A Quick Guide To Splitboarding

As one of the fastest growing segments of the winter recreation industry, splitboarding is on fire!

What is splitboarding anyway?

A splitboard is basically a snowboard that has been cut in half lengthwise to efficiently use as skis to travel over snow into the backcountry. The "skis" have something called skins underneath which offer friction to allow you to climb uphill without sliding backwards or sideways. Once you are at the top of the peak you make some adjustments to the bindings, put the "skis" back together into a snowboard and ride that stick all the way down.

There's a little more to it than that so c'mon and read on!

Super abbreviated history

Back in the mid-90s, some dude met with another dude (Kobernik & Wariakos) to pitch a rough idea of splitting up a snowboard to be able to access backcountry terrain. This was the era of telemark skiers and hotdogging around. As a snowboarder, as rare as we were back in the day, if you were even rarer than that and wanted to get into the untouched powder in the wilderness your only option would be to hike or snowshoe in with your board of your back, hitch a ride on a snowmobile or save all year for a one day heli excursion.

Well thankfully, due to these two dudes innovating for a few years they came out with a DIY Voile Split Kit in 1994 where you could cut your own snowboard and utilize it to access unmaintained terrain. The industry saw the opportunity to tap into this market and a couple manufacturers put out their own splitboards rather than leaving you to saw into last year's snowboard deck. Fast forward to 2018, the plywood planks of the past are now efficient, nimble, lightweight, responsive and more that ever there are women's splitboards!

How do I become a bad ass splitboarding woman?

Well, first things first, you might actually need to know how to snowboard before venturing into the backcountry on a splitboard setup. If you have that tiny little requirement already checked off then yay! Let's continue on what you will need. If you don't know how to snowboard, I suggest getting your butt to a local ski resort this November and get thee some lessons. There is nothing more rad than being a female snowboarder!

Tips

Get the gear! Or rent the gear...

Sign up for some local training. There are a few groups that offer intro to splitboarding courses and Alpinistas will be offering them too!

Consider getting some basic avalanche terrain training.

Get familiar with local avalanche reporting.

Be able to navigate with a map and GPS

That should give you a good idea on some of the basics about getting into splitboarding. Hope to see you out there!