I first got into crossing streams with my skis on by accident when I was trying to cross over a slender snowbridge which collapsed and dumped me in the stream. I was mainly worried about scrapping up my bases and edges, but on the other-hand, my feet stayed dry and it was fairly secure, so now I do it intentionally. The rocks tend to have some river slime on them, so they are pretty easy on your edges and bases, especially if you just step and don’t slide on them. Continue reading ‘Creek Crossings’
Monthly Archive for February, 2010
Mai oui, The Big LePowSki is rolling into Salt Lake City Feb 25-27 to set up pins and knock’em down until they go click at Brighton. This is the second annual gathering of TBLP, and last year was a blast. The format is pretty simple – ski/ride & party, but not necessarily in that order. Starting on Thursday night with a Backcountry Film Festival, it then rolls on to a Friday night pre-registration at the BD retail store where you can mingle with the athletes/instructors. Noah Howell will be signing left buttock cheeks, Forrest Shearer gets the right and Julian Carr will be sticking back layouts off of the BD clocktower onto a flat cement landing.
The actual skiing action takes place on Saturday from 9am – 4pm at Brighton and features morning and afternoon clinics on just about anything to do with skiing, riding and the backcountry. I’ll be teaching clinics on steep skiing and backcountry terrain assessment, but if I wasn’t, I’d love to take a clinic on filming or park riding. The cost is $75 which includes a lift ticket, the clinics, lunch and a ticket to the Shoot Out Party that night at Club Elevate. Continue reading ‘The Big LePowSki ~ Feb 25-27, Brighton’
One of the more frustrating booting scenarios is when you encounter crusts which are almost supportable… but not quite. Since I weigh in at about 165lbs with all of my ski gear, I think refer to these crusts by the amount of weight they will support. One-hundred and fifty pound crust is my nemesis as it is just enough to allow me to commit to a step and push up on it before it collapses and I sink in to my groin. Hateful. I’ve been out on many occasions where I’ve been able to boot up something, but my heavier partners are wallowing in misery behind me as they punch through every step. This is usually only funny when it is happening to someone else.
The cure for crust is the Alpine Crawl, which is preformed just like you might imagine, by crawling up a slope on your hands and knees. There is some booting involved, but the idea is to spread your weight out over your hands and shins so you get a little bit of extra flotation.
You can motor right along with an Alpine Crawl, but it gets tiring. Fortunately, that perfectly awful zone never seems to last too long – it either tightens up and become supportable 200lb crust, or softens up to the point where it might be easier to switch back to skins. In the meantime, get on your knees and crawl. Continue reading ’150lb Crusts & The Alpine Crawl’
Scotties is a classic little Wasatch one-hitter. It is in danger of being over-run by Snowbird as it borders the resort, but if you time it right, it can serve up a nice powder run. Continue reading ‘Scotties Bowl – Topo’
Trying to clamp down the latest generation of wide skis for a tune-up is like wrestling an eel in a vat of Crisco. Forget it. Because they are so wide, yet have a thin cross section and rounded topsheets, traditional tuning clamps will hold skis only long enough to look secure, yet the first time you lay into your bases with a file, the ski pops loose and you drive the back of your knuckles directly into the steel edges, slicing your hand open and gushing blood. It’s enough to make you not want to tune your phatties.
To help hold skis in place, a few companies (like Swix) make rubber devices that wrap around your bindings and pull the ski to your bench. Click here for details on my bench setup. I was tempted to buy one of these, but thought I’d try a piece of accessory cord and a hardware store cleat first. Much to my wallet’s relief, it works really well and the total cost was $1.19.
Start with a piece of accessory cord about 24″ long. Tie a small knot in one end and use that to make a loop, which is then wrapped around the binding (this works with almost any style of binding). Continue reading ‘Tuning Bench Tie-Down’
One of the cruelest avalanche tricks out there is the old “I was just minding my own business skinning up a nice valley when suddenly both sides collapsed thousands of feet above me and I was buried 20′ deep.” It is a mean spirited trick as the skier may be on flat ground far away from the starting zone, and to add insult to injury, it is often fatal. This particular type of avalanche is different from the “wrong place, wrong time” slide where a skier happens to be below a slope when it decides to cut loose, because in this case, the skier is actually triggering the slide remotely from hundreds/thousands of feet away.
From studying Architecture, this phenomena reminds of an architectural arch, where all of the compression forces are balanced and held in place by a keystone at the top. Exhibit A below:
A collapsing valley is basically the same thing, except the arch it turned upside down, and instead of carved stones, you have a cohesive slab of snow. When an unsuspecting skier walks along the base of the valley, he is essentially knocking out the keystone that holds the valley walls up, as illustrated below:
This type of avalanche is very difficult to accurately predict, but not that hard to avoid. If the snowpack has pronounced collapsing (like the Wasatch has had this season), it means that keystone is being punched out and it would be better to stick to the high ground. The chances of getting caught in a slide like this are about a million to one (unless you live in Colorado, where it is more like 50/50) and the best defense is to be forewarned.
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Help support StraightChuter.com and pinpoint a deep burial quickly with a Pieps iPROBE Probe from Backcountry.com. Click on the photo below…
