This IFMGA Mountain Guide Reveals the Ski Mountaineering Secrets You Won’t Learn in an AIARE Course

Who do you call as a professional athlete when you’re looking to push the limits of skiing so far past your comfort zone that nobody has been there before? IFMGA Guide Zahan “Z” Billimoria, of course. For nearly a decade, Billimoria acted as the lead guide for Teton Gravity Research in their home range, the Tetons, and took athletes deep into the wildest mountains of British Columbia’s Coast Range, Alaska, and Bolivia. Before that, he competed at the highest level in professional ski mountaineering, facing off against the likes of Kilian Jornet, and pushed the limits of steep skiing in his home range. But even prior to all of that, he was just a young kid who had moved to the mountains and made the same mistakes as any novice backcountry skier. Like all of us, he had to start somewhere, and once it began, the learning process never ended.

After an avalanche accident in Canada nearly killed him in 2020, Billimoria felt the need to look inside and figure out what truly mattered. As a dad of two and a longtime professional mountain guide, he knew better than anyone that he had made some serious mistakes, but learning from those would be the only way to move forward. It was more than just practicing what he had preached, it was about re-thinking his whole approach to risk management, building better safety systems, re-building a broken body, and communicating all that with his fellow skiers.

Today, Billimoria–the owner of mountain sports training outfit Samsara Experience and professional backcountry and avalanche safety instructor–is sharing everything he knows about backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering with you. Forget an AIARE or AAI course, Billimoria’s Backcountry Semester is a fresh take on high-level avalanche and mountain safety education, aimed at experienced backcountry skiers looking to take the next step in their ski career. It’s a little pricier compared to a traditional avalanche safety course, but this is the kind of high-level one-on-one education you won’t find anywhere else, taught by the best in the business.

Check Out Patagonia’s Short Film About Billimoria Solving For Z

I’ve been lucky enough to take a look at what the course offers to students, and I can attest that this will be a game-changing learning experience for the modern backcountry skier. I’ve taken a few courses from Billimoria over the years, and I cannot recommend them enough.

It’s very much not your traditional avalanche safety course that focuses on terrain avoidance or is heavy on time-consuming snow science that no backcountry skier wants to use in the field–instead it teaches the hard skills that Billimoria and his crew of professional mountain guides have honed over decades of mountain travel. This team knows how to move efficiently, make hard decisions, and build their safety margins in the mountains.

That crew includes prolific Teton guides like Morgan McGlashon (the youngest woman to ski the Grand Teton), Adam Fabrikant (look this guy up if you haven’t heard his name), and more. Alone, each guide is already at the top of their game, but together, this group represents the crème de la crème of North American big-mountain skiers.

There’s everything from avalanche safety and rescue, learning how to interpret weather forecasts and real-world conditions, ski mountaineering ropework ninja skills, technical and ski gear choice, medical/first aid preparedness, and countless hours dedicated to honing your in-the-field decision making skills. The course will run online with virtual meetings and video training for 12 weeks this fall, and is designed to be combined with Billimoria’s Samsara Experience training/fitness programs. You will learn how to not die in the mountains, and get extremely fit while doing so. That’s what I call a win-win.

Finally, through the end of the week, Billimoria is offering perhaps the sickest giveaway I’ve seen in years. You can apply to win a full ski mountaineering kit from Blue Ice, a winter’s worth of nutrition products from Gnarly Nutrition, plus a spot on both the Backcountry Semester course and on Samsara’s Athlete Team (their premier coaching program), all for free. You can apply here.