Tips & Technique
7 – Hedge Fund Skiing
Part 7 of 10 in a series of personal avalanche avoidance theories. After going on a financial disaster reading bender for the last three years, I started noticing a lot of similarities between investors and skiers: Risk versus Reward Smart people getting whacked Dumb people getting lucky Greed Herd instinct Competition Tons of underlying information […]
6 – Trust Your Instincts
Part 6 in 10 of my personal avalanche avoidance theories.. Deciding to ski an avalanche slope based on gut instincts alone is a bad habit to get into, but there is one occasion when you definitely should trust your avalanche instincts: when they are telling you NOT to do it. This is akin to Spiderman’s […]
5 – Staying High with Athey
Part 5 in 10 of my personal avalanche avoidance theories… If you’ve spent time skiing in the Wasatch Mountains, you’ve most likely crossed tracks with Bob Athey, aka The Wizard of the Wasatch. Bob has excellent snow science skills and observations, but more than that he is the grand master of avalanche avoidance through terrain […]
4 – Coombs on “Nibbling”
Part 4 of 10 of some of my personal favorite avalanche avoidance techniques. The late, great Doug Coombs was well known for skiing bold lines, but he also had a lesser known strategy for avalanche avoidance. One day when we were talking about steep skiing and the importance of easing into a new area, he […]
3 – Dawson on “It Never Gets Better”
I triggered avalanches five out of five of my first backcountry trips to Colorado. One of the more insulting ones involved having a car-sized pocket of crusty snow pull out and dump me into the surrounding rocks. The mountainscape was more rocks than snow at the time and it didn’t even seem conceivable that snow […]
2 – Building a Quiver
Part 2 in a 10 part series of personal avalanche avoidance theories… Most skiers are familiar with the concept of owning a quiver, or variety of skis. Quivers often include powder skis, rock skis, fatties, all-around, racing, resort, tele, twin tips, etc.. The idea is to have the correct ski for the ever changing conditions.
1 – Above Average Skiing
Part 1 in a 10 part series on some of my personal avalanche avoidance theories. These are not meant to replace avalanche classes and mostly fall under the “Human Factors” category. Human triggered avalanches are far more likely to occur on a 38-40 degree slope than any other. The numbers drop off rapidly on both […]
Launch Pads
Ripping skins at the top of a climb is ideally done on a summit or flatish ridge, but it doesn’t always work out that way. There are a lot of times where I end up stopping on a steep slope next to a cliff or in the middle of a steep pitch to change over […]
Chututorial 101
I happened to have my POV camera with me yesterday when I stumbled across the Holy Mole couloir, so I shot a little 10 minute “How I Ski Chutes” tutorial, or Chututorial. Don’t get your Oscar nominating hopes up – it is pretty crude, but it does illustrate the thought process that goes into skiing […]
Whippet Sharpening
Whenever I’m in JHole with Rando Steve chugging down GU Chomps and Cucumber Mint Nuun chasers, he asks me how I sharpen my Whippets. Here’s how…
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