Decide the big one first: hire the skis and the boots
A hire ski is chosen for your weight by somebody who does it forty times a morning, it is tuned before it goes out, and if it is wrong you take it back at lunchtime. A first pair bought at home is a guess about a skier who does not exist yet.
Boots are the harder call, because hire boots are a compromise shell in a rough size and they are why so many people remember week one as painful. Hire them anyway — and note where it hurt, on which foot, at which point in the day. That note is what a bootfitter needs before the second trip.
Buy four things, in this order
Goggles. A double lens in category 2. The double lens is the anti-fog measure that works; the category is what makes one lens usable in both cloud and sun. A spare category 1 lens, if the budget allows, covers the afternoon it snows.
Gloves, with a stated waterproof membrane rather than a water-repellent finish, and with air at the fingertips. A glove packed tight against the skin has no insulation left.
Socks: thin merino, one pair per day or two. One pair, never two — the second compresses the first and squeezes the foot, and both make feet colder.
A tube scarf, thin, merino if possible. Under ten euros, and it closes the gap between the collar and the helmet where the cold gets in.
Sort the helmet out
Hire shops rent helmets and they fit approximately. If you can, buy one: measure the head circumference in centimetres above the ears, and buy the centimetre range rather than the letter.
Take your goggles to the fitting. The gap between a helmet brow and a goggle frame is not published by anybody, and it is the fit failure you notice on the first chairlift.
Three things not to buy yet
Skis. You do not know what you like, and you will not until the end of the week.
A wax kit. Nothing you own yet needs waxing.
Anything for off-piste. A transceiver bought before a course is equipment without the thing that makes it work.
The evening routine that makes the week
Boots unbuckled and liners out to dry at room temperature. Gloves inside out. Goggles face up, never wiped on the inside. Socks changed.
That is ten minutes, it costs nothing, and it is the difference between day five being enjoyable and day five being endured.
What to bring home from it
Three notes: where the boots hurt, which light you struggled to see in, and whether you were cold anywhere. Those three answer most of the second-trip shopping list, and none of them can be looked up.
The questions asked most often
Is hiring really better than buying?
For skis and boots in a first week, yes. A hire ski is chosen for your weight, waxed before it goes out and swapped at lunchtime if it is wrong — and none of that is true of a first pair bought online in October.
What is the one thing worth spending on?
Goggles with a double lens. They are rarely hired, they are what fails first on a cheap pair, and fogging is what ends a day early.
Do I need lessons if a friend can teach me?
A friend can show you a snowplough. What lessons are for is the terrain choice and the bad habits, and both are much cheaper to get right than to unlearn.
Last reviewed 28 September 2026