So, I skied powder for the first time today...

[fgor]

Just wanted to share my experiences as a newbie my local mountain got ~35cm of fresh snow and I was lucky enough to have some fellow snow-goers show me some off-piste stashes of fresh powder in the morning. I wish I'd read and paid attention to how to ski powder beforehand! ;) I got to fall over in some lovely untracked powder and I made many discoveries:

• You can't treat powder like "normal" skiing! I've been taking a few lessons lately and i just dived tip first into the powder like I would on regular hardpack/soft snow. Multiple times. Weighting the tips doesn't work at all in powder. Unless your goal is to detach from your ski and land face-first in the snow

• No side slipping on pow either! Also an excellent way to immediately sink one foot into the snow, lose a ski from the sideways torque, and as a bonus, proceed to slide down a few metres of ice handily situated right below that particular powder stash. While I was wondering how I was going to climb back up the ice to my ski, someone nearly ran over my ski (buried in powder), luckily saw it instead and picked it up and brought it to me

• I'm not sure that I had a ton of dignity to begin with but it's all gone now, after being unable to remain upright for more than ten consecutive seconds while trying to negotiate powder :P

• Getting up from a fall in even just a foot of thick powder is a lot more effort than getting up from a regular fall!

• Very good way to find out if your bindings work!

The only really bad part about the pow day was that in one of my powder-related falls, I managed to somehow clash the tails of my skis together (I think when one ski caught and the other was still doing something) and took a gouge out of the tail of my brand new skis :( it seems to only be the "top sheet", there's some black stuff missing and it looks nasty to me but the metal edge isn't affected. I'll take it to the shop and get them to have a look and hopefully it's a non-issue.

I don't know when or if we'll have another day like this - could be the only one this season for me - but was an unexpectedly steep and fun learning experience

 

[newboots]

Oh, how well I remember this experience. I was skiing with my partner, Mr. Blizzard, at Waterville Valley, in my first year of skiing. We had skied there once before. I was on the lift before I realized where we were headed. “I need to start my day on a green trail!” I protested. “You’ve skied this trail before” he replied. (Mr. Blizzard has 50 years more skiing than I.)

Thus began my 90-minute ordeal down a steep trail that I had barely managed when it was groomed, now with a foot of snow on it. Appropriately, Mr. Blizzard nearly froze to death waiting for me, over and over, as I could not only not ski that powder, but I couldn’t get up from falls without taking off a ski. Not to mention having to find skis in that snow. And trying to clean out my goggles and glasses, which were filled with snow, finally just taking both off.

It was April Fools Day.

Yeah.

 

[Jilly]

Yes it's different. On groomers we tend to be forward on the skis. In powder you need to be centred on the skis.

One trick I learned years ago was to raise my toes inside my boots. It got me to that centred position.

35cm on a weekday....bet that didn't get tracked out too soon. Now you need to look for tracers....fluorescent straps that attach to your skis and tuck up under your pant gaiter. That's the way NOT to lose a ski in powder. Wasn't it SkiNurse that lost a K2 years ago?

 

[mountainwest]

• You can't treat powder like "normal" skiing! I've been taking a few lessons lately and i just dived tip first into the powder like I would on regular hardpack/soft snow. Multiple times. Weighting the tips doesn't work at all in powder. Unless your goal is to detach from your ski and land face-first in the snow
• Getting up from a fall in even just a foot of thick powder is a lot more effort than getting up from a regular fall!
• Very good way to find out if your bindings work!

Hehe! Oh yes, I remember learning those lessons the hard way. On my very first side-country bootpack to ski about two feet of powder I made exactly one turn before falling and getting so stuck I didn't think I would ever get upright again. And somewhere there is a video of me on a different super-deep day hobbling down the mountain in a blizzard on one ski the catch up with the ski that had gone down the mountain without me. My husband thought it was hilarious (it was).

 

[fgor]

Update on the powder skiing: we got a ton more - 40cm in a day - I started to get the hang of moving in powder a bit, really focusing on staying centered and lifting my toes helps! Unfortunately I then sort of got stuck trying to turn while unbalanced, panicked as my skis were pointing downhill and I didn't want to hit someone in front of me, double ejected sideways and tweaked my knee it's fun but tricky stuff!!

Skiing on patches of untracked powder is really something though, it looks so smooth and pristine

 

[Jenny]

It looks nice but I don’t think I’m ever going to get the hang of it. Hope your knee feels better soon.

 

[fgor]

It looks nice but I don’t think I’m ever going to get the hang of it. Hope your knee feels better soon.

I feel the same way, I'm quite envious of people who can do those lovely rhythmic turns in powder and make it look easy! It looks like the epitome of graceful skiing, but it's so much harder than it looks :P Thank you, it seems that I have a mild LCL sprain which is pretty unfortunate (went to medical professional and they pulled it in all sorts of directions to check everything), but the good thing is that I was able to ski the rest of the day with no knee pain, it only twinges while walking!

 

[Refinnej]

Sorry about the knee! Ouch.

Hang in there. I had some horrific first powder days and was absolutely convinced I'd never get it. There may have been more than one fall that I thought, "Okay, I can't stand up so I'm just going to burrow deeper and live here until spring. "

One day it will just click and you'll realize you can ski steep stuff that you'd never be able to tackle without the pow slowing you down. Good luck and enjoy!

 

[marzNC]

One day it will just click and you'll realize you can ski steep stuff that you'd never be able to tackle without the pow slowing you down. Good luck and enjoy!

The hard part for people who don't live near a mountain that gets powder snow on a regular basis is that it's hard to learn to enjoy powder, especially deep powder over a foot, when you only get to ski it one or two days every few years. Even though I've been spending a week or more at Alta in April for the past ten years, it took 5-6 seasons before I had enough experience to start really enjoying a big storm. That was after I spent time working on fundamentals enough to be considered a solid advanced skier.

The best suggestion I picked up about learning to deal with powder was in Lito T-F's book called Soft Skiing. He suggested to start by finding places on the edge of trails to just go straight in 4+ inches of untracked snow to feel the difference.

 

[fgor]

It's so true, up until a week or two ago everything on the sides of trails was straight up ice, so there's been no opportunity to practice any deep snow skiing. It was amazing skiing on the weekend because I could actually go on the edges of trails without just immediately sliding down a sheet of ice! When I injured myself on Sunday I was about 2 metres off the side of one trail. Hopefully that new snow doesn't turn into ice too fast (or we have some new snowfall...) and I'll have more opportunities to practice as the season wears on.

Gotta say though, I'm pretty nervous to try powder again now. I did take another couple careful powder turns after I finally clipped my skis back on after my fall - as a mental exercise - before jumping back on trail. At least this is confirmation my DIN absolutely shouldn't be any higher ;)