Spring snow conditions change rapidly through the course of a day and can present a challenge in making good tactical decisions on where to ski/ride. Unlike mid-winter conditions, the variables of freeze to thaw to freeze cycles in Spring can create some unique situations. Here are some general thoughts for interpreting Spring snow conditions:
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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.
Your skiing and riding is predicated that the movements you’re making with your body will result in an anticipated response from the skis and snowboard. How is it that one person can naturally just take to a sport like skiing while another never seems to look comfortable with what they’re doing? The answer isn’t so much that these two people are making different movements, but that these movements are translated into different degrees of balance and control from their gear. It’s very common that there are inherent variables in your body alignment; for your best performance, all serious skiers and riders should pay a visit to their local boot fitter.
Sunscreen protection is a must for those spring skiing days when the sun is high and bright. After a full winter of limited exposure, the strong spring sun can really do a number on your pale skin if you don’t take some precautions. Sunscreen is the #1 preventative and a personal favorite for sunscreen protection are products from the Bullfrog brand. Read the rest of this entry »
As the season winds down, it’s time to start considering how to set yourself up for success next season. If you take the time now to store your equipment properly, you’ll able to basically pick right up from where you left off. Consider the following:
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.
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.
When going on a ski vacation, a good ski or snowboard instructor can help make the difference between a good and great time! And one of the best ways to know in advance if an instructor is good is to ask for one who is certified by a professional skiing and riding organization. Almost every country with winter recreation sports has such an organization: in the United States, the professional organization of snowsports instructors is the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors (AASI).
When moving down a slope, control requires turns and turns need to be efficient and efficiency comes from strong turns and strong turns come from good balance and good balance comes from steady edges and steady edges make a turn round and round turns give you control. As in all things in life, everything goes full circle! So, how do you accomplish any one of those factors? Forget that goal; you can have it all if you use the mental image of a train while making turns.
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Many skiers and snowboarders hear instructors or fellow sliders talk about the fall line. Normally it comes up in conversations about what path to follow or where to start or stop a turn… if it is “in” or “out” of the fall line.
So what is the fall line? The fall line is a specific path down a slope where gravity will have the strongest impact. Does that help? We didn’t think so.
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