The Ultimate in Powder

No doubt about it, skiing and snowboarding can be expensive. Perhaps the most expensive way to find snow for sliding is to take helicopter trips into the backcountry in pursuit of powder.

I just received an e-mail for one such trip. An eight-day excursion in British Columbia costs $8,000, reduced from $9,800. It sounds delightful, though perhaps the accommodations are more upscale than I need. All that snow should be enough.

Varieties of Snow and Snow Sliders

You've heard the cliches about Eskimos and the number of words for snow? Well, if there are hundreds of words for snow, there must be at least a dozen types of snow sliders.

We don't get much powder here in the Midwest; much of the snow is put on the ground through snowmaking equipment. When snow does come down, it's often quickly subjected to the grooming machines. It seems a crime against snowy goodness to tame powder into submission, and I'm not sure why ski areas do it. One reason is that many guests actually don't like powder. Hard to believe, but true, some don't. Another reason is that powder dumps are rare. So when the powder is inevitably chopped up and pushed around, it can end up in difficult-to-manage piles, so ... might as well get it cleaned up right now.

Some of my favorite snow companions are skiers who actually seek out groomers, and find powder a challenge rather than a pleasure. Sometimes, then, I'm faced with the choice of being a "good citizen" and seeking out my preferred terrain.

At other times, like this recent trip, the choice doesn't exist, since the groomers don't exist. That means being in a strange position: I'm delighting in the fresh stuff, while my companions struggle through it.

A Powder Morning in the (City) Park

So we finally got a powder day. And all I got is crud.

People who don't live in Minnesota think that because it's cold here, we must get a lot of snow.

Not true.

Unlike western Michigan, Cleveand, or Buffalo and western New York state, we don't have one of the Great Lakes off to the west. Hence, the air that comes from the west is usually dry, which is not a really good thing if you would like to see a lot of snow.

In addition, when snow does fall here, it doesn't stay powder very long. Most skiers and riders aren't used to it, and since it's not regularly replenished, it turns to crud, and eventually bumps, very quickly. (One "horror" I witnessed: riding on a layer of "dust on crust," what usually passes for powder here, while watching a groomer work the other side of the hill, taking out all the powder before it was even tracked out!)

But yesterday, I woke up to 9 or 10 inches of snow in the driveway. As I shoveled out, I was listening to a podcast, during which someone estimated that thanks to labor-saving devices, the modern American has the equivalent of 300 servants at his disposal.

A few minutes after that, my next-door neighbor came over with his snow blower (!) and cleared out the three-quarters of the driveway that was left.

Unsure of the road conditions so early in the day, I walked over to a local park, and earned some runs through walking up the hill. The experience brought back some elements of childhood, to be sure, but not exactly the thrill. The hill should have been steeper for the amount of snow on the ground. I had always wondered what it would be like to take some runs on that space, in powder. I got the chance, which isn't to say that it's worth doing again.

One thing that might be worth repeating is building a kicker. I see kids building kickers are ski areas all that time, but the snow there is usually so hard that going off them is not appealing.

But today ... in that soft stuff. Why not?

One key word in snowboarding is "progression," which means little-by-little, taking on bigger challenges. I started out with a very small kicker, and ended up with ... a small kicker, perhaps 18 inches tall. Slide down to the kicker, jump off, ride out, walk up, add to the kicker, walk up some more, and then repeat.

Eventually I got to perhaps 2 feet in the air, though even that might be an overly generous estimate. What I lacked in altitude I made up for in style. Not "stylish," but merely good form. I find myself bending at that waist whenever I get the slightest air, and of course, that's bad news. Bad because it puts me in a position to fall. But on the descents over the kicker, I managed to bend my knees, not my waist, and I had a good jump every time.

Now if I just had plenty of powder to try this again and again.

It's unlikely that I'll get very good at jumps, though. If I ever had that much snow to play with, it would probably happen only on a big mountain. And in that case, playing around with a kicker would be a waste of time. I'd be cruising, taking in the acreage and thousands of feet of vertical descent.