Off piste or backcountry: one is beside the lifts, one is beyond them

Off piste means skiing away from the marked, groomed pistes, usually still within reach of the lifts. Backcountry is the American word for going beyond the resort altogether, often climbing on skins rather than riding a lift. In Europe most people call all of it off piste.

Between the two sits a third thing, the itinerary or ski route, and that is the one we measure.

Three kinds of ground

Piste. Marked, groomed where possible, and secured against avalanches.

Itinerary, or ski route. Marked, but not groomed, so expect moguls, crud or powder. What else it promises depends on the country and the resort. In the Arlberg a ski route is marked and protected against avalanches, but not regularly groomed or monitored. At Verbier an itinerary is a yellow line on the map and the 15 metres either side of the yellow poles, and it opens only when conditions allow.

Off piste. Everything else: not marked, not groomed, not patrolled and not secured, even a few metres from the piste.

What we measure

We measure the itinerary around every resort we cover and keep it as its own figure, never added to the piste. Of the 55 resorts we cover, St Anton has the most, 70 kilometres, then Lech with 56, Chamonix with 44, Zürs with 40 and Val d'Isère with 29. The three Arlberg villages share much of that ground, so never add them up.

Laax shows why we keep it apart. It markets 216 kilometres, which is its 176 kilometres of piste plus 40 of ski route. Both are honest; they count different things.

One caution on the word. The longest itinerary on our Chamonix map is the Vallée Blanche, which Chamonix's own tourist office calls neither marked nor secured: a high mountain route it strongly recommends doing with a guide. So our figure there includes ground that is not marked at all, and a line called an itinerary can mean very different things.

What it means for your week

If off piste is why you are going, those figures say where to look, and the itineraries are the natural first step for a confident skier. Beyond the markers, you want a guide.

The one thing people get wrong

Thinking a guide is only for the backcountry. The slope beside the piste is off piste too, and the avalanche protection covers the pistes and the routes, not the ground between them. At Verbier, one step past those 15 metres and you are off piste, whatever the tracks in the snow suggest.

So hire someone who knows that mountain on that day: a qualified mountain guide, or for off piste inside the lift area, an instructor qualified to take you there. In France a ski instructor may teach off piste in the ski area, but not on unmarked glaciers or ground that needs mountaineering; that is a mountain guide's job. Many winter sports policies exclude off piste unless you are with a qualified guide or instructor, and some want avalanche kit: a transceiver, a shovel and a probe, which you need the training to use. Check yours before you book the day.

Where to go next

If off piste is why you ski, our page on alternatives to St Anton follows that thread, and Chamonix or St Anton compares two of the three resorts with the most. Our guide to piste colours explains why a red in one country is not a red in another, and how steep is a red run measures what the grades really mean.