What is ski touring? One sport, far too many names

In Swedish this is easy. The thing we do is called turskidåkning, tour skiing, and every Swede knows what you mean. Long skis with most often steel edges, boots you can walk in, no lifts, no tracks. One word. Done.

In English it has taken us six winters and we are still not sure. This site has called it ski touring, Nordic ski touring, backcountry ski touring and, in a 2023 article we stand by, cross-country skiing over untouched snow. So, the words, one at a time.

Ski touring

The one we use most, and the one that confuses most people. Say it in Chamonix, in Scotland or in a British ski shop and they picture alpine touring. Downhill skis, skins on the bases, a long slog up and then the point of it all, skiing back down. The up is the price. The down is the reward.

For us it is the other way round. The flat and the gentle uphill are the whole day. The only proper descent on our Level 1 week is about a hundred metres of steeper ground coming off the Fulufjället plateau, which we snowplough down slowly, and which you are welcome to walk. Nobody has ever called that the reward. (The reward is dinner., always!)

Backcountry skiing

The American one. It comes with off-piste, powder, avalanche transceivers and, quite often, a film crew. Our skiing is backcountry in the literal sense, as in nobody has been there, there are no tracks and the nearest road is a day away, and not in the sense of a helicopter. We don't ski in avalanche terrain at all. (Our winter page says backcountry ski touring. We are leaving it. It is at least half right.)

Cross-country skiing

This is what most people picture when you say skiing in Sweden. Skinny skis, lycra, a groomed track, somebody from Norway winning. Same family as ours, same free heel, same kick and glide. But a track ski is built to be fast on a surface someone has prepared with a machine. Ours are built for a surface nobody has prepared at all. Wider, heavier, steel edges, a short skin for the climbs. The track ski is the greyhound. Ours is the farm dog.

Nordic skiing, Nordic ski touring, XCD

Strictly, Nordic skiing is the umbrella for everything with a free heel, so we run Nordic skiing holidays and so does the ski jumping hill in Falun. In everyday English it means cross-country in a slightly better coat, and it is the one word on this list that is never actually wrong. Add touring to it and you have what the people who do this actually call it. Nordic ski touring, backcountry Nordic, XCD. Cross-country skis that have grown up and gone off-track. Almost nobody searches for any of those, which is why this page is called what it is called.

Fjellski

The Norwegian word, and the best one. It means mountain skis. Norwegians use it for the kit rather than the activity. Ours are the Åsnes Combat NATO, a name that sounds like a video game and is in fact the ski Åsnes developed for the Norwegian armed forces. Wide, steel-edged, and built to be dragged across a fjell by someone who did not choose to be there. They work very well for people who did.

Things we don't do

Telemark is the free-heel turn where you drop one knee and look magnificent. We do not telemark. We snowplough. Alpine touring and ski mountaineering are summits and descents on downhill gear. Lovely, and not this.

So what is it, then?

Nordic ski touring is walking on snow with long skis. Kick and glide on the flat, which is most of the day. Short skins for the climbs. A slow snowplough, or your own two feet, for the way down. Everything you need for the night in a pulk behind you, about 15 kilos and feeling more like resistance than load, because it slides. No lifts, no tracks, no lycra, no avalanche terrain.

Our German guests have the most accurate word for it. Skiwandern, ski hiking. Our own tour page says the same thing with slightly less confidence. Like hiking, but on skis. If you can hike for a few hours, you can do it. On the Level 1 week the first days are short tours from the cabin, so everybody learns the skis before anybody pulls a sled, and all the gear is ours. If you would rather find out what it is by doing it, have a look at the dates.