DEEP POWDER CLIMBS AND THE TRENCH PROBLEM
13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production
After this lesson you can read a climb before you commit to it, keep the track planing instead of digging, recognise a failing climb early enough to turn out, and recover a machine that has buried itself on a slope without hurting yourself or exhausting the group.
The Technique
- Read the climb from the bottom and read it properly, because every decision that matters is made before you touch the throttle. Find the fall line, and understand that it is rarely where it looks from below. Look at where the snow has been wind loaded and where it has been scoured, because those two will carry your track completely differently and the boundary between them is often invisible. Note the aspect and the time of day. Identify your top-out, which is the place you intend to arrive and stop, and be honest about whether you can actually see it or are assuming it. Most importantly, identify your exit, which is the place you will turn out to if the climb does not go. If you cannot name the exit from the bottom, you are not ready to ride the climb.
- Set up the approach on the flat below and enter with speed already in hand. A snowbike climbs on momentum plus thrust, and the momentum has to come from somewhere other than the slope itself. Build your speed on the run-in, choose an entry angle rather than attacking straight up the fall line, and get the machine planing before the gradient starts to bite. Avoid the natural gully or drainage line, which collects the deepest and least supportive snow and which funnels you into a place where turning out is hardest. The convention is to climb a shoulder or a rib rather than the middle of a bowl, because a rib usually gives you firmer snow and a turnout onto both sides.
- Understand the difference between a track that is planing and a track that is digging, because it is the central problem in snowbiking. A planing track is moving over the surface, compacting a thin layer beneath it and converting most of the engine's output into forward motion. A digging track has broken through into unsupportive snow and is now converting the engine's output into vertical excavation. The transition between those two states is not gradual, and it is not always announced by wheelspin the way a dirt bike announces losing traction. The difference is track speed versus ground speed. When those two numbers diverge, the track is cutting downward and the machine is on its way to being buried, and the countdown from that moment to a genuinely stuck machine is short.
- Throttle discipline, the turnout on a steep face, and getting a buried machine out downhill
- 5 more technique steps
- The 4 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 biking - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.
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