The national Youth and Sport scheme for promoting sports provides opportunities to enjoy the unique feeling of off-piste powder and test your mettle in demanding terrain.

Youth and Sport ski and snowboard leaders are allowed to take their groups off-piste without emergency equipment if they follow this decision-making process:

1. Clarify: Clarify each leader’s skills and off-piste knowledge. Take account of the organiser’s rules.
2. Plan: Choose where to go based on your group’s level of ability and the current conditions. You must choose a slope that’s close to a piste (same degree of exposure and steepness, easy to reach) and not too steep (less than 30° in all places, including the terrain above the slope).
3. Discuss: Discuss the avalanche risk on your chosen slope with the local piste and rescue service. It must be virtually zero.
4. Lead: Leaders take responsibility for their group on the slopes. Their duty of care includes clear leadership and proactive communication of typical dangers.

Guided off-piste tours and downhill runs from difficulty level WS (not very difficult) are classified by law as high-risk activities. Snow sports instructors with a federal diploma who wish to engage in high-risk activities need a licence from the relevant cantonal authorities. These activities are subject to the Federal Act on Mountain Guides and Organisers of other High-Risk Activities (Risk Act) as well as the related Risk Ordinance.

Key principles for federally licensed snow sports instructors:

• The Risk Act applies to commercially offered high-risk activities outside the responsibility of ski lift and cable car operators.
• Any activity generating turnover of at least one Swiss franc is deemed to be commercial and thus requires a licence under the Risk Act.
• The level of difficulty in accordance with the Swiss Alpine Club scale determines whether an activity qualifies as high-risk and thus requires a licence.
• A licence is required for off-piste downhill runs with difficulty level WS (not very difficult) or higher, and routes up to difficulty level S (difficult) are permitted, provided there’s no fall risk.
• Tours always require a licence and are permitted up to difficulty level WS (not very difficult).
• Crossing glaciers and using technical aids such as picks, crampons or ropes aren’t allowed.

Snow sports instructors without a licence may use off-piste routes that don’t qualify as high-risk under the Risk Act, i.e. up to difficulty level L (easy, below 30°), and marked yellow pistes by agreement with the management of their school.

Snow sports instructors have a duty of care towards their customers at all times. This requires them to be aware of the needs and dangers activities entail and how to deal with them. The law only covers a fraction of the knowledge snow sports instructors must have and the rules they must follow.