The “tricky snow” ski lesson

No matter how you look at it, snow is never the same and so are skiing conditions! This early ski season provided me with never-seen-before conditions. 

The snow had fallen abundantly in altitude since the beginning of November with up to 1 meter accumulation, but the uppermost slopes weren’t open to skiers until three weeks later. 

That resulted in the few good turns in fluffy but already desiccated snow for a brief couple of hours after opening, but when I came to ski a little bit later, the snow became downright dangerous on steep slopes as skis wanted to dive deep into a broken crust, twist around and throw the skier.

In other words, the upper crust was barely supporting the skier’s weight and the rest of the layer was all powdery and lacking cohesion. The net result was that one had to ski extremely carefully, lightly as well as smoothly and still hope for the best! 

Two days later the upper crust had refrozen slightly and was now extremely fast and this was mostly felt on very steep sections where acceleration after clearing the fall-line was instantaneous. 

Another good reason to dial-down speed and aggressiveness, but all in all, a good lesson under these peculiar circumstances that might never serve me again!