Gimmie Light

The best kind of lighting for snowboarding: full sunlight. The second best: artificial lights in full power. I’m going to expand on my previous comments on night sliding. In most cases, there will be a limited number of runs open. It’s going to be colder out. And you can’t see as well. Still, there’s something appealing about the night life. The lights cheat the darkness by exposing the snow. Instead of sitting in front of the TV, you’re being active. You also see the terrain with new eyes. But what of those in-between hours, especially on cloudy days? When the sky is merely dark gray, not black? When the lights have been turned on, but they’re not terribly visible? Yuck.

The other day I bought a pair of night vision goggles. Sounds pretty cool, like something that Army Rangers would use to hunt down the bad guys. Extend your capabilities, and all that. And for the most part, they worked. On occasion I had to lift my goggles up (while riding the lift) to let some condensation out. But they worked flawlessly on the slopes during 3 hours of night skiing.

I had figured that I would get just plain old clear plastic, but the shop owner said that these items, with a greenish tint, were specifically designed to filter out the glare of man-made lights. They did seem to work better than the old amber shades that I use for bright light. Then again, maybe it was a placebo effect. I’ll have to do a comparison sometime.