Ah, the promise of a freshly booked ski trip—as pure as untracked snow glinting in the morning sun.
But as the trip gets closer, the questions creep in: Do you have what you need? What are the baggage rules, anyway? Will this be the year that you get an airline-agent sheriff, who tells you that you can’t stuff clothing into every crevice of your ski bag?
While I can’t answer that last question, I can help with the first two (and hopefully more). I’ve researched all of the ways you can travel with your ski gear, many of which I’ve done myself. Whether you’re a minimalist who takes just one pair of underwear (please don’t do that), or you want convenience no matter the cost, I’ve outlined all of your options and included their pros and cons.
Using your own gear versus renting
There are a few choices you need to make, but the first one is whether to use your own gear or rent. If you have gear that you like, I’d encourage you, at the very least, to bring your own ski boots or snowboard boots. With ski boots, especially, a good or ill-fitting pair can make or break a day on the slopes.
If you don’t have your own gear or don’t want to deal with the hassle of packing, skip ahead to my discussion of renting gear where you’re skiing.
Traveling with your own gear
Being on the mountain in familiar and comfortable gear makes a huge difference, and that’s the big advantage of bringing your own equipment. How you get your gear to the resort can vary, but essentially you have two choices: flying with it or shipping it.
Each option has its drawbacks. Bringing your bags with you on the plane is more tedious—but typically less expensive—than shipping. There’s also a risk of your checked equipment being damaged or delayed. Shipping, on the other hand, gives you convenience and peace of mind, but it’ll cost you.
Either way, consider getting a scale. A luggage scale is convenient, but a bathroom scale will suffice. No matter how you decide to transport your gear, you’ll face weight restrictions, so a scale is a helpful tool no matter what.
Taking your gear on the plane
Check your airline’s baggage policy—before you book, if you can. I dug into the major airlines’ baggage policies and ranked them in four groups, taking into account how much weight and size each carrier allows, how consistent the pricing is, the transparency of the policies, and Wirecutter staff’s experiences with them.
Current as of February 2025. Each airline on this list counts a ski or snowboard bag plus a boot bag as one checked bag. The size limit is measured in linear inches—the total sum of the bag’s length, width, and depth.
Buy (or borrow or rent) a ski or snowboard bag. Airlines require your snowboard or skis to be packed in bags designed for travel. We’ll be testing a small batch of these bags in winter 2025, but for now our advice is to look for something with good padding. (If the airline thinks your bag won’t protect your skis, it might make you sign an agreement that limits its liability if your equipment is damaged.)
Prepay for your checked bag. Many airlines charge higher fees to check your bag when you arrive at the airport, so it’s worth paying ahead of time.
Before packing for your outbound flight, decide whether to check everything or carry on your essentials. We’ll outline what each of those options entails and their pros and cons. On your return flight, we recommend checking everything, since it’ll matter less if your luggage is delayed.
Check everything: Simpler but riskier
Checking all of your gear makes life easier. With little else to carry but a small backpack or purse, you can glide through the airport and down the aisle, and you won’t have to worry about whether your carry-on bag is too big for the overhead compartment.
But the airline might lose your stuff. This is especially true if you have a connection and end up traveling during a winter storm. If your luggage is delayed, you’ll need to pay for ski and boot rentals (and potentially buy or borrow gear such as a jacket, gloves, a helmet, and goggles, not all of which is usually rentable).
Carry on your essentials: Annoying but safer
If you carry your essentials onto the plane, you can still ski even if the airline loses your checked luggage. In an ideal world, between your carry-on and personal item, you’d pack all of the items listed below; if your luggage is delayed, all you would have to do is rent skis.
I was able to pack everything listed above, except for my helmet, into our top carry-on suitcase pick. My ski boots, the equivalent of a men’s size 10.5 shoe, fit pretty snugly. Staff writer Trey French, who wears a size 13, was able to fit his boots into an old, roughly 45-liter Patagonia duffle with a little room to spare.
If you’re tight on space and okay with renting boots in a pinch, consider checking them with your skis. I recommend bringing boots on board because, of all the gear, they have the biggest impact on your comfort and enjoyment. But they’re also rigid and awkward to pack, and they’re easy to rent. So if you don’t mind having to rent boots as a last resort, check your boots with your skis. (Most airlines count a boot bag plus a ski or snowboard bag as one checked bag.)
You might have to gate-check your carry-on anyway. I’ve never had this happen to me, but with airlines cracking down on carry-on luggage, you might be asked to gate-check your carry-on bag even after you’ve meticulously packed it. The possibility increases if you have a basic-tier fare or are in a later boarding group.
Shipping your gear
Only one type of person needs to ship their stuff: someone who is absolutely set on using their own gear and who can’t or won’t check a bag. Maybe you’re traveling with kids and you need your hands free in the airport. Maybe you need your gear to arrive by a specific date and can’t risk its being delayed. Maybe you’re not heading straight to the ski hill but visiting other places first, and you don’t want to lug your gear along.
No matter what your scenario is, know this: Shipping is never cheaper than checking luggage. We got price quotes from five different luggage-shipping services—FedEx, UPS, Luggage Free, Luggage Forward, and Ship Skis—for shipping one ski bag from Boston to Copper Mountain in Colorado. The least expensive shipped bag cost about $150 to ship round trip, and that was a single ski bag with a weight limit of 25 pounds and a shipment time of one week.
Also, if you’re shipping a ski-bag/boot-bag combo, keep in mind that unlike on the airlines, they don’t count as one bag; you have to pay for them as two separate bags.
With shipping, you also have to plan ahead to get the best deal. The quotes we used for comparison were for ground service, which takes from five to seven days. That means you need to ship your stuff out almost a week before your trip.
Shipping services do offer one major advantage: They pick up your gear at your house. If you don’t have a car or shuttle that can get you to the airport with all your stuff, and renting gear is for some reason not an option—or if money is no object—the extra convenience may justify the extra cost.
Of the four shipping services we looked at, Ship Skis and Luggage Free generally had the best rates. The companies quoted a fee of around $150 round trip from Boston to Copper Mountain for one 25-pound ski bag. Luggage Forward was more expensive all-around than the others. Although FedEx and UPS offered rates similar to those of Ship Skis and Luggage Forward, they charged extra for pickup.
Renting gear where you’re skiing
If you don’t have your own gear or don’t want to haul your own gear on a cross-country flight, renting offers a few advantages.
The skis or snowboard will be tuned up and ready to go. A fresh wax or tune-up of your own skis or board can cost at least $50. Also, a rental shop will have the right equipment for the terrain, which may differ from your home slopes.
Renting can be a great deal for a family, and a convenience. Kids under 12 often get a free, or at least discounted, rental with each adult rental. And if you usually take public transit or a shuttle from home to the airport, you won’t have to lug gear on that leg.
Consider renting from a shop that isn’t at the base of the mountain. If you have a car, you can get to shops farther from the resort that offer better deals for rental packages. If you don’t have a car, see if Ski Butlers serves the area. The service will bring the rental gear to your hotel or condo door and then pick it up when you’re done. Adult packages range from $55 to $75 per day; that falls on the high end of rental pricing, but you’re paying for the convenience.
This article was edited by Christine Ryan. Eve O’Neill wrote an earlier version of this article.
