Skiing the pow

[SkiDork]

Myself and the rest of the fam went up to Wyndham last season, and it was snowing hard pretty much all day.

I'm not so familiar with the trees there, although I did look in a lot to see if it was do-able (which it wasn't)

BUT, the extreme sides of all the trails were totally sweet. Especially with the Phantoms.

I skied the sides all day long, pretty much nobody else was doing it.

I got a lot of dirty looks from most of the skiers - "What the heck are you doing having so much fun on the sides while I'm having so much difficulty in the middle, where it's all chopped up/scraped off???"

I just had to smile and keep going.

Anyone ever experience this sort of thing before? It was magnificent...

 

[Vortex]

I ski near the edge most of the time unless I'm going at a good clip and doing some gs turns. In the east most of my experience has been that is where the guns put the most snow also.

 

[SkiDog]

I too pretty much only ski the sides or trails...since all the gapers are pushing the snow there anyway... ;-)

M

 

[SkiDork]

Yeah - I love the edge too.

But this day was special - a pow day, which was getting constantly scraped off (since it was a Saturday on January) but where the edges had thigh deep pow. Skiing right next to someone who was scraping ice, and I was blasting through thigh deep. Cool stuff....

 

[hammer]

Skiing right next to someone who was scraping ice, and I was blasting through thigh deep. Cool stuff....

I'd guess that most "weekend warrior" skiers in the east aren't comfortable in deep powder...I know I wouldn't be...

The sides are the place to be -- you get the best snow and I like the challenge of tightening my turns up so that I'm not all over the trail.

Even though I would have been challenged in the powder, I'd take that over scraped hardpack/ice any day...:beer:

 

[SkiDog]

I'd guess that most "weekend warrior" skiers in the east aren't comfortable in deep powder...I know I wouldn't be...

The sides are the place to be -- you get the best snow and I like the challenge of tightening my turns up so that I'm not all over the trail.

Even though I would have been challenged in the powder, I'd take that over scraped hardpack/ice any day...:beer:

Trust me theres nothing better than the feeling of "cold smoke" in your face........trust me..you learn how to ski the deep pretty quick if you're thrown into it without a choice...

Like the old Nike commercials used to say...JUST DO IT..

M

 

[SkiDork]

believe me, there were a lot of unsolicited "yeehaa's" yelled that day - know what I mean?

 

[from_the_NEK]

I've the same experience at Okemo directly under the lift line. No one wanted to ski between the towers. There was only about 4 inches of snow but it was way better than the scraped off ice chutes on either side.

 

[SkiDork]

there ya go - any place can have some awesome stuff if you look for it, and know how to make the best of it..

 

[thetrailboss]

Well, some of us have the fortune of skiing a ski area that is quiet and can have lots of pow. That may change...

I, too, tend to stick to the crud and bumps on the side of the trail. I will never forget how we all played on this one spot on the BEast trip:

The first section was at the top of the trail and Riv' led the charge!

bvibert and I followed suit...

But this was the section I was thinking of...some churned up stuff from the middle of the trail ended up on the side and here I am hitting it:

And Riv got more into it:

And these pics are on a day when MOST of the trail was a sheet of ice basically. But, as you can see in the pics, we were getting some good carving and some decent soft stuff.

So yeah, the sides are where I am....

The rest of the pics from our 2005 BEast Trip.

 

[SkiDork]

Can't wait to hook up with you this winter at K - you da man! Thats exactly what I'm talkin 'bout

 

[riverc0il]

what smack are you guys talking about? side of the trails? psssssah. straight down the middle, all the time! it is the only way to go!

funny thing about that flying cloud shot under the lift at beast: as i recall, natural snow blew chucks that day and under the lift line on that trail was no exception. it was rock hard and difficult to edge. thankfully there were some small bumps useful for checking speed and hopping around. i just went for it because it was the hardest thing i could find on an open trail, that was a rare day in which the conditions on the edge of the trail blew. though lower down on that trail, the sides were definitely delicious as the other pictures atest.

 

[thetrailboss]

Now that I think of it, the upper part that Riv referred to was machine made snow from the night before that had blown over to the side...

 

[riverc0il]

i don't think it was cold enough to be blowing snow at that time, it was rather warm out for february as i recall. they recently had a rain/freeze event, as evidence by many of the other natural snow trails some of us went down so i recall that snow being crunchy scrappy frozen snow wherever the mountain was not groomed. i checked my TR which did mention a recent rain storm that closed much of the mountain down despite being open 100% just a week or so earlier. i remember being disappointed when i got there because the report for the day before said they were going to be open 100% or close to it, but the recent rains shut many of the trails down.

 

[andyzee]

TB, in the one pick, it looks like you're holding both of your poles in one hand, wuz up with dat?

 

[kingslug]

Skiing at Whiteface one day, well the only day I ever did, we found that the sides of the trails where the only place to get traction. Ended up on a run that had a 6 inch swath down the side that everyone was on. Sux for me that I lost a ski and went down on it. Not fun to have people skiing around you trying to stay on it. But all in all. it's those who know usually will be found on the sides while the rest slide down the middle.

 

[tirolerpeter]

Skiing the Pow

Nice pictures. Makes me hopeful that winter will come around again. Sad though, that our idea of "Pow" here in the east can mean an inch or two of something sprinkled around the edges of a glacier. I don't mean to say that we can't enjoy it and have a good time. Since I only ski mid-week, I can choose my line and not worry about others around me. But, trying to "work" the edges and do the little dance on literally a ribbon of "Pow" while dodging fallen bodies or unguided missiles makes week-ends tough to take for the working crowd.