Sebastian Siep

On the last weekend of April, the PowderGuide team met up with friends, partners and long-time companions in Engelberg to celebrate the end of the season in style.

PowderGuide partner Atomic has provided us with the new Maverick freeride ski for testing. This is the short test of the Maverick 115 Cti, the flagship model, which has already been tested on the Freeride World Tour.

A very light and convincingly well-fitting backpack made of robust material, which is rather spartanly equipped. The EL2 system encourages practising, as it is easy to use and the backpack can be folded up and loaded again effortlessly after deployment. With a well thought-out packing strategy, the pack volume offers sufficient space for all one-day adventures.

Whether it's a powder suit, a flightsuit for flying through the snow, a jumpsuit or a one-piece. We're talking about a ski suit.

The Val d'Arpette in the Lower Valais is well known for small and large freeride tours in the northern sector. Nevertheless, even weeks after the last snowfall, you can still find powder on the predominantly north-facing slopes and gullies, which is probably rarely fully skied out.

A small ski manufacturer in Sweden. In view of the many craft ski manufacturers that have sprung up recently, that alone doesn't sound very special. However, NORSE's developments have received very promising feedback in the die-hard internet forums. What makes NORSE's skis so special is the very complete development approach. Once I had familiarised myself with the core technology used, I was keen to test the ski.

The pin technology, which was once only of interest to very experienced tourers and above all racing bunnies, has now become an integral part of the touring boot market.

The small, North American equipment manufacturer CAST has brought its system to serial maturity. PG skiers Tobi and Sebastian have been using the previous Cast - S&I system for some time and favour its attributes over conventional touring bindings. Having had the new CAST system on their equipment bucket list for a while, they have now been able to test it extensively.

Since my discovery of booster straps and the Castsystem, I haven't had any gadgets for skiing that could revolutionize my skiing days. Even with these newly discovered energy storage devices, it was only the feedback from my ski buddies and the realization of their season-independent usability that was a revelation.

The Booster Strap was invented by Ray Fougere in 1999 and park and pipe skiers quickly realized that the strap stopped ski watch bruising. Nowadays, almost every ski boot manufacturer has its own strap technology, but nothing beats the original.

The Upper Bavarian equipment manufacturer is upgrading with a new ascent-oriented binding for ski tourers of all kinds. The Straubing-based company has expanded the horizons of its binding world: in addition to the Duke for big mountain and the KingPIN for all downhill-oriented "freeski mountaineers", the ALPINist is now a fully equipped Pintech binding that is available from just 300 euros and weighs just 245g (without suspension line and without ski topper).

A few years ago, the brothers Lars and Silas Chikering-Ayres developed a binding system due to a lack of alternatives, which makes it possible to ascend with a pin toe piece and descend with an alpine binding and boots. What is the background to the Cast system, why is the original system no longer being sold and what is coming next?