Last winter was our family's first winter on backcountry skis. Over the past few winters we have been exploring various means of backcountry travel in an effort to decide what would work best for us. We wanted to be able to travel longer distances over snow, while at the same time be able to have some fun going down. Having moved close to the Chic-Chocs - we are within 1.5 hours drive of a plethora of beautiful backcountry ski places - we wanted to be able to take advantage of all of the winter ski opportunities we could. Outfitting five had the potential to get expensive, so we had to get creative about doing this in an economic fashion.