SNOW SPORTS · Intermediate

READING OFF-PISTE TERRAIN

10 min · Full library · written from fifteen years in the terrain

The point

After this lesson you can look at an ungroomed slope and predict where the good snow, the bad snow and the hazards are before committing a single turn.

Half the answer, free

The Technique

  1. Snow is a history book. Wind, sun and temperature since the last snowfall wrote it. Read the last three days of weather before reading the slope.
  2. Aspect: in the southern hemisphere, south-facing slopes hold cold, dry snow longest; north faces get cooked into crust and slush cycles. Reverse it for BC and Japan.
  3. Wind signs: smooth, rounded pillows and firm chalky patches mean wind-packed snow. Rippled, scoured surfaces ride hard. Leeward rolls hold the soft stuff, and also load avalanche slopes.
Still under the glass
  • 3 more technique steps
  • The 3 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
  • The drill that builds the reflex
  • The safety non-negotiables

It opens when you book a trip that runs snow sports - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.

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First Tracks

New lessons, new film and new Intel land after every Recon. First Tracks reads it before anyone else.

← Steeps: Body Position & Speed Co…Park Introduction: Jumps & Rails →

← Full snow sports curriculum

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Read this before you send

These sports kill people. Not rarely, and not only the reckless - every season they kill riders who were experienced, fit, well equipped and doing everything properly. That is the honest starting position and everything else we do sits on top of it.

The mountain does not know who you are. Snow releases on people with twenty years in it. Machines roll on riders who have done that line a hundred times. Water, rock, trees and other people are indifferent to how good you have become. Every time you go out you are accepting a real chance that it goes wrong, and no amount of skill removes that chance - it only changes the odds.

What that looks like in these disciplines, plainly: avalanche burial and asphyxiation, being crushed under a machine, head and spinal injuries from falls and impacts, drowning, hypothermia, and collisions with trees, rocks and other riders.

We work in remote country, so distance is part of it. A serious injury usually means hours before a helicopter can reach you, and weather sometimes means no helicopter at all. Help being close is not a feature of any trip we run.

This is exactly why we prepare the way we do. Training before you ride, gear standards, minimum party sizes, people who know the ground, and a willingness to call a day off. All of it is about improving your odds and making the group capable of looking after itself. None of it makes anything safe, none of it makes anyone competent, and passing our training is not a qualification. Anybody who tells you they can make this safe is selling something.

Everyone out there is relying on everyone else having been honest about what they can actually do. If reading this has made you hesitate, that is worth listening to rather than talking yourself out of.

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