Steigeisen

This winter, my beetle-crushers could have come to more use during the Nordketten forest fire to help step it out than on ski toures. This lack of touring opportunity gave me enough time to get to grips with my own equipment. In doing so, I came across a few topics that had been on my mind in previous winters.

For snowboarders who are travelling on steeper terrain, in harder conditions or on bare ice, there is no way around the use of crampons. However, due to the nature of soft boots (wide fit & relatively soft sole), there are a few special features to bear in mind.

Attention to all mountaineering enthusiasts among you: The screws on the Neve Strap crampon (green version 2024) can loosen, causing the heel cup to come off the crampon. Those affected can return the crampons.

Anyone who has ever walked up behind someone who has used Auftriib can hardly do without these "gamechangers". What am I talking about? Polypropylene plates that you strap under your ski boots (in conjunction with crampons) to move forwards or upwards in couloirs or any kind of deep snow. As the name suggests, they give you buoyancy and make your bootpack a lot easier in deep snow.

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.

Petzl, known for climbing equipment and headlamps, has an ultra-light set of crampons and ice axes in its range that is perfectly suited to ski touring and ski mountaineering. I was allowed to test the Ride ice axe and the Leopard crampons last year.

Alongside classic snowboard boot manufacturers such as Deeluxe or Northwave, the Italian company Fitwell, known for its mountaineering boots, was long unknown in the snowboard sector. This changed abruptly about 4 years ago when the first pictures of a crampon-compatible snowboard boot from Fitwell made the rounds in the relevant forums.

The Austrian Alpine Club combines the various facets of its training program under the umbrella term "Safe on the Mountain" (SAB). In addition to the SAB courses on various mountain sports disciplines for section members, there are the so-called SAB booklets, in which the relevant teaching content can be found. In addition to the already well-known booklets on ski touring, via ferrata, sport climbing and mountain biking, there is now Hochtouren - Sicher unterwegs im vergletscherten Hochgebirge.

Anyone who frequently undertakes steep descents, goes on typical ski mountaineering tours or is simply out and about in the firn in spring will also regularly need crampons when skiing. This makes it all the more surprising that there are hardly any crampons that are really well adapted to ski boots. From a bridge that is too short to straps that are also too short and cumbersome to put on, everything happens. With many ski boots, normal automatic crampons also block the walking mode, which is of course particularly suboptimal.

Deeluxe Spark XV - the first of its kind? A snowboard boot for freeriders and tourers

Oh horror! Christmas is less than a month away. Normally a clear warning shot that you should slowly but surely get to grips with the present madness. Wishing for presents, thinking them up, finding them, buying them, wrapping them and finally giving them. It's the same old song that has surely stumped everyone at some point. What, where, how? But what could be easier than peeking over the shoulders of like-minded people and copying from their wish lists? So here are the PG crew's Christmas wishes.

Warning about La Grave from Stefan Neuhauser. On 29.1.09, a German group of six climbed to the area below the Girose Glacier. As the group had no rope with them, they got stuck above a wall bar. For reasons unknown to me, one person fell about 200 meters over this ledge and died.