Archive for January, 2010
Belayed Ski Cuts
At times when you want to do a ski cut, but there is no island of safety to ski to, a belayed ski cut comes in handy. Prime candidates for belayed ski cuts are narrow, steep couloirs with no hiding spots, or the opposite end of the spectrum, wide open faces. For this type of […]
Ski Cutting
Along with cornice stomping, I also do a lot of ski cuts before skiing a slope. Ski cuts are quite a bit dicier than cornice stomping as you have to actually get down on the slope and try to trigger a slide. Because of this, I am usually fairly confident that a slope won’t slide […]
How To Know Where To Go
A huge part of backcountry skiing is knowing where to go on any given day to find the best skiing. It might be corn, powder, chutes, long tours or quick hits, but once you have been doing it for a while, you can almost always find The Goods (well, except for last week – sorry […]
Cornice Stomping
Stomping cornices is by far and away my favorite and most used snow stability assessment technique. Test slopes are a close second, but there is a lot to be learned from dropping a big fat ol’ cornice directly onto a loaded slope and seeing what happens. I like cornice stomping as it is something you […]
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