It’s All About the Snow
January 1st, 2010Posted in Skiing Everywhere
When all is said and done, skiing (and snowboarding) us all about the snow. Its is not about how new or expensive our gear is, or how fancy a resort we’re skiing at, or how great we think we look in our new parka, or how steep a pitch we just aced, what it is about is how happy we are doing or favorite sport and good snow is what makes that possible.
Yesterday I enjoyed another joyous day skiing light powder at Grand Targhee Resort. Lately Grand Targhee has been one of the few places in the Rockies to be getting much snow and the resort was straining to handle the holiday crowd, a crowd enhanced by many skiers driving an hour from Jackson Hole to ski Targhee’s less appreciated and less esteemed terrain. Included in the crowd were some of Jackson’s hardcore big mountain skiers, people normally pretty dismissive of a mountain lacking many dramatic steeps and in-bounds cliffs, but they were smiling and having a very good time sailing through the feathery snow. Also present in significant numbers were many Jackson Hole Mountain Resort employees, including ski and snowboard instructors with clients in tow.
These Jackson refugees could have spend the day skiing at Jackson where 100% of the lifts were open. They could have, but they didn’t want to ski on the few trails where there was enough snow for safe skiing- essentially the trails the resort’s groomers can run on, or where snowmaking is available, plus a few of the resort’s steeper upper mountain runs (but none of it’s iconic steepest terrain).
Yesterday was probably a no brainer for many of these people, given the dramatic choice between about a foot of fresh light powder over the previous day’s foot of the same at Grand Targhee and few inches of powder over hard snow or barely covered rocks at Jackson, but it highlights a real truth about skiing- good skiers gravitate to where the snow is the best.
On the days I’ve skied Whistler-Blackcomb, also big vertical mountains, like Jackson, where were all the good skiers?- riding just a couple of lifts at the very top of the mountains where the snow quality was the best.
Why is a large part of Jackson’s invitingly steep and largely treeless terrain of bowls and ridges, perfect powder skiing terrain, so lightly skied? Because it’s low elevation terrain and its angle to the sun quickly turns the powder to a lumpy crud that is crap to ski compared to the snow higher on the same mountain.
Fighting skis through crusty crud, or heavy, warm and wet “powder”, or chattering them through rock hard icy moguls, or even scrapping them over smooth broiler-plate ice just doesn’t cut it after skiers have spend a few days enjoying really good snow, whether it is deep powder or just soft groomers.
When we’re young and sometimes feel we have to prove we’re good enough to ski a really steep run regardless of how bad the snow is, we’ll pass up some untracked lying just beyond the nearby trees, but most of us out-grow that insecurity pretty quickly. Is an edge straining, twitch turn descent, really that satisfying, or memorable- or fun? Is carving railroad track turns on hard groomers anywhere as much fun as slicing through billowing powder with gravity’s push delightfully balanced by the resistance of the deep snow? Not for most of us I’m sure.
For most skiers the best skiing equates to the best snow conditions. We’ll fly, drive, hike and bribe to gain access to the deepest and lightest snow we can find. An expensive trip to the best resort or heli-ski operation is a failure if the snow sucks when we’re there, but a lucky day on even a little hill when the snow is light and deep can be absolutely magical. It’s all about the snow.
I wish everyone a New Year filled with lots of soft powdery days!
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