Inside the 2015 Gear Guide, you’ll find this winter’s best gear—130 skis, splitboards and bindings including 30 top-performing Editors’ Choice winners. How do we know these products are the best? Because we tested everything. For two weeks last March, between Powder Mountain, Utah and Crested Butte, Colo. a fleet of almost 80 testers ski and rode more than 300 new skis, boots bindings and splitboads, reviewing the latest in new rocker profiles, tech binding innovations and hyperlight, carbon upgrades. Find the reviews, plus an exploration of Japan’s rise to backcountry-skiing prominence, an interview with Lynsey Dyer and Biff America, inside the 2015 Gear Guide.

FEATURES

THE GEAR GUIDE
2015's Best Boards, Boots & Bindings

2015 SKI TEST & GEAR GUIDE
Five days, 41 testers, 192 skis, plus nearly every backcountry boot and binding available—the scope of Gear Test Week is staggering. For seven years now, we've returned to Utah to run backcountry gear up, down and across Powder Mountain. This year, we left with 1,065 individual test forms: we ran the data, read the comments and distilled it into 25 pages of technical information and tester feedback, all starting on p. 50.

2015 BOARD TEST & GEAR GUIDE
Twenty years ago, the only nod to snowboarding in Backcountry came on the inside-back cover of the premiere issue—a single rider hucking a crevasse, snowshoes on his backpack. Two decades later, for this year's annual Board Test Week, we rode some 40 splitboards at Crested Butte, Colo. To say a lot has changed in 20 years is an understatement. Splitboarding is bigger than ever, and we bring you snowboarding's best...make that only backcountry Gear Guide.

SPECTACLE
The stoke gallery cometh

DEPOSITION

CONTRIBUTORS
EDITORS' NOTE: SCHOOLED
LETTERS
BACKSTORY: DAWN PATROL
FIGURES 11: GEAR OF THE YEARS

BLOWN IN

LAND OF THE RISING SKINTRACK
Inside Japan's rise to backcountry dream-trip prominence

GARAGE BRANDS
Beneath the overhead doors with the backcountry's small-time brands

PASSION PROJECT
With Pretty Faces, Lynsey Dyer takes her turn on the other end of the camera

THAT GUY: JEFF CAMPBELL
This biomechanical engineer will change the way we think about bindings

BLOWN OUT

BIFF AMERICA
Words of wisdom: Always have your plumber and attorney on speed dial

LAST COL
Using backcountry gear is a love-hate relationship