Snow Skills

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.

Let’s start by examining the role edge angles have in hard snow conditions. The two-edged sword of using edging is that the more you use, the more grip you can have. But the more edge angles you use, the more balance you need to develop to control that grip. On hard snow, you’ll spend your day striving to strike the best balance between those two conditions, literally from turn to turn.

In loose, wet snow, that balance tips in favor of lower edge angles. You don’t need high edge angles to control the ski and even if you do build high angles, you’ll have to work hard to lower them again because of the increased weight of the wet snow. That heaviness mean that low edge angles are more effective and it only takes smaller motions to create them.

The most efficient method of edging in corn snow is to use your ankles more than your knees to control your edging movements. Try to minimize your knee’s range of motion while increasing your awareness of the ankles alternately releasing and engaging the edges. As always, work to release and engage both skis at precisely the same moments. A good exercise for practicing this skill is simply sideslipping where your primary edging is from the ankles. Ironically, this exercise is best done on a harder snow surface where you can focus feeling the edging come from the small motions of your ankles and feet.