Isolating parts of a mesh while skin weighting [3DSMax]

Mambo4

I just finished skin weighting a female charcater with long hair falling on her shoulders and face
for game engine pruposes this had to be a conitguos mesh, so the hair was not a seperate mesh.
It was very hard to skin to the hair bones without accidentally grabbing verts form the shoulders/back/neck/face

I tried using an edit mesh modifier to hide the faces i wasn't working on,
but with the skin modifier active I could still select hidden verts.

how can I isolate verts form the mesh while skinning, so they cannot be selected?

monster

Don't add an edit mesh modifier to the top of the stack. Instead hide the elements/faces/verts in the editable poly beneath the skin modifier.