Skiing moguls in spring conditions is one of skiing’s great pleasures. The more forgiving snow, the warmer temps, and the softer feel underfoot combine to let skiing moguls be more successful and fun!
The heaviness of the wetter snow can be a challenge in the narrower confines of a mogul field, however. You can adjust your skiing to match soft mogul terrain by changing your line to avoid the troughs and stay higher on the moguls. You can maintain balance better by focusing on where your feet would go if you were running down the hill.
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Posted in Moguls, Skiing Tips, Spring Corn
Spring skiing is surely the Prime Time of the winter season. The weather’s warmer, the sun’s higher, the snow is softer, and you’ve been making turns all season so you’re probably feeling pretty comfortable on the slopes. By March, you should be set up for some amazing days of skiing and riding, provided you take care of an unintended consequence of those factors on your gear. Due to the warmer temperatures, your boots won’t have the same fit as they did earlier in the season. Materials such as plastic, foam, and suede all behave differently under various temperatures and you need to adjust your boot settings to compensate.
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Posted in Skiing Tips, Snowboarding Tips, Spring Corn, Telemark
When the warmer temperatures bring warmer (and heavier) snow, snowboarding can get challenging. Sure, the softer snow feels great under foot and it doesn’t take much to get the board gripping the surface. The heaviness of the snow, however, can put you in a situation where the board seems to have a mind of its own. A snowboard seems very long when you’re trying to turn it against a whole mountain’s-worth weight of snow.
A natural reaction to this condition would be to steer your board more with the rear foot to compensate, but a little high school physics can teach us otherwise. If to every action there’s an opposite reaction, then the more you try to push the board around, the more the snow will be grabbing back at you. There’s a solution; resist the urge to over-steer your snowboard in heavier snow conditions by keeping the rear foot light and directing your balance along the path of the turn.
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Posted in Snowboarding Tips, Spring Corn
In the wetter snow of spring skiing, it takes a different set of skills to make an efficient skiing turn. As the snow gets softer, focus on putting nearly the same amount of weight on both feet. Yes, there still has to be a dominance of balance on the outside leg, but the heavier snow dictates that both skis need to work together and that takes modifying your movements to stay balanced and efficient. The focus is to ski with two feet!
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Posted in Skiing Tips, Spring Corn
My favorite piece of clothing for spring skiing in sunny weather is a fleece vest, for a bunch of reasons. It keeps your torso warm while giving your limbs freedom of movement. It’s not too warm on the chairlift ride up and keeps you warm on the way down. It gives you pockets for storing lip balm, keys, and the season pass. It has a collar to keep the sun off your neck. It’ll make you look like a skier and rider, on and off the slopes. And there’s lots of choices for how much you want to spend on one.
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Posted in Gear, Spring Corn, Winter Clothing
We can take a tip from the Aussies for sun protection in spring skiing conditions. Living on the hottest, driest, and flatest continent on earth, Australians are far more aware of the dangers being in the sun than most Americans. Teaching skiing Downunder was unique in many ways, perhaps most notably that you’re a lot closer to the sun in the Southern Hemisphere than when you’re in North America. The Aussies’ national motto for having fun outside is “Slip, Slap, and Slop!” and it’s a good mantra for spring-time skiing and riding as well.
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Posted in General, Snow Conditions, Spring Corn, Weather, Winter Clothing
Skiing on hard snow conditions requires that you modify your movements to compensate for the slicker surface under foot. It’s like being under a magnifying glass; any small loss of balance is signaled by a much larger movement by an arm, leg, or torso as you try to regain control. You don’t have to always be in a reactive mode when skiing hard snow, however; there are a number of adjustments you can make to your skiing to create steadier balance and increase grip.
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Posted in Ice, Skiing Tips
When is a good day to learn to snowboard? If you are a skier and thinking of trying out snowboarding for the first time, think carefully about which day you will give it a go.
Many people decide they want to learn to snowboard on a day that would otherwise not be the best skiing day. They pick a day that is rainy, foggy, windy, or any other day when the wind or snow conditions are not ideal. I suppose the logic is if they don’t enjoy snowboarding they will not have wasted a “good day” of skiing. Avoid this temptation.
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Posted in Snow Conditions, Snowboarding Tips, Weather
Well, you’ll never see this event on a ski area website, but we’ve gotten some winter rain recently here in New England. It’s a bit early in the season to be adapting to wet snow conditions, but the skiing conditions can be very good when it’s raining. When the snow surface is wet and loose while the base is firm below, you need to change your skiing skills to match the conditions. For corn snow, a primary adaption is to use lower edge angles in your turns.
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Posted in Snow Conditions, Spring Corn
The Snow Gods blessed the western Maine mountains with about 8 inches of new snow Monday just to spite the weathermen who forecasted “flurries with no significant accumulation”. I expect I speak for many when I say don’t you just love it when that happens?! With a sudden change from yesterday’s conditions, an unexpected powder day is a a situation where you’ll want to pay attention to how you should adapt to the new snow. A primary adaptive movement in powder is to slightly narrow your stance so that your feet are fully under your hips.
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Posted in Powder, Skiing Tips