Most snowboarders spend their entire riding lives inside resort boundaries. And there's nothing wrong with that — Australian resorts have good terrain, well-groomed runs, and on a powder morning the side-country around Mt Buller or Falls Creek is genuinely excellent. But there's a separate world operating beyond every ski resort boundary in Australia, and the riders in it are doing something fundamentally different.
This is not a piece that tries to convince you to go splitboarding. It's an honest explanation of what backcountry snowboarding actually is, how it differs from resort riding in every meaningful way, and what you need to know if you're curious about what's on the other side of that boundary rope.
The fundamental difference: how you access the terrain
Everything else that separates resort riding from backcountry flows from one basic fact: in the backcountry, there are no lifts. You get up under your own power, and you earn every descent.
At a resort, a chairlift carries you to the top. You ride down. You repeat. The terrain is managed — ski patrol has assessed and controlled avalanche risk, runs are groomed or at least regularly assessed, and there are other people around. The infrastructure exists to keep you moving uphill so you can ride downhill.
In the backcountry, the infrastructure is you and your partners. You skin uphill — attaching climbing skins to the base of your splitboard and walking, one ski-width step at a time, up the slope to the terrain you want to ride. The ascent takes time. A run at Thredbo that takes three minutes to ski down might take two hours to skin up. And that two hours of uphill is not incidental — it's part of the experience. The quiet, the exposure to the mountain on its own terms, the physical effort, the sense of having genuinely earned what comes next.
This distinction shapes everything: the gear you need, the skills required, the risks involved, and the community that forms around it.
Terrain and access in Australia
Australia has legitimate backcountry terrain. This surprises people who assume Australian snowboarding is confined to resort runs — but the ranges above and around our resorts contain terrain that genuinely rewards the effort to reach it.
The Bogong High Plains in Victoria — the alpine zone accessible from Falls Creek and surrounding Mt Hotham — offer touring terrain across open alpine bowls, snow gum forest and ridgelines that most resort riders never see. Mt Feathertop, Mt Bogong and the surrounding high country are a world away from the resort experience, accessible to anyone with the right gear and training.
The Main Range in Kosciuszko National Park in NSW — particularly the terrain around Dead Horse Gap, Club Lake, Blue Lake and the Ramshead Range — is the most accessible and best-developed backcountry zone in Australia. With Thredbo's chairlift providing access to the boundary and skins taking you from there, experienced riders can access chutes, bowls and ridge traverses that rival small-scale terrain anywhere in the southern hemisphere. The Guthega area is another popular starting point, with access on foot from the car park.
Victorian riders more commonly access the high country around Mt Stirling — which has no resort infrastructure and is purely a backcountry zone — or the terrain beyond Falls Creek's boundaries. Mt Stirling was the location of the original Spring Split, a community ride that Twelve Board Store helped organise with Let's Split in 2017, now running annually.
Australian backcountry is different from the big mountain terrain in Japan, Canada or Europe. The elevation is lower, the snowpack shallower and more variable, and the runs shorter. But that honest assessment is not a reason to discount it — it's a reason to understand it on its own terms. An experienced Australian backcountry rider can access lines that are inaccessible from any chairlift, ride in genuinely remote terrain, and have days on snow that have nothing to do with lift queues or resort crowds.
The gear is completely different
Resort snowboarding gear and backcountry gear overlap somewhat — you wear the same outerwear, carry the same goggles — but the core equipment that makes backcountry travel possible has no equivalent in resort riding.
The splitboard is the foundation. A splitboard is a snowboard that splits lengthwise into two touring skis for the ascent, then clips back together as a full snowboard for the descent. The split allows you to skin uphill using touring-specific hardware and then convert back to a rideable snowboard in minutes at the top. Without a splitboard, you're either carrying a full snowboard on your back for the entire ascent (which some people do, but it's slow and exhausting), or you're not going.
Splitboard bindings are a distinct product category from resort bindings. They need to convert between touring mode (where the heel lifts freely for walking) and riding mode (where the binding locks into the board for descending). The two dominant systems globally are Spark R&D — whose puck system is the most widely used splitboard binding interface — and Karakoram, which uses a direct clip-in mechanism and is favoured by experienced tourers who want the fastest possible transitions. We stock both at our Richmond store and can walk you through the differences.
Climbing skins attach to the base of the board in tour mode. They use directional mohair or nylon fibres that grip the snow going uphill and release cleanly going downhill, with a glue system on the underside that holds the skin to the base without damaging it. Skin width needs to match the board's running surface, and skin glue needs to handle the temperature range you'll encounter — which in Australian conditions can mean frost in the morning and slush by afternoon.
Avalanche safety equipment — a beacon, probe and shovel — is non-negotiable. Not optional. Every person in a backcountry group carries all three. We go into this in detail in our dedicated backcountry safety guide.
A backcountry pack carries all of this gear on the uphill. A good touring pack sits the load close to your back for better balance while skinning, fits a shovel blade and probe externally or internally, and ideally has a hip belt you can release quickly on a descent.
The skills required are genuinely different
Resort riding requires snowboard skills. Backcountry riding requires snowboard skills plus a substantial set of additional competencies that have nothing to do with how well you can turn.
Skinning technique is learnable but not trivial. Walking uphill on a splitboard in cramped skins, managing your weight distribution on steep slopes, switchbacking on narrow ridgelines — it takes a few days of practice to become efficient. If you're inefficient on the skin track, you exhaust yourself before the descent.
Terrain assessment and avalanche awareness is the most critical skill gap between resort riders and backcountry riders. At a resort, avalanche risk management is handled by ski patrol — they assess the snowpack, close terrain that's dangerous, and sometimes blast to trigger controlled slides before you ride. In the backcountry, you are your own ski patrol. You need to understand snowpack, assess slope angle and aspect, read the daily conditions reports from the Mountain Safety Collective (MSC at mountainsafetycollective.org) and make decisions about what terrain to enter based on current conditions.
MSC is Australia's not-for-profit backcountry safety organisation, providing daily backcountry conditions reports throughout the season for Victorian and NSW terrain. Their forecasters work from field observations, snowpack analysis and weather data to publish reports that anyone planning a backcountry day should read before leaving the car park. MSC membership is one of the most valuable things a backcountry rider can have in Australia — reports are free to access, but membership funds the forecasting operation that makes them possible.
AST 1 (Avalanche Safety Training Level 1) is the minimum standard most experienced backcountry riders in Australia consider acceptable before going independently into avalanche terrain. The course teaches companion rescue using beacon, probe and shovel; snowpack assessment; terrain decision-making; and group management. It does not make you an expert, but it gives you a framework for making better decisions and the skills to search for a buried person effectively.
In Australia, AST 1 courses are run by a number of accredited providers. MSC's Alpine Guiding Partners include Alpine Access Australia, Blizzard Academy (led by Kyle Boys, one of Australia's most experienced guides, offering Australia's only Canadian-accredited AST 2 course), K7 Mountain Guides, The Climbing Company and Thredbo Backcountry Tours. Check MSC's guides page at mountainsafetycollective.org/guides for current providers and offerings.
Navigation matters in the Australian backcountry in ways it doesn't at a resort. White-out conditions on the Main Range or Bogong High Plains can disorient even experienced riders. Map and compass skills, or at minimum a downloaded offline topo map and GPS device, are important for anything beyond the most straightforward day tours.
The risk profile is genuinely different
Backcountry snowboarding carries real risk that resort riding does not. This is not said to discourage anyone — it's said because pretending otherwise is the thing that gets people hurt.
Avalanches are the primary terrain hazard. Australian snowpack is variable and can produce avalanche conditions, particularly after significant snowfall events followed by wind loading, or during warming cycles when surface layers become unstable. The 2014 season on the Bogong High Plains — which led to two fatalities and fourteen rescues in a single season — is why MSC was founded. The organisation exists because the community recognised that the growing number of backcountry riders needed structured access to conditions information and safety education.
The avalanche training centres at Mt Hotham (near the Machinery Spur track from the Mt Loch carpark) and Thredbo (at the top of the Kosciuszko chairlift near Basin T-Bar) are permanent installations where you can practice beacon search exercises before the season. Use them. A 15-minute burial survival window is not abstract — it's the practical time constraint that everything in companion rescue is designed around. The faster you can find and extract someone, the more likely they survive. Practice makes that faster.
Remote terrain, weather exposure, and the physical demands of a long skin day are additional factors that add up. Carry more kit than you think you need. Tell someone where you're going and when you expect to be back. Carry a personal locator beacon (PLB) for anything beyond day tours close to the resort boundary.
The community that's built around it
One of the things that distinguishes backcountry snowboarding in Australia is the community that has formed around it — a community that takes safety seriously but also genuinely loves what they do and wants to share it.
Let's Split is a grassroots splitboard community initiative that started in 2017. Founded by Amine Yasmine, working with Twelve Board Store on the first Spring Split at Mt Stirling, Let's Split runs community tours across NSW and Victorian backcountry terrain. Their trips are not guided tours — they're invitations for riders of similar experience to tour together, with the explicit goal of passing skills from experienced riders to those new to the backcountry. Follow them to find tour days you can join.
Splitfest DownUnder at splitfest.com.au has been running since 2012 — the longest-running backcountry festival in the South Pacific. Held in the NSW Main Range near Jindabyne, it's the gathering point for the Australian backcountry community: gear demos, tours, evening sessions, the raffle, and the chance to meet the people who've been doing this the longest. If you're new to backcountry and want to understand what the community looks like before committing to gear, going to Splitfest is one of the best decisions you can make.
The Victorian Backcountry Festival is the equivalent for the Victorian high country, held annually with 400+ registrations covering tours, workshops, speaker presentations and skills sessions. Previous locations have included Mt Hotham.
Tough Tits Co runs community meetups and events for women and gender-diverse skiers and boarders in the backcountry across Australia and New Zealand — an important part of broadening who feels welcome in a space that has historically skewed heavily male.
POW Australia (Protect Our Winters) is the climate advocacy organisation closely connected to backcountry culture. The backcountry community cares deeply about the snow that makes its world possible, and POW Australia is where that concern becomes organised action.
The relationship between TBS and the backcountry community
Twelve Board Store is Australia's largest splitboard retailer and an official Jones EPICenter — the largest Jones dealer in the southern hemisphere. Jones is the most credible splitboard brand in the world, and the connection between Jones's mission (Jeremy Jones founded Protect Our Winters, the global climate advocacy group) and the backcountry community in Australia is direct and meaningful.
We stock the full splitboard kit: Jones splitboards, Spark R&D bindings, Karakoram bindings, G3 and Black Diamond skins, BCA and Mammut safety gear. We can set up a complete backcountry kit, discuss which binding system suits your intended terrain, check skin compatibility with your board, and make sure you have everything you need before you go out. That's the gear side.
The education and community side belongs to the organisations listed above. We're not guides. We link to MSC, Let's Split, Splitfest and the training providers not because it's good marketing but because that ecosystem is what makes backcountry snowboarding in Australia work safely, and the people who run those organisations have been doing it longer and with more expertise than anyone in retail.
Where to go from here
If you're curious about backcountry snowboarding and want to understand what it involves before spending money on gear, the path is:
Read MSC's conditions reports through a season. Go to Splitfest DownUnder or the Victorian Backcountry Festival. Do a guided day tour with one of MSC's Alpine Guiding Partners. Complete AST 1. Then come and talk to us about gear.
The order matters. The community and the training come before the equipment, not after it.
Relevant reading: What Do You Need to Go Splitboarding? — Complete Australian Kit Guide · How Backcountry Safety Gear Works — Beacon, Probe, Shovel Explained · Why Twelve Board Store Is Australia's Go-To Splitboard Store
Shop: Splitboards · Splitboard Bindings · Splitboard Skins · Backcountry Safety Gear · Splitboard Essentials
Guides: Splitboarding Buying Guide · Backcountry Safety Guide
