Outside 2022 Winter Buyer’s Guide

Making our annual Winter Buyer’s Guide is roughly an eight-month process. We start testing gear in late January and go to press in September, just as the temps begin to drop and workplace banter turns to which ski passes everyone has sprung for. Flipping through page layouts and seeing all the season’s most exciting new products in one place always gets me looking ahead to what I’m most excited about for the coming winter. This year, it’s heading out the door for mid-week dawn patrols at Ski Santa Fe, our local hill. At 5:45 A.M. on a cold morning, everything gets reduced to habit. I slide into the base layers I laid out the night before, followed by the shell pants and jacket perpetually hanging on a hook by the door.…

Salomon QST Blank $900 On paper, the Blank seems like a powder specialty ski, and it is. It’s 112 millimeters across at its narrowest point and sports ample tip and tail rocker, plus a lightweight build complete with high-tech materials instead of metal. But it won our Gear of the Year award because it’s also wildly versatile. Sure, it porpoises in and out of powder and spring slush energetically, and it’s fat enough to float in bottomless snow. But it also has enough sidecut (17-meter turn radius) and oomph, especially in the belly of the turn, to make groomed skiing truly fun. That power comes courtesy of Salomon’s unique double sidewall, which places a second piece of ABS material horizontally underfoot, above and perpendicular to the sidewalls, to push even more…

Rossignol Alltrack 130 GW $700 With a 102-millimeter last and 50 degrees of cuff range in walk mode, the Alltrack 130 GW accommodates wide-footed shralpers and gives average feet some wiggle room. The 130-flex shell is stiff enough for speedsters yet progressive enough to absorb jump landings and cruddy snow. 4 lbs, 24.5–31.5 Atomic Hawx Ultra 130 S GW $850 Designers updated this 130-flex boot by beefing up the polyurethane shell, adding an extra band of plastic around the ankle to reinforce the cuff and improve lateral stiffness and all-around power. Yet the additional plastic plumped this boot’s weight by only 3.8 ounces, so testers never felt taxed during boot-packs to far-flung powder stashes. The 98-millimeter last and low overall volume provide a race-tight fit for narrow feet. 4 lbs, 24.5–30.5 Dalbello Panterra 120…

Giro Contour RS $270 The Contour RS has many great features, but the lens is what earns it Gear of the Year status. For starters, it’s toric (slightly convex), to mimic the shape of the human cornea and thus reduce distortion. It also boasts semi-spherical curvature, which enhances peripheral vision. That’s all in addition to the light-filtering technology that boosts contrast without oversaturation, meaning it’s easier to discern features in poor light. This is especially vital when you’re moving from a sunny face to a shady gully at 25 miles per hour. Combined with a compact frame, all those features offer a sharp but massive field of view to people with smaller than average faces. Despite its slim shape, the Contour RS fits over most prescription glasses. (For those with bigger…

A. Salomon S/Lab Shift MNC 13 $600 Four years ago, the Shift became the first tech binding to provide both resort performance and reliable backcountry utility. We still love it. Its baseline two-degree ramp angle in tour mode means you’re never walking on a flat platform, so testers found it more at home on short missions. 1.9 lbs B. Fritschi Xenic 10 $430 Fritschi’s lightest model stands up to all-day touring and is the least expensive binding we tested. Plastic composite toe bumpers make lining up the boot’s tech pins easy and allow the toe to release quickly from tour mode. To keep weight down, the Xenic has one easily actuated 11-degree heel riser in tour mode. Brakes (85, 95, and 105 millimeters) are sold separately for $65. 9.9 oz C. Plum Summit 12…

A. Dynafit Radical Pro $800 Dynafit’s designers took the brand’s stiff, narrow Hoji Free Tour, lightened it, and used foot-mapping technology to hone the shell’s shape for a broader fit range. Also new: a 120-flex Grilamid shell (for both men and women) that is more reliable in a wider array of temperatures. The grippy Pomoca sole is ideal for ridgeline scrambles. 6.1 lbs, ​​25–31.5 B. La Sportiva Vanguard $899 The 130-flex Vanguard (115 for women) is La Sportiva’s first step in the direction of four-buckle boots. It sports a V-shaped cuff to reduce rotational twisting without limiting walk-mode range (63 degrees of it), and the integrated power strap and top buckle boost control in variable conditions. The shell, made from castor-seed based Pebax Rnew, performed consistently in a wide temperature range. 6.0 lbs,…