hmmmm.... powder skiing!
Mid way through the season and things have settled into a rhythm. The guests come and go and apart from this week’s batch, are all merging into two groups. Those that we liked and those that we didn’t! The weather is showing its hand as well. This year seems to be a typical NZ season with a two to three week cycle of cold storms bringing lots of snow, moving to cold and clear, then mild and finally warm and spring like. We get really good powder skiing during and immediately after the storm cycle and then good safe conditions for touring in the backcountry with mixed bag skiing conditions when its mild and finally great spring skiing backcountry when its warm before another storm cycle comes through. So we have been getting to ski a lot of varied snow conditions and this is helping develop are skiing really fast. It is amazing how two or three days of difficult breakable crust skiing can improve your powder skiing. Learning to keep your feet together on the crust (which is a do or crash must) makes the deep powder just so much more controllable at speed. A couple of session skiing on one ski forces you to use the outside edge making carving the groomed runs easier and weighting both feet off piste far more natural. The other good thing about this snow cycle is that things can be reasonable predictable. As long as the temperatures stay in the mild range (a big warm or cold spell will throw the following out the window) the snow pack is relatively stable on all aspects and altitudes. The main issue is how the new snow out of each storm cycle sticks to the old snow pack. Deep snow pack avalanches seem to be coming from a small new snow avalanche stepping down to a deeper instability and producing a bigger avalanche. And yes these smaller avalanches could be skier released. There is the major difference between NZ/North American fields and these in Europe. In NZ as a general rule, if a lift is open then whatever you ski from it will be safe or closed with a fence or outside the ski area. Here in Europe the avalanche control work is done to protect the groomed runs and resort infrastructure and a small number of marked off piste runs. But it is possible to ski or board from one lift to another through uncontrolled, un-patrolled terrain with serious avalanche issues and only a flag or flashing light at the lift station to warn you.
But if a relatively simple plan is followed you can have a whole lot of fun. We have been skiing in bounds on controlled slopes during the storm cycle, moving to the lift accessed off piste as the weather cleared. Starting by keeping the angles low, skiing slopes that have very little gravity pulling on it. Here you can find small isolated pockets of steeper or more loaded snow and progressively ski these. Riding one at a time, jumping into small wind loaded pockets or cutting above each others tracks to see if the then isolated snow is going to move or is stuck on. Once your happy that things are good you can move on to the bigger lines and slopes with the same angles and snow loading. Again starting off one at a time and avoiding over stressing the slopes with steeper start zones or convex slopes leading into them. We tend to keep it mostly below thirty degree slopes on the first day. If the weather is settled, like no more snow fall or wind that moves snow around changing factors, then on day two we will ski the bigger continuous slopes and the steeper or more loaded slopes and aspects. The snow does get safer given time even from morning to afternoon. Baring in mind that this is all done in and around the ski resort so any major deep seated issues would have been dealt by the resort control staff. They don’t want a skier/boarder triggered avalanche stepping down to producing a cafe or ski school eating monster. After this we start heading further and further a field chasing the untracked lines! Following the same progressive process of skiing the safer stuff first and moving into steeper and deeper snow if and when we are happy with what we find. If all that sounds complicated as Karen has just pointed out, please remember that I have hugely simplified what is a very complicated and dynamic process that at times also relies on gut feeling and the willingness to hike back out of dodgy situation. Why have I put all this in? Well in the last three weeks there have been five skier triggered avalanches with whole parties buried and eight people in hospital with serous injuries and depending on where you read it, between six and eight people dead! Generally it seems to be by people skiing steep slopes as a big group on the first clear day, but some of the deaths have been from terrain issues and (incredibly) from not having any rescue equipment. No transiver (radio beacon for finding people buried in the snow) or no shovel for digging people out even though you know they are underneath you. One lucky woman survived when she was found by the rescue team while they were digging for someone with a beacon. They were digging in on an angle and came across her boot in the snow. She had no rescue gear and the rescuers didn’t even know she was in the avalanches!!!!
One of the good things about being here for the season is that we are a bit more at ease with sitting out the high avo condition and going to the pub.
Other news is that my nose has healed ok. Yes there will be a scar. We will need to wait and see how bad before I spring for a nose job. But hey if it’s a choice between new skis and a nose job then the skis win every time! I’m a married man (three years this week) and its about time I let myself go a bit. Karen has had the flu but is on the mend. Should be just in time for the next clearance. Well that’s enough for now. Its snowing heavily outside so we are off to the pub, powder skiing on the agenda in a day or two!
Ben.
But if a relatively simple plan is followed you can have a whole lot of fun. We have been skiing in bounds on controlled slopes during the storm cycle, moving to the lift accessed off piste as the weather cleared. Starting by keeping the angles low, skiing slopes that have very little gravity pulling on it. Here you can find small isolated pockets of steeper or more loaded snow and progressively ski these. Riding one at a time, jumping into small wind loaded pockets or cutting above each others tracks to see if the then isolated snow is going to move or is stuck on. Once your happy that things are good you can move on to the bigger lines and slopes with the same angles and snow loading. Again starting off one at a time and avoiding over stressing the slopes with steeper start zones or convex slopes leading into them. We tend to keep it mostly below thirty degree slopes on the first day. If the weather is settled, like no more snow fall or wind that moves snow around changing factors, then on day two we will ski the bigger continuous slopes and the steeper or more loaded slopes and aspects. The snow does get safer given time even from morning to afternoon. Baring in mind that this is all done in and around the ski resort so any major deep seated issues would have been dealt by the resort control staff. They don’t want a skier/boarder triggered avalanche stepping down to producing a cafe or ski school eating monster. After this we start heading further and further a field chasing the untracked lines! Following the same progressive process of skiing the safer stuff first and moving into steeper and deeper snow if and when we are happy with what we find. If all that sounds complicated as Karen has just pointed out, please remember that I have hugely simplified what is a very complicated and dynamic process that at times also relies on gut feeling and the willingness to hike back out of dodgy situation. Why have I put all this in? Well in the last three weeks there have been five skier triggered avalanches with whole parties buried and eight people in hospital with serous injuries and depending on where you read it, between six and eight people dead! Generally it seems to be by people skiing steep slopes as a big group on the first clear day, but some of the deaths have been from terrain issues and (incredibly) from not having any rescue equipment. No transiver (radio beacon for finding people buried in the snow) or no shovel for digging people out even though you know they are underneath you. One lucky woman survived when she was found by the rescue team while they were digging for someone with a beacon. They were digging in on an angle and came across her boot in the snow. She had no rescue gear and the rescuers didn’t even know she was in the avalanches!!!!
One of the good things about being here for the season is that we are a bit more at ease with sitting out the high avo condition and going to the pub.
Other news is that my nose has healed ok. Yes there will be a scar. We will need to wait and see how bad before I spring for a nose job. But hey if it’s a choice between new skis and a nose job then the skis win every time! I’m a married man (three years this week) and its about time I let myself go a bit. Karen has had the flu but is on the mend. Should be just in time for the next clearance. Well that’s enough for now. Its snowing heavily outside so we are off to the pub, powder skiing on the agenda in a day or two!
Ben.
posted by thekarenandbenshow at 4:58 AM
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