While we may live in the desert of AZ, my husband and I are both big skiers and there are some great areas north and east of us for doing just that. Normally we are fine, without a shovel, but we skidded off the road a couple of years ago, during bad conditions and had no shovel at hand. Since then, we started traveling with a full length shovel, which is definitely cumbersome. I'd been looking for a good shovel that broke down and this is it. You can have it short or long. It breaks down to 4 pSee full review