An avalanche safety kit is a tough thing to assemble. Choosing equipment that maximizes ease-of-use, speed, and safety requires experience with the gear, the one thing a beginner lacks! We teamed up with Alpenglow Expeditions and Black Diamond to curate the Alpenglow Expeditions Avalanche Safety Kit!

We polled the experience of Alpenglow Expedition's professional guides and capitalized on impressive new tech from our friends at Black Diamond. This avy rescue and backcountry travel kit is an excellent starting point that will grow alongside you as you develop your backcountry skiing, splitboarding, snowmobiling, and/or snowshoeing experience. You can save 20% on your avalanche gear by booking avalanche education with Alpenglow Expeditions.

Professional guides are notoriously unhelpful when you ask them about the best beacon. Guides are famous for this answer: "The best beacon is the one you know how to use." As a beginner, you don't yet know how to use a beacon! Guides also generally use top-of-the-line gear and require advanced features that a beginner does not need. We made this guide for folks who don't yet know what features matter most.

We put our heads together to make concrete beacon recommendations that Alpenglow Sports and Alpenglow Expeditions stand behind. We believe the best entry-level beacons combine ease-of-use, a large search range, and the highest search accuracy. The following beacons deliver all three benefits.

The main differences between avalanche shovels are volume and weight. Volume is actually "blade volume" which is a measurement of how much snow the shovel can throw with each scoop. This becomes important when you consider fatigue during a rescue scenario. Some folks can opt for a large-volume shovel allowing them to evacuate large blocks of snow with strong, deliberate scoops. Other folks will do better with a small-volume blade allowing for more strokes at a quicker cadence. To each their own!

Your shovel will be the largest and heaviest component of your avalanche rescue equipment. Many folks choose lightweight shovels to cut down on overall pack weight. A lighter pack will help you get deeper into the backcountry with less effort.

The probe you choose depends on where you ski most often and what your tolerance for weight is. Probes are offered in many lengths with a short probe at 280cm and longer probes up to 320cm. You need a longer probe if you ski in places with a deeper snowpack. In Tahoe, where we routinely get more than 500" of snow in a season, a longer probe can come in handy.

Longer probes are heavier so we often choose carbon fiber probes to cut down on total pack weight. When it comes to probes, the carbon equivalents are often as little as $15 more than their aluminum counterparts.

There are two types of adjustable-length poles for backcountry skiing: Z-poles and telescoping poles. Telescoping poles have two or three sections that slide, or "telescope" in and out to create your desired length. Telescoping poles are generally more durable thanks to the overlapping sections providing additional rigidity. You'll need this for thwacking cornices! We also have some data that telescoping poles are more reliable thanks to simple, flick-lock closures between sections.

Z-Poles are significantly smaller when collapsed. Compared to a three section telescoping pole, Z-Poles are, on average, 8 inches shorter when folded. If your pack does not have an external option to carry your poles, a Z-Pole is the best option for storing inside your pack. Many snowboarders prefer Z-poles for this reason. We've curated this collection of durable poles that stand up to cornice thwacking, ice clearing, riser flipping, and everything else you'd want out from your collapsible touring pole.

The first two considerations with backcounty backpacks are volume and torso length. Volume, expressed in liters, will vary from as few as 28 liters to as many as 40. The average pack size of Tahoe recreational backcountry skiers is 32-34 liters. If you are a larger person, you will need a larger pack as all the gear you carry (clothing, gloves, helmet) will be more voluminous.

If you are someone who carries a full-avalanche pit-kit, larger medical kit (which we highly recommend), or is just want more tools at your disposal for a big mission, you can most likely get by with a 35 liter pack. Another reason to get a larger pack would be if you had technical mountaineering objectives and needed to carry ropes and additional gear.

Torso length is the measurement from the top of your shoulder blades down to the top of your hip bones. Matching your torso length to the stated length of the backpack will ensure the most comfort day after day. We are happy to help you measure your torso length at Alpenglow Sports and recommend a pack that matches your anatomy and goals.

The three considerations for climbing skins are grip, glide, and glue. Grip is the skins ability to maintain traction in the skintrack, a very desirable quality! Nylon skins are the grippiest skins and have long been thought of as a great beginner option. Importantly, the more grippy a skin is, the less it glides.

Glide is a very underated characteristic of your skins. Simply put, a skin with more glide will let you travel further forward (or up!) with the same amount of effort. A small increase in glide really adds up as you'll make thousands of steps each day you go out skiing or splitboarding. Also, you'll have a lot easier time skiing the many small sections of downhill that often break up big climbs. We look to "mohair mix" skins to provide a great balance of grip and glide.

Glue is a hotly debated topic in our world! A glue failure in the backcountry can be devastating. Black Diamond is well loved for their glue formulation as the glue is very durable, reliable, and incredibly sticky! This is advantageous for your first skins as the resilience of the BD glue will "make up" for some beginner mistakes you often make when managing your skins in the backcountry.

How is it that Tahoe's two premiere backcountry brands have the same name? It's a tale as old as time. Alpenglow Sports was founded in 1973 and has been outfitting our customers for backcountry travel ever since.

In a shivering bivy on the side of Peru's 20,217 ft. Ranrapalca mountain, Adrian Ballinger decides to found his business and he and his climbing partner, Ian Boyer, come up with the name "Alpenglow Expeditions." Alpenglow Expeditions was founded in June 2004 and ran international expeditions out of Aspen, CO.

In 2008, Adrian moved to Tahoe and Alpenglow Expeditions came along for the ride. Since then, Alpenglow Sports and Alpenglow Expeditions have enjoyed an incredibly harmonious relationship where folks think we're the same as the other entity, and we both benefit from the increased exposure and positive associations.

All clients who sign up for an Alpenglow Expeditions avalanche safety program during the 2024-2025 season will receive a discount code for use at Alpenglow Sports via email. This code can be used online at alpenglowsports.com or at the Alpenglow Sports store and product will be available for pickup or delivered directly to the Alpenglow Expeditions office for convenience.