With less than one week to go until I fly out to Italy all the usual doubts and fears have began to surface around such a venture. I hope to travel safely, to come back in one piece – having avoided any major injuries – I hope everyone will be OK at home while I’m away. I also hope for good snow and good weather conditions in the mountains for my week there, for good trails and pistes and that I perform well while skiing down them. I hope that the accommodation I chose will be close enough to the slopes and be clean and quiet. Most of all though I hope my training has left me fit enough to ski for around eight hours a day, for six days, back to back.

All of these aspects of the trip are now beyond my control and some are just plain in the laps of the Gods. The only thing left to do is to check and then recheck all my kit and make sure that I have everything that I need for a successful and safe week skiing in the mountains.

Each time I prepare my kit I’m amazed by how much extra kit I seem to feel I need. At the bottom of this post is the inventory for this particular trip, it begs the question, How much kit does one man really need? Am I trying to control the uncontrollable aspects mentioned above by having kit for every eventuality, – quite possibly! That would appear to be the only sane reason why I have packed much of the below. By eliminating possible problems am I trying to sanitise the adventure? Does that not defeat the idea of the adventure? Are we all guilty of taking too much kit into the great

outdoors these days? Is the whole idea in the first place not to try and get back to nature and avoid all the trappings of modern day life? I don’t know the answers to such profound questions, but I do know that at a basic level checking kit helps me personally to focus on what I am about to embark upon, so the longer the list the more I tend to focus, it also has the duel advantage of signalling the initiation of the first stage in any planned venture. It begins to become real!

With getting real in mind I recently posted a famous quote from Roald Amundsen on this blog that seems to go some way to justifying my own obsession with this kit checking malarky (at least to my mind) –

Victory awaits him who has everything in order …..  luck, people call it.
Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck’

So, if it was good enough for such a luminary figure as Amundsen it sure as hell will do for me! Here’s wishing for lots of luck on this particular trip. My kit list to help have everything in order and to try to encourage such luck is presented below:

• Ski Boots
• Ski Outer Jackets x 2
• Ski Outer Bottoms x 2
• Ski Helmet
• Ski Goggles x 2
• Sports Sunglasses
• Camel Backpack (with hydration kit)
• Knee Stabilisers x 2
• iPhone – (Ski Data App) + GPS + Piste Map Apps
• PowerMonkey
• SolarMonkey – for backup power
• Petzl Headtorch
• POV HeadCam
• Panasonic Lumix Digital Camera with HD Video facility
• HD MiniCam
• Ski Ties x 2
• Beanies x 3
• Ski Socks x 6
• Thermal all bodywear x 3
• Baselayers x 4
• Softshell Jacket
• Micro Fleeces x 3
• Merrell Multi-Activity Boots
• Travel First Aid Kit
• Prescription Painkillers
• Mountain Sports Suncream
• Assorted T-shirts & Jeans etc
• Money
• & finally Passport