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How to Write a Gear Guide

All the parts of a gear review. Notes, previous mags, product specs and interviews come together for every review. 📸 Liam McGee

We’re putting the finishing touches on our annual Gear Guide. Despite this being the third year I’ve been a part of the process from start to finish, the ending always seems to come quick. That’s not to say it’s been a short process. It essentially takes us eight months to make the Gear Guide.

But for the purpose of being concise, I’ll skip the four months of organized chaos that lead up to Gear Test Week. The job of writing gear reviews starts the week after Gear Test, when I lug three cases of handwritten forms into the public library and take up way too much time and space digitizing them in the computer section. Then, we read every one of the hundreds of uploaded forms to get an idea of what testers thought of each ski, boot, split and binding at the test.

The summer is spent almost entirely deep in the gear world. We email brands for information on their skis, then reread review forms alongside product info to get an idea of why a ski or boot performed the way it did. For gear that’s updated or carried over from previous years, I’ll take a morning to read previous reviews we’ve written too, flipping through old mags to keep my eyes off of a screen for as long as possible.

With all that information in hand, we then reach out directly to the brands to interview a ski designer, product manager or anyone with in-depth knowledge of the construction process to dig deeper into the story and idea, as well as the physical construction of each product. Only afterwards do actual words go on paper (or, onto some imaginary but maybe real space on the Cloud I guess). Getting all the information into around 200 words is an impossible task. Some cool, niche fact will eventually be cut in the name of wordcount. But, the important stuff remains.

And it’s all on the way to the printer now.

—Liam

The 2027 Gear Guide is coming. Subscribe by September 30 to get the Gear Guide with your subscription.

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The testing is done. The reviews are in. The files have shipped. Now we’re printing the 2027 Backcountry Gear Guide.

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