"Six inches of new snow isn’t even a proper powder day, but you wouldn’t know it by checking out the Instagram feeds or the Facebook pages of your local mountain’s marketing department. "
He just barely touched on this, but I find it interesting. Anyone can make 6 inches look way deep. This isn't a new thing, I've read stories about those old Alta skiers sitting on their skis during filming so the snow is literally over their heads. But now we all have cameras. We all can cherrypick stills out of video. We all know how to slash turns. I sat and watched some K2 athletes (as in, you know their names) at Snowbird last year with a photog crew, hiking and rehiking a maybe 30-ft area, skiing and slashing turns for the camera. It was really funny looking in reality.
Three inches =
This was a report of 8 inches; where we were here, it was legit over the knee, but most of the rest of the mountain wasn't like this! lol, of course not.
Yes, this was a deep day (over 2 feet storm total), but he was squatting :D
As for me, my favorites are still the surprises. Yes, there are fewer, and yes, I can ski weekdays so I'm lucky, but when they call 4, and you show up to 8, and a bunch of new terrain is open so that means it's more like 16, and no one is around because it's not "a powder day," those are the days. Exceeding expectations is just fun. What has happened is that I think social media has raised expectations so high... They are hard to even meet, much less exceed.
The one thing I've learned ... just show up. Sure, read facebook and instagram, but do it with some realism. That day that Crested Butte closed because of "too much snow"? Well, it was fun the next day, but where was the 19" of snow that didn't get skied? We found a little bit, but we had to go waaaay off the beaten path. Two days later, on an 8" report, it was untracked knee-deep all morning. I had a run in the North Face that was better than any run I've had heliskiing or cat skiing, face shots for 2 or 3 dozen turns. Eight inches my ass.
So just GO, it will eventually happen.