Advice on Buying Used Touring Gear

This ski has been mounted once, and has yet to be plugged. However, if a remount is in order, there should be plenty of real estate to move the binding mount.

‘Tis Ski Swap Season. Buying used touring gear can make financial sense. If you’re looking for a first set-up or building out the quiver, our Gear Editor Gavin Hess and Matt Zia (Executive Director of the Montana Mountaineering Association, pack builder, and guide) help us comb through the used gear to find the gems and avoid the junk.

Enter the Ski Swap

Gavin Hess: Imagine you’re walking into a ski swap, or perhaps into a second-hand sporting goods store, and you’re looking to buy backcountry skis, either for your first pair of skis or you’re just maybe shopping for a good deal on a new pair of skis.

Heading out, having an adventure, skiing in the deep mountains, doesn’t take the fastest and greatest (or even “best of”) gear. That said, buy used gear wisely.

Matt Zia: A little bit of context here. We ran a backcountry ski and climbing gear swap through Montana Mountaineering. I almost always get this question: “I want a new pair of skis, and this is my first backcountry pair of skis. Is this a good pair?”

The other thing that I would add to this conversation is what gear is worth buying new? Let’s say you have $1,000. What percentage of that should go to buying, whereas all the rest could go towards searching for used gear? I’ll, you know, figure out something that works. Or, this is the money I will spend to re-up or refurbish the used gear I purchase. Considering these questions makes your money go further.

Gavin: In Jackson, the ski swap world has become an interesting sort of market both for buyers and sellers. As the community becomes, I don’t know if split is the right word to describe it, but I view it as more and more people are on two different paths here. One is industry people, who work at a ski shop or like a job that gets them deals. Or they’re financially stable enough to buy new things and wouldn’t even really consider going the used route at a ski swap.

But I think there is still a lot of value, and there is certainly still a community of people shopping at ski swaps who get deals but are looking for something specific or want to try something different. Or they just moved to town, and they’re overwhelmed by all the skiing options in Jackson: they might need resort skis and backcountry skis, and more specifically, powder skis and mountaineering skis.

Matt: N + 1 is the number. This may be a bit far down a rabbit hole, but the demographics of a place are important, too.

Gavin: I was thinking Bozeman is probably a different demographic than here because you’ve got the college. It would seem like there’s a fresh crop of first-year students every year from who knows where, and they’re probably in the market as much as anyone else.

Matt: Exactly. Bozeman has the pro-deal crowd and increasingly has the wealth you mentioned in Jackson. We also have 1000s of college students.