Patrick Wehowsky

The Munich night club institution 'Harry Klein' and a book presentation on ski touring using public transport. Two things that don't seem to go together at first glance, but on closer inspection harmonise perfectly and complement each other. The Harry Klein was certainly packed and gave the impression that the authors had struck a chord with the times.

" It's our favourite piece of clothing ever And its history goes back a long time Initially favoured in plain white Today it's not about the price, if the tailor's name is right. " One, Two (2001): Generation T

The Covid season was a successful one for splitboard manufacturers, that much can be said for this winter. Due to the lifts being closed in many places, the run on splitboards was large and sustained. As a result, Amplid, for example, sold its splits like hot cakes and another production series has been added. Our partner store splitboards.eu also reports a similar run

For years, the Salomon Malamute was (and still is) a good answer to the question of a solid, reliable freeride boot. Salomon had made a name for itself in the freeride community alongside Burton's Driver X and Deeluxe.

Insulation jackets are one of those things. From the 80s to the 2000s, things were relatively clear and straightforward. Fleece jackets were medium-warm insulation jackets that you wore either under a hardshell or on their own. Warmer insulation was then often the Michelin Man model, optionally with down or synthetic filling. A lot has changed since then.

In terms of snowboarding, ISPO is stagnating at a low level as far as the number of stands is concerned. It hasn't actually become completely insignificant, but young brands are often at ISPO once, but then give it a miss and only go to the industry meetings such as rock on snow or Shops 1st Try. That's why we were at the Shops 1st Try in Alpbachtal again this year in addition to ISPO, to capture as much news as possible in the splitboard and snowboard sector for you.

You could say that the weather gods didn't mean well with the new, old Snow&Safety Conference in Lech am Arlberg this year. Rain in Lech was not necessarily what freeriders and off-piste skiers had hoped for. On the other hand, it wasn't really about powder skiing but about risk management in the winter mountains. The conditions were indeed challenging for this and therefore anything but unsuitable.

White Risk, the SLF's comprehensive learning/knowledge tool for avalanche prevention, has been around for several years now. While version 1.0 was still distributed via DVDs, White Risk has been web-based and interactive since 2013. The White Risk app for IOS and Android is also available so that you can use the planned tours on your smartphone. I tried out how well the whole thing actually works for you using a tour to the Seekarspitze as an example

By chance, I stumbled across the STRG_F documentary "Snowboard and Ski: How dangerous is deep snow?" on youtube. STRG_F is an online research format that is based at NDR and always takes up interesting topics. But what I saw in the documentary by Henning Rütten left me in disbelief.

"ISPO is not dead, yet," I wrote last year. This is still true, but the patient is already in intensive care. More and more brands are starting to present their products outside of ISPO, which was also discussed here last year. The snowboard industry was once again a pioneer, as this trend now also seems to have arrived in the ski sector, as our ski article makes clear.

"The Freeride Split was developed to tackle any kind of snow and terrain you might find in the backcountry," says the manufacturer Furberg about its Freeride Split, now in its third generation. We took a look at the current version of the splitboard to see whether it also performs well in the test.

After Deeluxe, Burton or Fitwell have had specific splitboard snowboard boots on offer for some time, K2 has now also been offering a boot with a Vibram sole and rear sole edge for two years with the Aspect. There have been minor changes for this season, but they don't fundamentally change the boot. Find out how it performed in over twenty days of use on-piste, off-piste and in the touring area in our test.