Trekking poles are essential for winter trekking and powder baskets for those poles are, too!
“I’ve only made this mistake once and I’ll never do it again!” I’m referring to heading out for that first snowshoe trek of the winter season, grabbing the backpack, the snowshoes, and the trekking poles on the way out the door. Upon arrival at the trailhead, I noticed that the trekking poles had the small baskets that had served me so well through the summer. Well, they’ll be fine in snow, right? “I’ve only made this mistake once and I’ll never do it again!”
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Posted in Cross Country Skiing, Gear, Powder, Snow Conditions, Snowshoeing
The most wonderful thing about Spring is that, just when it looks like it’s over, Mother Nature comes through in an awesome way! After weeks of little natural snow, the Western Maine mountains received 14 inches of the white stuff yesterday. Winter over? Heck no!
When hitting the slopes in powder conditions, a good tactical focus for skiing powder is to make turns that keeps the gear mostly facing downhill.
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Posted in Powder, Skiing Tips, Snowboarding Tips, Telemark
It’s the chicken or the egg question of skiing: do the hands time your turns or do your turns time the hands? In terrain and conditions such as moguls, steeps, trees, powder, and Spring snow, it really doesn’t matter which answer is right. Either way, a series of relatively short linked turns are best made by keeping the hands and legs working in concert. Key to those movements is the commitment to the turn that a good pole swing adds to your skiing.
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Posted in Moguls, Powder, Skiing Tips, Spring Corn, Steeps, Teaching Philosophy, Trees
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
