How to find a backcountry ski partner you can trust

To find a backcountry ski partner, take an avalanche course and tour with your classmates, go to your local avalanche center's events, and treat anyone you meet another way, through a club, a shop or an online group, as someone to vet first. Ask about their training and rescue gear before the first tour, then keep that tour short and low-angle: slopes under 30 degrees, with nothing steeper above them. The care has a reason: in a critical avalanche burial, the partner you came with is the rescuer most likely to reach you in time.

A 2024 study in JAMA Network Open shows why. It looked at 1,643 people critically buried by avalanches in Switzerland between 1981 and 2020, meaning their head and chest were under the snow. Dug out within 10 minutes, a buried person had a 91% chance of survival. At 30 minutes, the figure was 31%. Companions dug buried partners out in a median of 10 minutes, while organized rescue teams took 90, and people rescued by companions were nearly three times as likely to survive.

Two details in the paper make that sharper. Earlier work had treated the first 15 minutes as the high-survival window; in this longer record, survival dropped after 10, and the authors suggest suffocation may begin earlier than previously assumed. And the organized teams did get faster. The paper's table shows their median falling from 153 minutes in the 1980s to 65 in 2011 to 2020, and the authors suggest quicker dispatch, helped by wider cell coverage, as part of the reason. Sixty-five minutes is still more than six times the window. The paper has limits: burial times were missing for about one case in seven and had to be estimated statistically, and the rescue times are Swiss. Suffocation, which the authors name as the leading cause of avalanche deaths, works the same everywhere, though. In the minutes that decide the outcome, the only rescuer close enough is the person you came with.

Get trained before you look

The fastest way to find good partners is a course, because everyone on it is looking for the same thing. In the United States, courses that follow American Avalanche Association guidelines run in a set order, laid out in Avalanche.org's course progression. Level 1 takes three days, 24 hours of instruction. A separate Avalanche Rescue course takes one. Level 2 requires both. AIARE runs its own versions of each.

Canada uses different names. Avalanche Canada's training program starts with AST 1, a minimum of two days, and moves to AST 2 once you've taken AST 1 and gained some backcountry experience; its one-day Companion Rescue Skills course is aimed at every winter backcountry traveler and doubles as a refresher.

A course does two jobs at once. It gives you the skills a partner needs from you, and it puts you on a slope with people from your area at the same stage. Swap numbers on the last day. Then practice a rescue together before the season gets busy, because the window in that study is 10 minutes, not 15, and a search you last rehearsed two winters ago may not fit inside it.

Where to find partners, from most known to least

Each source tells you something different about the person. Start where you know the most.

1. Course classmates. You know their training, because you did it together.
2. Avalanche center events. Many local centers, listed on Avalanche.org and Avalanche Canada, run talks, beacon practice sessions and fundraisers. The people there have shown up to learn.
3. Clubs and mountaineering groups with touring leaders. Someone vouches for the people on the trip. How to join a ski club covers what to ask before you sign up.
4. Backcountry shops and guiding services. Clinics and guided tours put you alongside locals, and staff often know who is looking for a partner.
5. Your resort crew. You know their pace and temper, but not their backcountry judgment. Take a course together and you get both. How to find ski buddies and how to find snowboard friends cover building that crew inbounds.
6. Online groups and apps for your area. You know the least about who you're talking to. Use every question below and start smaller than you think you need to. That includes SkiBuds, which is being rebuilt with rider channels for each mountain and avalanche reports for the terrain that needs them; the new iOS and Android app is coming soon.

A stranger from the internet can be a hazard in avalanche terrain, so why look online at all? A partner who overstates their training can be worse than useless, which is why online groups sit last. But for many people the realistic alternative to an online contact is touring alone, and the Swiss data is the case against that: the people most likely to survive a critical burial were the ones a companion dug out within minutes. An unknown partner calls for vetting. The six questions below are that vetting, followed by a first tour small enough that a bad match costs you an afternoon.

Six questions to ask before a first tour

A good partner answers these without hesitation, and asks you the same ones back.

1. What avalanche training have you done, and when did you last practice a rescue?
2. What rescue gear do you carry? A transceiver, shovel and probe for every person is the minimum. Check at the trailhead that every transceiver sends and receives.
3. Where have you toured, and in what conditions? Days in your range, on your snowpack, count for more than a long list of trips somewhere else.
4. How do you decide whether to go? Listen for someone who reads the avalanche forecast, can name the day's avalanche problem and is comfortable turning around.
5. What do you want from the day? A summit at any cost and three safe laps in low-angle trees are different trips. Those two people shouldn't tour together yet.
6. Is there anything medical I should know about?

One red flag is enough to skip the tour

• Unwilling to do a transceiver check, or missing rescue gear.
• Dismissive of the avalanche forecast, or never mentions it.
• Vague about their training or where they've toured.
• Pushes to keep going after the group has agreed to turn around.
• Treats the first tour as a test of how hard they can go.

None of these make someone a bad person. They make them the wrong partner for the backcountry today. For the opposite, read Francesca Jacquez's first year splitboarding in Bend, Oregon: patient riders who taught her, and her advice to learn your safety gear and always go with someone.

A first tour, planned

Treat the first day as an interview that runs both ways. Here is a hypothetical one. Say you met someone at a beacon practice night, you both have Level 1 and rescue training, and the forecast for Saturday is Moderate.

• The night before: read the avalanche forecast together, and the weather behind it. Heavy new snow, strong wind and rapid warming all load or weaken the snowpack. Chinook winds and snow explains rapid warming, snow-to-liquid ratio explains why some storms add more weight than others, and why snow forecasts disagree helps you judge the forecast behind the bulletin.
• Terrain: a route you both know, on slopes under 30 degrees, with nothing steeper above or beside the skin track. Avalanche.org notes that avalanches starting on slopes under 30 degrees are rare, but slides from steeper ground can run out onto the flatter terrain below.
• Turnaround: a time you agree on at the car, say 1 p.m., whatever the snow is doing. Tell someone at home where you're going and when you'll be back.
• Trailhead check: a transceiver check before you leave the car.
• On the way up: talk. Ask what they notice about the snow and the wind, and you'll learn how they think.
• On the way down: one at a time on anything steep enough to slide, regrouping in safe spots out of the runout.
• Back at the car: a debrief. What went well, and what would you each change?

A partner who welcomes that last conversation is worth a second tour.

Before the second tour, time a practice search

Spend half an hour together in a flat, safe spot, a beacon park if your area has one or an open field well away from any slope. One of you buries a transceiver in a pack, and the other searches, probes and starts digging. Then swap, and time both runs. The Swiss numbers give you the scale: dug out within 10 minutes, a buried person usually lived, and at 30 most didn't. If the search alone eats most of those 10 minutes, practice until it doesn't. A partner who wants to run the drill a second time, and asks to see your time as well as their own, has answered the question behind the other six: if one of us is buried, can the other dig them out inside 10 minutes?