Walkie Talkies

In the backcountry, these can be worth their weight in gold, especially if you’re filming and you don’t want to risk missing the shot (and thus sending either filmer, rider or both into a monumental meltdown).

On piste, though, anyone using these has most likely done it so that they can give themselves a shit Top Gun-esque callsign – and the person on the other end is probably their mum.

The potential headaches that abound when more than one group of idiots is using the same channel only adds to their uselessness while inbounds. In these halcyon days of low roaming charges and good signal, your phone will do.

Head Torch

“I’d better take this just in case it gets dark. It is winter, after all.”

It may well be, but resort operators have long since figured out that when the sun goes down in winter it gets bastard cold, and the lifts stop turning by late afternoon.

The only conceivable use you’ll get from your head torch on an average shred week is if the après gets out of hand and you end up miles from your apartment in rural France-shire or Austrialand – by which point you’ll probably have dropped it in your pint hours before, and the dark is the least of your worries.

Speakers

Portable speakers are worse than useless when you take them on the mountain, as Jamie Nicholls discovered during an early taste of splitboarding (he’d packed a set instead of, y’know, food and water). We don’t care how dank the bass is; leave them on the coffee table, they don’t belong in your backpack.

And for the love of God, don’t be that guy who has their speakers blaring out their pack while they ride, or on a chairlift. Write it down: the mountains are not the back of the No. 49 bus.

Leash

Mercifully, most resorts no longer insist on the use of this utterly pointless device that connects your boot to your binding (you know what else does that? YOUR BINDING). There are only two conceivable circumstances in which you’d ever need a leash:

a) if you have so little faith in your binders that a bit of string with a metal clip on the end gives you more peace of mind (in which case, may we suggest these?).

b) if you’re incapable of remembering to hold on to your board when you undo your binding (at which point it’s one of these you need).

Goggle-Wipe Gloves

Someone, somewhere once had the idea to stick a squeegee on the thumb of a snowboard glove, the idea being that you could clear snow from your goggle lens with the efficiency of a roadside window-washer.

Cue twin epidemics of self-inflicted scratches and buyer’s remorse. Pulling your goggle bag out of your pocket for a quick polish might not look as tekkers, but the results are far less infuriating.

Not to be confused with snot-wipe panels, which are rad.