What is freeride?

The word freeride came to us from the English free ride - free ride. Freeride refers to riding outside of prepared trails. Freeride can be skiing and snowboarding, cycling, rollerblading, even longboarding. But we will consider the winter type of freeride skiing and snowboarding.

Now there are many factors contributing to the development of this direction - the availability of equipment for any price range, the development of infrastructure in cities where you can try freeriding.

But often, when people first join a freeride tour, they do not understand what awaits them. This is normal, and we would like to contribute to educating people on a topic that we ourselves understand.

There are freeride tours that take place near or directly at the ski resorts themselves. When you go where there are no ski resorts, you will have several freeride options, but they differ only in how you get to the top.

Ski Tour

You climb the mountain on foot. Skiers in this case need special freeride skis with appropriate bindings. It will be difficult to climb up on trail bindings, so ski touring bindings have Ski (ride) and Walk (go) modes. In Walk mode, the bindings allow you to lift your heel, which is extremely important when climbing uphill.



Skins are glued on the skis to prevent them from sliding down. This is a special lining, which has a sticky layer on one side for attaching to the ski base, and on the other - pile.



Snowboarders on a ski tour have two options: go splitboarding or snowshoeing. A splitboard is a two-piece snowboard. When disassembled, it resembles skis and when climbing uphill, the same scheme with skins is used as for skiers. For the descent, the two parts are connected and down you go on a snowboard.



If there is no splitboard, snowboarders climb on snowshoes with a snowboard on their backs. You buckle into them in snowboard boots and due to the large surface area, you do not fall into the snow.

Snowmobile Drops

Everything is clear here - you are being taken in a passenger sled attached to a snowmobile to the place of skiing.

Heli-ski

From the English word heli-skiing. Heli is short for helicopter. Accordingly, on heli-skiing programs, riders are delivered to the place of skiing by helicopter. After landing at the top, the helicopter flies and waits at the bottom, where the group moves out, and again takes you to the top.

There are also rides on snowcats or cars, but here the only difference is in transport.

If you want to try freeriding in Kamchatka, but you have minimal riding experience, we will be happy to advise you and select programs for you. You can book a freeride program in Kamchatka using LINK.