General snow stuff

[Legion]

I don't know what the splitboard setup is like but many ski touring bindings don't have a flat position and are therefore not great on the flats. Like walking in stilettos, apparently. You get sore legs holding yourself from tripping forward.

[offshore1]

Dude. You're in Maryland. It ain't the Andes.
That said, onya booya for getting out there , my North American compadre.

[alakaboo]

Got that right, I looked into doing an avalanche course and I'd have to drive across 3 states to even find something that can slide.

Leej, splitboard bindings are fairly flat, because of the amount of hardware required to create the front pivot point.

[alakaboo]

Did some more meadow skipping today.

The snow was pretty sketchy, with an icy crust in the middle.

[Legion]

Haha that looks horrible.

[alakaboo]

It sounded even worse!

[Legion]

I remember certain days out of the couple of thousand I've logged. Funnily enough some of the remembered days are days like that, for all the wrong reasons. A day touring when I had 1000m of impossible breakable crust on crappy ancient touring gear. A day of frozen rain crust in British Columbia.

Modern gear has made that stuff easier but it's still not easy.

[alakaboo]

Yeah my most memorable days are getting caught by sluff in Oregon and washed over a cliff, and heading into slack country in Japan to find we were the first for the season and it was a chest-deep hike out.

Got above the rain crust today.

[Cranked]

There's bushfires all around us, the day is heating rapidly, 70kph winds are going to fan the flames, we're locked down.... what a wonderful vision boo

[Legion]

That looks much better. Half a metre's not bad.

[alakaboo]

Yeah it was surprisingly good.
Was thinking it might be closer to 20-25 but it really started coming down yesterday evening.
The storm moved north faster than expected too, I was going to go south but changed plans.

Enough snow that I could get off the fire roads and into the woods on some hiking trails.

There's another 30cms on the long range charts. Which probably means rain. But if not I have an objective in mind with some proper angle to it.
Or I might do the quarantine protocol and head over the border.

[alakaboo]

Went to Blue Knob yesterday, it was the first decent hill I've seen on the east coast.
Did about 20k feet of vertical, until my neighbour took a spill and hurt himself enough to want to head home, but not seriously.

Up to knee deep in the trees, and hardly anyone headed very far off the trails because they don't have powder skis. Got fresh turns on the last run.
Apparently it's the best season in 10 years.

Lots of fallen trees, I think because it's a state park they can't clear timber. Coupled with the low average snowfall it means you have to really pick your lines.

No photos, it was -11 so I kept my gloves on.

[foamy]

Nico Porteous, the 19 years old New Zealand freestyle skier, won the men’s half pipe world champs about 10 days ago.
Here is his winning running run. The feature is his back to back double somersaulting 1620s. One right spinning and the other left spinning. I heard him interviewed. Doing it both directions seemed to be what left him most chuffed. The left spin is his natural spinning direction. He broke his foot skateboarding five weeks before the event.

https://youtu.be/vQpuFm1fCds

[Cranked]

Fcuking wow!

[alakaboo]

That just looks silly.

Skis look stupid in the pipe. It's the one part of the mountain where they don't belong.