Skis vs splitboard for the backcountry
Skis climb faster, transition faster, sidehill better and cross flat drainages far more easily. A splitboard descends as a snowboard and lets a rider keep the boots they already own. Choose by which descent you actually want, because you will spend most of the day climbing either way, and the avalanche training requirement is identical.
The honest way to frame this decision is that it is a descent decision made about a day that is mostly climbing. You will spend three to five hours going up and thirty minutes coming down. The equipment differences all live in the climb, and the reason to choose a splitboard despite them is that the descent is the point and you want to be snowboarding when you get there.
<!-- gift-guides-xlink -->The comparison in one table
| Ski touring | Splitboarding | |
|---|---|---|
| Climbing efficiency | Better. The stride slides rather than lifts | Good, but wider and shorter planks with more hardware |
| Transitions | Peel skins, flip the heel, go. Under two minutes | Separate or join the board, move bindings. Three to five minutes |
| Sidehilling on firm snow | Better. Long effective edge holds an angled track | Harder. Shorter, wider halves hold less well |
| Flat drainages | Skate or double pole out | Miserable. This is the worst terrain for a board |
| Descent | Skiing, on a light ski that is less damp than a resort ski | Snowboarding, on a board that rides close to a solid one |
| Boot continuity | None. Alpine boots do not tour | High. Standard soft boots work |
| Avalanche requirement | Course, transceiver, probe, shovel, practice | Identical, with longer transitions to plan around |
Where a splitboard genuinely struggles
Flat ground. This is the big one and it is worth understanding before you commit. A skier crossing a flat drainage skates, or double poles, and covers ground at walking pace or better. A splitboarder in tour mode is shuffling two short wide planks with no ability to skate, and in deep snow that becomes a genuinely exhausting slog. Route choice matters more as a result: avoid approaches that involve long flat sections.
Firm sidehills. A splitboard half is wider and shorter than a touring ski, so its effective edge is shorter and it holds a hard angled track less well. On a refrozen spring traverse that is the difference between walking across and taking the skis off. Ski crampons help both disciplines here and are a small, light, cheap item that should be in the pack any time the snow might be firm.
Transitions. Three to five minutes each against under two for skis. On a day with four laps that is a significant amount of standing around, usually while cold, and it is worth planning regrouping points around it so a party is not waiting in an exposed spot.
Where a splitboard wins
The descent, if you are a snowboarder. Modern splitboards ride close enough to a solid board that the compromise is far smaller than it was a decade ago, and float in deep snow is exactly what a board is good at, which is exactly what backcountry snow usually is. If you do not yet own a solid board to learn on, the best snowboards compared at three budgets is the place to start.
Boot continuity is the practical win. A rider who already snowboards keeps the boots they own and are fitted to, which removes both a cost and a fitting problem. A skier converting to touring has to buy a touring boot, because an alpine boot has no tech fittings and almost no cuff rotation, and it is one of the larger line items in a touring setup. The touring boot roundup explains why cuff rotation is the first criterion rather than stiffness.
The gear, on each side
The ladder is green circle, blue square, black diamond, as everywhere on this site. On the splitboard side, a package with the board, the interface and the skins matched to each other removes the compatibility problem that makes assembling a setup piecemeal expensive.
Splitboard
K2 Freeloader Splitboard, 158W
- Length:
- 158 cm wide
- Includes:
- Board only
- Use:
- Backcountry snowboarding
A freeride splitboard, so the board you climb on is the one you want on the way down. It is sold as the board alone, so budget for a splitboard interface and skins cut to match before the first tour.
Best for: A snowboarder moving into the backcountry.
What it costs you: Splitboarding is genuinely harder than ski touring: transitions take longer, the climb is less efficient on a sidehill, and traversing out of a drainage is miserable. The avalanche training requirement is identical.
Specifications are the manufacturer's published figures, not measurements we took. Sizes, prices and stock change constantly, so confirm on the retailer page before buying. We earn commissions from Backcountry and from qualifying Amazon purchases, and every link on this page is one or the other. Where a Backcountry button reads "shop the category" it opens a search for that category rather than that exact model, so it finds comparable gear alongside it.
Touring skis
Atomic Bent 100 Skis, 165 cm
- Waist:
- 100 mm
- Weight:
- Resort weight
- Use:
- Resort with occasional touring
A resort ski with a tech binding on it is the cheapest honest entry to touring, because it is one ski instead of two. It is heavier than any dedicated touring ski, and for the ten days a year a new tourer actually gets out, that is the right trade.
Best for: A fifty-fifty setup for someone touring occasionally and skiing the resort the rest of the time.
What it costs you: You will feel every gram on a long climb. Once you are touring twenty days a season, a dedicated light ski is the upgrade that changes the most.
Salomon QST 100 Skis
- Waist:
- 100 mm
- Use:
- Fifty-fifty to touring
A 100 mm waist is the width that floats in soft snow and still holds an edge on a refrozen exit track, which describes almost every real tour. Light enough to climb on, substantial enough to ski down properly.
Best for: Most tourers buying one ski for everything outside the resort boundary.
What it costs you: Lighter than a resort ski means more chatter on hard snow. That is the cost of every gram you saved on the climb.
Blizzard Zero G 96 Touring Skis, 171 cm
- Waist:
- 96 mm
- Build:
- Carbon, dedicated touring
- Use:
- Big vertical days
The Zero G is the reference dedicated touring ski: carbon construction, genuinely light, and stiff enough to ski hard snow at speed, which is the combination most light skis fail at. On a four thousand foot day the weight saving is measured in whether you get the last lap.
Best for: A dedicated touring setup for someone doing serious vertical.
What it costs you: A light ski is a nervous ski on chopped-up resort snow, and this is expensive. Do not buy it as a one-ski quiver.
Blizzard Zero G 105 Touring Skis, 172 cm
- Waist:
- 105 mm
- Build:
- Carbon, dedicated touring
- Use:
- Deep snow touring
The same construction at 105 mm, for tourers whose objective is soft snow rather than vertical. Width is float, and float is what makes a long climb worth the descent.
Best for: Deep maritime snowpacks and powder-focused touring.
What it costs you: More ski to lift and more skin to buy. On a firm spring morning the extra width does nothing for you.
Specifications are the manufacturer's published figures, not measurements we took. Sizes, prices and stock change constantly, so confirm on the retailer page before buying. We earn commissions from Backcountry and from qualifying Amazon purchases, and every link on this page is one or the other. Where a Backcountry button reads "shop the category" it opens a search for that category rather than that exact model, so it finds comparable gear alongside it.
Cost, honestly
- Splitboard, converting from resort snowboarding. Board with interface and skins, splitboard bindings, poles, pack, transceiver, probe and shovel. Boots carry over. Well over two thousand dollars complete.
- Ski touring, converting from resort skiing. Touring skis, tech bindings, touring boots, skins, adjustable poles, pack, transceiver, probe and shovel. Nothing carries over except outerwear. Comfortably more than the splitboard route.
- Either way, add an avalanche course. Several hundred dollars and three days, and it is the entry requirement rather than an upgrade.
The cheapest honest way to start either is to rent or borrow for a first season. The route into backcountry skiing argues for exactly that order: ski or ride the resort well, take a course, borrow gear, then buy once you know what you want.
The third option: snowshoes and a board on your back
For short approaches this is a legitimate and very cheap route. Snowshoes plus a pack that carries a board is a fraction of the cost of a splitboard setup, and for a thousand feet of gain to a single descent it works perfectly well. A budget pair such as the Retrospec Drifter snowshoes at under $50 is enough to find out whether the approach suits you before spending more.
It stops scaling quickly. A board on your back is heavy, catches wind and snags in trees, snowshoeing is slower than skinning, and you gain nothing on the way down. It is the right first step and rarely the long-term answer. The snowshoe roundup covers sizing by total load and the avalanche considerations that apply identically on foot.
How to decide
- What do you want to be doing on the descent? If the answer is snowboarding, that outweighs every climbing inefficiency on this page.
- What does your terrain look like? Long flat approaches and firm spring traverses push hard towards skis. Steep tree laps with short approaches do not.
- Who are your partners? A mixed party works fine, but a splitboarder needs the group to accept longer transitions and a skier needs to accept waiting.
- What do you already own? Snowboard boots that fit are a real head start, and no alpine boot is.
- Have you taken a course yet? If not, that comes before any of this. It changes what terrain you will choose, which changes what equipment suits.
Once you have decided, the first touring setup prices a complete kit with a running total, and the tour planning guide covers the part of the day that actually decides how it goes.
The two setups this comes down to
On the splitboard side the practical answer is a package, because the hard part is not the board but the interface, pucks, hardware and skins all needing to match. The K2 Freeloader splitboard is the version on this site. It is sold as the board alone, so the interface and skins are separate purchases that have to match it. On the ski side, something like the Salomon QST 100 climbs better, sidehills far better and transitions in a fraction of the time, for a similar outlay. The avalanche training requirement is identical either way.
Frequently asked questions
Is a splitboard harder than touring on skis?
On the climb, yes, in three specific places. Transitions take longer because you are separating and rejoining a board and moving bindings rather than flipping a lever. Sidehilling on a firm traverse is genuinely harder, because a splitboard half is wider and shorter than a ski with less effective edge for its length, so it holds a hard angled track less well. And flat drainages are miserable, because you cannot skate or double pole a snowboard out of one. On the descent it is simply snowboarding, which is neither harder nor easier, just different.
Can I use my regular snowboard boots on a splitboard?
Yes, and that is one of the genuine advantages. Standard soft snowboard boots work with splitboard bindings, so a rider crossing over from the resort keeps the boots they already have and are already fitted to. Some riders add a stiffer boot for touring and some use a boot with a walk mode or a hard-boot setup for steeper mountaineering objectives, but none of that is required to start. Skiers do not get the same continuity: an alpine boot has no tech fittings and no useful cuff rotation, so a touring boot is a required purchase.
Which is faster uphill?
Skis, over almost any terrain, and the gap widens with distance and with how rolling the ground is. A ski glides forward on the snow so a stride slides rather than lifts, and a skier can skate across flats and double pole out of a drainage. A splitboarder has shorter, wider planks with tail hardware and a bulkier binding interface, and transitions cost time that accumulates over a day with multiple laps. On a single long climb to one descent the difference is modest. On a day with four transitions and two flat approaches it is substantial.
Is the avalanche training requirement different?
It is identical, and this is worth being blunt about because the equipment conversation can obscure it. Snow does not distinguish between skiers, splitboarders and snowshoers. The same avalanche course is required before entering avalanche terrain, the same transceiver worn on the body, the same probe and shovel, the same practised companion rescue, and the same regional forecast read on the day you are going. Gear only works alongside training and never replaces it. Splitboarders do have one specific extra consideration: transitions take longer, so a party should choose regrouping spots that are not exposed.
Can I just use snowshoes and carry my snowboard?
For short approaches, absolutely, and it is by far the cheapest way to start. A pair of snowshoes and a pack that carries a board costs a fraction of a splitboard setup, and for a thousand feet of gain to one descent it works fine. It stops working as the days get longer: carrying a board on your back is heavy and awkward in trees and wind, snowshoeing is slower than skinning, and you gain nothing on the descent. Most people who start this way move to a splitboard once they are doing it regularly.
Which is cheaper to get into?
Splitboarding, if you already snowboard, because your boots carry over and boots are one of the larger line items. A splitboard package with the interface and skins included avoids the compatibility problem that makes assembling a setup piecemeal expensive and frustrating. Ski touring requires a touring boot, which no alpine boot substitutes for, plus tech bindings and skis. Set against that, the ski touring market is much larger, so the used market is deeper and the entry-level options are more numerous. Neither is cheap: both are well over two thousand dollars complete, before an avalanche course.
How we choose: we compare published manufacturer specifications, published certification standards and verified owner reviews across retailers. We do not test equipment in person, and every figure quoted here is the manufacturer's published number unless we say otherwise. This is researched buying guidance and not professional instruction: binding release values are set by a certified technician on a calibrated jig, and avalanche terrain requires formal training and a current regional forecast that no article can replace.
