One of the best moments on a ski holiday has got to be drawing back the curtains on the first morning, opening the
window, and breathing in the fresh mountain air. The view is spectacular, the early morning sun is just touching the tip of the Matterhorn,
and you can feel the hairs up your nose freezing.
As you sit down and tuck in to an enormous Swiss breakfast you are already computing the weather and snow conditions
aren’t you? The fact that the sun is shining in a clear blue sky bodes well, but what about the hairs freezing up your nose? This means that
the snow is going to have that squeaky sound when you walk on it, and if you go high up first thing the snow crystals could even be hard and
sharp enough to stop your skis running at all.
The effect that different types of snow have on your skiing is quite important. If you did go high up the mountain, it
could be really frustrating if you found your skis wouldn’t slide! In this instance you would have to wax them first, or else wait for the
sun to warm up the snow, or perhaps stay lower down the mountain. If it is this cold your nose and any other exposed parts would be
suffering anyway as the air temperature would be minus 10 Celsius or below.
The following snow types cover most of what you are likely to come across. There are more than likely some I have missed
out because I have never come across them myself; I would be most grateful for any additions.
RED SNOW AT ANY TEMPERATURE
This is interesting stuff and as far as I know is restricted to western Europe. The red stuff comes from the Sahara
Desert and is the result of a sand storm lifted high into the atmosphere by tropical maritime air which then dumps it on the Alps. It is
usually more pink than red and has no bearing on performance whatsoever.
ICE
Ice usually refers to frozen snow that lies on the downside of bumps, slopes that have caught the sun during the day and
refrozen over night, or occasionally, after a period of thaw, when everything freezes. This last example is also known as boiler plate and
is a killer on the ankles and any other parts that come into contact with it. Very occasionally you may find blue ice from a frozen stream
or another water source that has been running across the slope and then frozen overnight. This is best avoided although you can ski
over small patches holding your breath and trusting your balance.
To ski on smooth ice successfully, and by smooth ice I mean the first two examples, you must have sharp edges and
use them as much as possible. Angulation and hard work are the only successful remedies. If you are skiing hard on icy slopes your skis
should be sharpened every day! Many years ago while I was learning to ski slalom gates in Norway we once had a three week period with no new
snow at all. At the start of the three weeks the temperature had gone above freezing and turned the slope into an up ended ice rink. We were
sharpening our skis twice a day on this stuff! It did have its advantages though. Ten people would come down the same course and make little
imprint on the track, so we only had to make new courses twice a day. The main problem was getting the slalom poles into the ice and we had
to used a giant wrecking bar. It kept us fit, but there was not a lot of edge or sole left on the bottom of our skis after three weeks!
SKI MAINTENANCE FOR ICE
Unless you are very rich or have a very good friend in the ski shop you are gong to have to sharpen your own skis. As
this is the only maintenance I was going to talk about, I may as well go into it here as it does not really warrant a whole chapter of its
own.
This is a bit like a cooking recipe. You will need a new file, as they wear out quite quickly. A ten inch bastard
mill is the best, but any standard milled file is adequate. You will need a carborundum block - that’s a sharpening stone. Make sure you
have some oil to go with it although I have used spit quite successfully. You will need one of those decorator’s scrapers made of stainless
steel. They are about six inches by three and have sharp edges. If they get blunt from use then you can sharpen them on the file. You will
also need a rag to wipe any mess off the bottom of the skis. All this stuff can be bought in a hardware store for about $10.
This will probably save you about $100 you would have spent in the ski shop on the same bits. I hope you appreciate the
money I am saving you.
If you haven’t got a vice readily available - do you mean to say you forgot to pack that huge lump of metal bolted to
your workbench in the garage? - then you can quite easily do all this by hand. It is better to sharpen the edges before scraping the soles
as you may get some of the filings sticking to the soles if you do it the other way round. Take a ski and put it on its edge with the back
end on the floor. You should stand astride it holding it up with your thighs - not that high. Hold the ski with whichever hand you’re
not going to file the edge with. The ski is roughly at 45 degrees to the floor. File the edge from the shovel end with the file as flat as
possible but held at an angle of about 45 degrees across the edge. This maximises the cutting of the file. As you work down the ski
try to keep one motion going. You will have to walk down the ski as you go, and if you have to stop filing, hold the file at that spot,
rearrange yourself, and carry on. You can either kneel down as you work towards the back end, or else drop the shovel onto the ground and
put the heel up against the wall to finish off.
There are three more edges to do like this - if you are in a hurry you can just do the two inside edges of each ski as
long as you remember to put them on right. Mark the skis left and right if you are doing this. If the file is doing its job you should land
up with a load of metal filings along your filing fingers, and you should only need to run it along each edge a couple of times at the most.
You will only need to do it more if there are really bad gouges in the metal. You may only have to run the file along once; I’ll let you be
the judge.
You should now do the bottom. Put the ski upside down at 45 degrees against a wall with the tip on the wall and the heel
on the floor. You can again steady the ski between your thighs. Get the file at its maximum cutting angle of 45 degrees across the sole and
draw it back down the ski with quite a bit of pressure. Again you should feel some bits of metal on your fingers. Remember not to go over
the same bits but stop the file if you want to rearrange things.
Oil the carborundum up and do the same on the edges and the sole that you have done with the file. This can be done quite
lightly and is only intended to smooth off the burrs made by the file’s rougher treatment. Remember to keep it as flat as possible. You can
now just blunt off the first six inches at the tips very lightly with the carborundum held at 45 degrees across the edges. This means
that the skis won’t cut into the ice too quickly at the beginning of a turn. I’ve never noticed if this works but the purist theoretician in
me says it does, so there we go.
Scraping the sole comes next. Take the decorator’s scraper between forefinger and thumb of both hands and draw it up the
sole of the ski at about 45 degrees. Everything on this job seems to be done at 45 degrees so for a change let’s say 35 degrees. You will be
using the long side of the scraper to do this of course. The scraper’s sharp edge should shave off small amounts of the plastic sole. If you
bend the scraper up in the middle fractionally then you will get a minimal concave sole which can theoretically mean a faster edge set, but
again I can’t say I’ve ever noticed the difference between doing it and not doing it. Scraping the sole is really only done to clear up the
mess made by the file and to equalise the amount of edge taken off by the file.
Finally wipe the skis with that valuable rag to get off any loose bits of metal, oil, and plastic.
It goes without saying but I'll say it anyway. If you want to avoid all this hassle leave your skis in the ski shop
overnight and ask the technician to do it for you. It may cost a few bucks but will give you more time to read The Secrets of Better
Skiing.
SNOW WITH AN AIR TEMPERATURE ABOVE 0 DEGREES
(All temperatures in Celsius)
Fresh snow
Melting snow affects the running of the skis in two ways. The first time that it melts it slows the skis down. Freshly
fallen overnight snow late in the season has this effect as the air temperature rises above freezing in the morning. Rain does the same job
as it falls on to fresh snow. If you can imagine skiing through strawberry jam then you will know the stuff I’m talking about. Off piste can
be hell in this awful stuff if the air temperature is above freezing. As it has not been packed the skis go into it a few inches. It is very
bad for the knee ligaments and the ego, and should be avoided. If this crud has been flattened it also tends to hold water, which makes it
even less attractive. In these sort of conditions and if it’s raining as well, you’d be better off going round an art gallery for the day.
Old snow
(sometimes Spring snow)
Once this snow has thawed and refrozen for a few days and nights, however, it takes on the consistency of sugar when it
starts to thaw again. This type of snow presents the least friction of any type to a ski, and as long as only the top few centimetres are
melting, it provides an excellent surface to ski on as I have mentioned before. One memorable run down through the woods in Verbier
Switzerland was on this sugar snow. It was early spring and the birds were singing, and we were skiing in bright sunshine and rain
showers! We were hot anyway and in shirtsleeves, so the rain had a pleasant cooling effect.
With old sugar snow the melt water drops down through the existing snow and runs away, so no water appears to lie
on the surface. I say ‘appears’ in italics because only the top layer is actually melting and so there is water, but only from
around the crystals on the surface.
Note also that snow melts near rocks quicker than on open ground. The rock conducts heat from all its surfaces and snow
three or four feet down for maybe six inches all round the rock will melt. This causes a pleasant little trap for the unwary as they can ski
up to a warm looking, moss covered rock for a sit down, take their skis off, and schlunk - they drop some way into a nice warm hole.
Remember that snow insulates itself and reflects heat so until the air temperature gets quite high it is only the top
layer that melts. As the temperature rises the snow begins to melt further down. At this stage off piste skiing becomes impractical and even
dangerous. Solid bridges over crevasses will start to weaken and glaciers become off limits. Added to this there is a higher risk of
avalanches later in the day.
Remember that all snow is at freezing point or lower.
SNOW FROM 0 TO -10 DEGREES
This is the stuff that you see on holiday brochures. On the piste and compacted by a machine and countless ski tracks, it
provides a reliable and consistent surface with low friction and just enough give to help braking manoeuvres. You know the sort of stuff I
mean.
Off piste and untouched with a little hut in the background and all white and sparkly, it will vary in consistency
depending on wind and position. As you stand by the lodge window at night mesmerised by the snowflakes falling past the window all you can
think about is the metre of powder tomorrow. The cold air tripping along behind such a dump will usually guarantee good conditions, although
that amount of snow does need some time to stabilise before it is safe. As I mention in the chapter on avalanches the crystals need to
settle into each other so that the snow condenses and it becomes one huge interconnected carpet of angel poop.
If you look out of the window and the snow is coming down almost horizontally that means the wind is blowing, or you’re
lying on the floor after too much gluwein; this puts a slightly different slant on things out there on the mountainside. I’m referring to
the wind not the gluwein.
On any windward slope the snow crystals will be compressed by the wind into a solid crust, whose thickness will depend on
the length of the storm and the amount of the snowfall, and quite possibly the temperature at which they fell. If there is already some nice
powder snow that fell before the storm, there may only be a thin crust, which you will probably break through. It is still heavy duty
survival skiing. Some people can power through it like an arctic ice breaker applying normal deep snow technique, but I usually have to make
quite violent jump turns until I can find a way out of it. A nice caramelised creme brulee in a good restaurant is infinitely preferable.
The worst kind of this rubbish is the crust that feels like skiing on a hard piste and bears your weight for a while then
all of a sudden gives way. You fall through the hole, stop dead, and are catapulted out of your skis. They nose dive into the deep snow
below, and you spend the rest of a nice sunny morning looking for them.
A solid weight bearing crust is skiable but the rills formed by the wind do not make it that brilliant. If the crust is
four or five inches thick then you can always make an igloo. All you need to do is cut blocks about 18 inches by 9 with your skis (don’t
forget to take your tape measure with you) and jam the blocks together in a spiral, not forgetting to slant them in as you go.....
On any leeward slope out of the wind there could be some excellent powder skiing, not only from fallen snow but also from
spin drift blown from the windward slopes. The tell tale sign of good hidden powder like this is the cornice formed at the watershed - or
should it be ‘snowshed’ - of a windy and sheltered slope.
I have a feeling that if anyone from Utah or the nether regions of the Canadian Rockies is reading this, they will be a
little bemused by the efforts us Europeans make to find good powder. Well the truth is that after a few days off piste in the Alps gets a
bit crowded and can become skied out pretty quickly. We also don’t get as much snow as you guys. I’m currently thinking about skiing in
China...
SNOW LOWER THAN -10 DEGREES
If you are skiing when the temperature is this low then you are going to know about it. All exposed parts are going to
feel really cold at speed and there is the danger of localised frostbite. The snow crystals are sharp enough to slow the skis down (which
may or may not be a good idea!), and you will have to wax the bottom of the skis to get them to run properly.
If the air temperature is lower than -20 then you will have to be careful with your breathing as unthawed ice and snow
crystals could give you a sore throat.
RETURN TO CHAPTER START
GLOSSARY