Scoping the slope - how Freeriders see the test from afar

Part of the thrill, and danger, of Freeride is that it takes place on slopes inaccessible to the general public. Strenuous hiking, sometimes using ropes and other equipment, is often required to make it to the peak.

In an effort to leave these mountain environments as wild as possible, athletes are only permitted to make descents on race day with no practice runs permitted. That means they need to find alternative methods of picking out a route down.

From the early days of Freeride, a pair of binoculars has been essential to ‘scope’ the slope. Ahead of the competition, athletes view the mountain from various angles to see how best to go down. However, advances in technology - including drone cameras and mobile phones to take photos of the slope - have helped greatly over the years.

Read on to find out how the top Freeriders work out the best route for any given test.

Phones, drones and binoculars

Victor de Le Rue has been around longer than most on the Freeride World Tour (FWT). The 36-year-old snowboarder clearly knows what he is doing, clinching his fourth FWT series title in 2025.

“I like to scope a lot to be able to be confident when I’m on top of the mountain, to be 100% sure of everything I’m going to do and not have doubts,” he reveals. “Sometimes I even go one day earlier to scope an extra day, because I hate the situation where you arrive and it’s bad weather on the scoping day and you can’t do it properly. And then on competition day, you’re like, ‘Nooooo, you didn’t scope well enough.’ This is the worst for me.

“The goal is to scope from every angle possible to be able to kind of shape the mountain in 3D in your mind. Then you pick up your line and all your features from all angles possible. And then you visualize your run, as if it’s you riding with a drone filming you, from a bunch of different perspectives. You also try to anticipate the feelings, the emotions you’re going to have. And then, once you’re on top, you kind of press the play button.

“Competitions are stressful and it’s hard to take that stress away. The goal is to be able to ride to your full potential, but it's not easy; it's just one run that you've never done before and you just look at it through binoculars and take pictures of the venue with our own cameras. The FWT sends a pack of drone shots, and you can also watch replays from the years before if they’ve been competing on that face so that helps a lot.

“But still, you don't exactly know the size of the jump, how steep it is, how the snow is going to react, if there are rocks hidden or not. There are so many unknowns, but once you pick up the line you decide that's the one and you go full out for it.”

For world and Olympic Moguls champion Justine Dufour-Lapointe, scoping the slope was “the hardest part” of her transition to Freeride. “There’s no guide to scoping a line and I had no clue as to what’s enough, what not enough, or what you should and shouldn’t do,” she recalls. “So I had to really understand what worked for me. At first, I was just overwhelmed by all the information on how to do it.

“I’d say now that scoping the line is something personal to everyone. But my strategy is to do as much as possible to be ready for any situation, and really visualize it in your mind before.

While admitting she hated watching footage of herself and others in Moguls - “I was not able to see the purpose.” - the Canadian has taken a different approach in Freeride. “I was like, ‘I need to watch a ton of video just to make sure I’ll be ready.’

“So I watch and watch and watch; I could watch a race like maybe 20 times, watch the men, watch the women. Learn about each cliff, the name, how they approach it by the side, they landed on which area, like it was just so much to learn.

“My approach has been to watch as much as possible, video, photo, drone footage, and then create and capture all the stuff that you liked from previous other athletes and create your own line and kind of decide to make it your own in a certain way. Honestly, during ski season, I'm behind my computer most of the time!”

“You have to trust yourself, trust your instinct… some competitions, I’ve been like, ‘Oh my God, it's exactly how I planned it.’ And that’s an amazing feeling, when I know I’ve done all my homework. And it’s really not fun when you're feeling like you're lost and like, ‘Damn it, I really have no clue where I am right now.’”

Reigning FWT Ski Men champion Marcus Goguen is another athlete grateful for the addition of technology. “Definitely the toughest part about our sport is not being able to set foot on the face before we actually go full send off of it,” he says. “Everybody has a different system, but it's kind of all slightly similar for us.

“We get there the first day of competition and look with binoculars. Before that, we’ll get a photo of the venue and we’re all kind of already picturing all the different options in our head. And so by the time we get on snow at the bottom of the venue, we're able to have an idea of where we might possibly go.

“I lock in an option that suits my skiing ability, and from there I ask if that’s the line I want to do. I always try to pick a line for myself because I know I'll ski it the best. Then from there, that's when I'm going to really lock it down and check out all the different landmarks - am I going to be taking a left turn around this tree? Am I going to be releasing my skis to get speed for this next cliff right next to this rock? So just making sure to keep all these landmarks into account.

“From there, I really dive into the drone photos that get provided to us. With them, we’re able to picture ourselves on top of the venue so having a top-down view. Whereas just from the bottom, it’s really hard to picture what the top of these features might look like because we might not always be able to see them. With the drone photos, we’re able to almost picture ourselves skiing it.

“A new addition last year was FPV (First Person View) drones which go super close to the ground, and they mark the face up and down all the way throughout. So we can pick a section and look at the FPV drone shot and almost feel like you’re on snow inspecting it. And with that information, I’m able to get a mental picture and visualize what our lines are.”

“No one else to blame besides yourself”

American skier Toby Rafford made his FWT debut in 2025. He finished third overall, and watching footage of previous competitions served him well despite his attitude being more akin to that of an old-school Freerider taking the fastest path down, known as the Fall Line.

“I went back and watched videos of the previous years, which is a pretty good starting point to see what looks good, what you liked and whose run you really liked,” he recalls. “And then I kind of just show up and and do whatever speaks to me. I hate to think about what other people are doing and what the judges want to see.

“I really like to look at it and pick out a couple of things that I really like and then try to piece those together. And if it doesn't work, maybe just not use one. But I always really want to just go Fall Line, you know, not too much traversing.

“Because I feel like in the competition, you drop in, hit something and then if you picked out something like way over there, you’ve then got to traverse all the way over. And then my brain is like, ‘I'd rather just go straight.’ You're just in the moment so I think faster and more Fall Line is what I look for. And then stuff that's going to be fun and scary.

“I always want to scare myself, at least on something - or else it'd just be too chill - and then piece it all together. And then like 10 minutes before your run, just completely change your line because you don't think it's working! And then, boom, you freeball it and then somehow it works out. That happens a lot.

“But definitely a good scope helps if you. If you scope your line not very well, you get to the top and you have no idea what you're doing. That's the worst case scenario.”

Rafford does not have a coach, but has taken on board what previous mentors taught him about scoping. “When I did have a coach, they helped me pick out a line in a certain way,” he reflects. “And I think that’s now pretty internal in my head when I’m doing it by myself.

“Of course, you’re with everyone in the same spot looking at it. You listen to people and talk and things are getting thrown around. Honestly, you get the gist of everything pretty much from a day or two of scoping the venue.

“There've been multiple times where I've asked people like, ‘Oh, what do you think about that?’ And they're like, ‘Yeah, no way it goes.’ And I’m like, ‘I think it goes. I'm going to do it.’ And then you just go and do it. And like sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I guess it's just trial and error, especially if you're just by yourself. If you don’t have a coach, there's no one to blame besides yourself.”

Noémie Equy also made her FWT debut in 2025, and came away with the Snowboard Women title. She admits her coaches helped her greatly when it came to scoping. “It’s really what I need their support for, more than the technical aspect of snowboarding,” she says.

“At any competition, I’ll take three or four hours to scope the line and take time to really see the mountain, like the face’s general aspects. I just try to find the little spots that I like, and then step-by-step, I join these little spots and try to draw a line.”

For German skier Lena Kohler, the scoping leads to extensive mental preparation and visualization. “We usually sit down one or two days before the comp and look through our binoculars and check out the whole face,” she says. “I usually start with looking at the complete face, and then we have photos on our phones.

“I look at the face and sometimes there’s something where I’m exactly, like, ‘OK, that’s nice. I want to do that.’ But most of the time, I'm looking at what features I really, really like, and then I'm seeing if I can build like a complete line around those features. Then I look for orientation spots, like big trees or things that you can see from the top where you know you have to go to find the right line and orientation. We also get some footage from the Tour, drone footage or old GoPro shots if the face was already skied a few years ago, and you check out all of that.”

“Then I do a lot of visualisation so I don't miss the line. I feel like I'm dreaming my line over and over at night. And I’m realizing the two options I have: option A is what I want to ski and, if it’s too dangerous or something like that, option B is a little bit more mellow. And I go through these lines as often as I can because then I feel safe.”

Scoping is essential in every Freeride athlete’s preparation for the test ahead. And a combination of a good scope and mentally visualizing the line gives them the best possible chance of success.