The 2026 Gear Guide
Seasonal change is finally upon us for real, but our team has been buried in winter since we made the first selections for our 2026 Gear Guide back in early May. In the months since, editors have sifted through 1,240 forms while our designers have photographed over 150 pieces of gear. Hours upon hours went into interviewing product engineers and reading catalogues, before we synthesized it all into digestible reviews on everything from skis and splitboards to boots, bindings and apparel.
Then, we zoomed out and looked at the industry. What trends stood out? There’s quite a few actually. So, we added a section for gear stories and reported on what’s changing.
Those months of research, writing and photographing are simply the diligence and dedication required when putting something together with your own hands, like planning a tour or waxing your skis. It takes real human-powered effort.
Needless to say, all those hours sifting through gear tech has left us dreaming of skiing for far too long. Thankfully winter is coming, and the 2026 Gear Guide is here to help you prepare you for the skintrack.
Get the 2026 Gear Guide
With the rate that ski gear is advancing, it can be hard to keep track of the latest space-age fiber blends and non-traditional rocker profiles. That’s where this Gear Guide comes in. Our editors spent their summer studying the newest features and technologies found in skis, boots and bindings. Then, they spent just as much time poring over our gear testers’ handwritten forms. These sprawling scribbles were made on chairlifts, in ski lodges and during the bus ride between the mountain and the condos. Between beer and coffee stains, testers’ notes tell us how these products work. Does the milled wood core flex as intended? Are the carbon stringers too stiff or just stiff enough? Is the walk mode actually 75 degrees, or does the lower shell cutout get in the way? In our reviews, we break down the latest tech and combine it with unbiased tester feedback so you can find your perfect match.
SKIS
BOOTS
BINDINGS
TELE GEAR
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Note: Skis are organized descending waist width. Boots and bindings are organized by descending weight. Weights are listed per pair.
There’s a lot to look for in a splitboard deck—pop and playfulness, weight, carvability, switch-riding prowess. Then, there’s the question of what to pair it with. Soft- or hardboot? Our split testers range the gamut of riders from splitboard mountaineers to pleasure-seeking pow lappers, hardboot fanatics to softboot adherents and everything in between. After Gear Test Week, almost every splitboard goes on to be tested for the rest of the winter, along with the boots and bindings that need further assessment. From California’s Sierra Nevada to the French Alps, testers put split gear through the skintrack wringer, compiling what they observe and experience into forms. Those findings are the core of our splitboard reviews. But in case you want to know what construction drives that performance, we go deep on that, too.
SPLITBOARDS
SPLITBOARD BOOTS
SPLITBOARD BINDINGS
Get the 2026 Gear Guide
Note: Splitboards, boots and bindings are organized by descending weight. Boot and binding weights are listed per pair.
Some say skintrack layering is harder than calculus. Hardshell or soft? Natural down or synthetic? A warm midlayer or a breathable one? Bibs or pants? Add in rapidly changing laws on forever chemicals, and the mental math for the best warmth to weight to waterproofing ratio is tough to calculate. Our testers took this year’s apparel and evaluated it on everything from sunny volcanoes to continental pow to snow and rainstorms. When their forms came in, we pored over all the data, picked through testers’ pros and cons and dove into technical summaries from brand catalogs. In the following reviews, from full kits to baselayers, we’ve broken down the mental math into digestible, honest feedback—so you can focus on the tour, not the equation.
EDITORS’ CHOICE KITS
JACKETS & PANTS
PUFFIES
MIDLAYERS
BASELAYERS
Get the 2026 Gear Guide
Note: Apparel is organized alphabetically.
