Succeeding on a big day of skiing summits, passes, and descents in new country doesn’t come from random luck – you have to plan. A tour plan is the process of gathering essential information about a route so you know what to expect and are prepared for changing conditions. On my own tours, when I have a solid tour plan, my success rate goes up 25-percent.

Maps
Adventures start with an idea. Take that idea to the best maps available. In the US, the best maps for tour planning are produced by the US Geological Survey at a scale of 1:24,000 (7.5-minute) for the contiguous states or 1:63,360 (15-minute) for Alaska. These maps have the smallest contour intervals – the difference in elevation between lines of equal elevation. Small-scale regional maps, such as USGS 1:250,000-scale or Trails Illustrated, are important for tour planning for a big picture of the region and for finding bail-out routes.

USGS maps for tour planning come in two main forms: the traditional paper USGS sheet maps or National Geographic Topo CDs for $100 per state. Topo has become the workhorse for tour planning because it’s cheaper than USGS sheets, you can print any desired region without the edge-of-map hassle, and you can run trip calculations within Topo. USGS quads have benefits also. They cover a larger area than Topo printouts and their resolution is higher – important for technical, micro/macro route-finding.

Sketch the Route
The core of tour planning is drawing your proposed route on the map. By studying the map enough to draw a line, you’ll see avalanche hazards and potential hidden ski runs. You’ll actually sketch three different routes for tour planning: your first choice route if everything goes as planned; the alternate route in case you reach an impasse, such as an avalanche slope; lastly, a bail-out route if you need get out fast.

Break your sketched route down into sections – also known as legs – with similar characteristics, such as a valley, or a single direction on a glacier. Try to link each of these legs to a physiographic handrail such as a pass or moraine that is easy to find in poor visibility. Give the end of each leg a quick and simple name such as T1, T2, etc. for quick identification.

Time and Navigation Planning
With a time plan you can prepare for time-sensitive hazards, such as the sun hitting a slope, or darkness. Next to each leg on your map, write the elevation change and distance. Calculate a time duration of each leg by using a rate of two miles per hour and 1500 feet of elevation gain per hour. While descending, divide that time by two. Determine your start time by working backward from the limiting factor, such as a west-facing slope that is cooking in the sun by three in the afternoon. Remember the golden rule of ski mountaineering: you can never start too early.

On legs that are difficult to follow in poor visibility – those without handrails, such as a flat glacier – you’ll need a whiteout navigation plan. Enter the waypoints for each leg’s end into your GPS as Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates by downloading the data from Topo (fast) or hand measuring (slow) the coordinates off your map using a UTM Grid Reader. Also, write down the compass bearings next to each leg in case your GPS keels over on the tour. Insert comments along the route such as, “handrail along base of cliff,” or “half-hour break on summit.”

Creating a tour plan is often just an exercise to lodge the route information in your brain. If the weather does get bad, then you have notes to make a strong decision about continuing, using an alternate route, or bailing out altogether. At first, tour plans seem daunting, but soon, you’ll have tours dialed in 30 minutes, even after eight domestic macrobrews on a Friday night. It’s a question of a few minutes at home, or hours of frustration in the mountains.

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