Skiing, seeing and climate change

If last ski season was the season of the moguls (no new snow to fill up the holes), this one is all about visibility. 

Tons of snow means mostly bad weather and skiing in less than ideal conditions as far as visibility goes. 

Lack of good vision takes different forms. As snow falls on a groomed run, it soon becomes “wavy” with nasty longitudinal bumps that when combined with flat light bounce you right and left, up and down with absolutely no warnings and no control. 

Then there is the omnipresent lack of good relief which also prevents anticipating what’s coming ahead. “Delayed feedback” as I call the problem! 

To make matter worse, there’s also global warming that make our light, legendary, “champagne Utah powder”, more sticky over the goggles, to the point that I sometime could use automatic wipers like on my car. 

So as you (cannot) see, our winter season is chock full of visibility problems that haven’t discouraged me yet to ski. As the saying goes: “What doesn’t kill you make you stronger!”