Part One
Beyond meringue: Why you should know the difference between fresh snow and powder.
The
next time it snows, catch a snowflake in your hand. Look at how small,
how fragile, how elhemeral. Now think how many snowflakes it takes to
fill the mountains. It seems nothing like a stroke of the divine.
Any
one not completely rocked by the mysteriesand magic of our frozen white
friend is clearly isn't thinking enough about it. Snow is one of the
most amazinf substance on the planet, a thing of beauty and we awe that
never stops changing from the moment of it's birth to its death and
raincanation as meltwater. Its wild and transforming properties are at
the heart of the starngley compelling experience of deep powder skiing.
The
snow is the thing. Snow is, of course, what separates powder skiing
from regular skiing, what makes it almost an entierly different sport
from the groomed trails and it dosen't take much mountain savvy to see
why experience of slipping silently into the white room is world away
from the aggressive arcing of the hardpacked carve. In most skiing,
you're in it, and therin lies the kay: What separates deep-powder
conceptually, aesthetically, and practically from every day skiing and,
indeed from every other sport, is the immersive, over-the-head, in-deep
cover up.
Only scuba diving and prehaps surfing offer a similar
link between the players and the field, but they're so farfrom the
alpine experience that comparisonis superficial at best. It's the
rhythmic in and out of powder, the being a part of instead of apart
from, that is the little miracle that makes deep-powder so transcendent.
A
faw layers of nylon might separte the skiers physically from the snow,
but when seen as a system, as a dynamic enterprise of motion and
emotion, they are one.
Part Two
The medium is the message, the powder is the story. The quality of the
snow. A truly religious powder experience first requires that the snow
must be deep. If you can feel firm snow beneath your skis, you're
bottom feeding. The skiing might be good, but if it isn't bomtomless it
dosn't count as deep powder, at least not in my book.
Next,it
must be legitimate powder snow. That is, it must be light, dry and
powdery. It drives me nuts when skiers and snowboarders confuse fresh
snow with powder. Don't call it powder just because its untracked.
Freshies can just as easily be a maringue, glop, or cement. Powder is
powder, light and delicate. At its best, its about four per-cent water
by volume - 96 percent air and it explodes when you hit-it. It dust
your chest, coats your face, streams from your shoulders. It lingers in
the air in your wake. And there are few sights more inspiring than
vapor trail of cold smoke, a cloud of nanocrystalsdancing skyward, then
hanging in the air and drifting slowly back down to earth, a snowman in
microcosm.
Part Three Comeing Soon.
