at a crowded test centre tell you almost nothing. How to actually test skis, what to compare, and why a few days on several models with a coach beats any review.
Ski camps for grown-ups are everywhere, and most of them sound the same. Seven questions that separate a camp that changes your riding from a pricey week of following a ski instructor around.
Every winter starts the same way: burning thighs, wobbly turns and a vague sense that you used to be better at this. Here is how to get your ski legs back fast, at home and on snow, before the season really starts.
No lifts, no crowds, no après-ski DJ. Just skins, shepherd huts, wood stoves and untracked snow on the Kosovo-Albania border. What hut-to-hut ski touring in the Accursed Mountains is really like, and who it is for.
Skis, bindings, skins, boots and the safety kit that is not up for debate. Everything a first-time ski tourer needs to know before spending money, from people who have bought the wrong thing so you do not have to.
Good tours are planned on the sofa and corrected on the mountain. The 3x3 method: three checkpoints, three factors, plus the time formula guides use to work out how long a tour really takes.
Three items, zero excuses. What an avalanche transceiver does, what to look for when you buy one, why a plastic shovel is a bad joke, and what the Snowbusters crew carries.
The best avalanche is the one you were never in. Seven rules we ride by, how to read an avalanche bulletin, and what danger levels 1 to 5 really mean for your day.
Freeride touring is what we love most: walk up, ride the line nobody else got to. Here is the gear that makes it work, from skis and boots to the pin-versus-hybrid binding question.
There is no best ski. There is the right ski for how and where you ride. A no-nonsense guide to waist width, length, camber, rocker, construction and weight for touring and freeride touring skis.
Ski touring, skimo, ski mountaineering, freeride touring: six names, one family. Here is what each discipline actually is, what it asks of you, and which one fits how you want to ride.
"Intermediate" means one thing on a groomed slope and something very different off-piste. Here is how Snowbusters describes levels: piste by colour, freeride from F1 to F4, and touring from T0 to T2.
From stories to trips
Take the inspiration onto real snow. Explore trips, coaching, and new places with the Snowbusters crew.
