 Poster: A snowHead
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I was suddenly reminded by some SH mentioning they wish to get down the piste as quickly as possible and go back to a chairlift station. The discussion was related to safety, speed, helmet, listening to MP3.......etc
Now there must a different goals a skier wants to achieve in a skiing holiday so lets talk about this one.
Quantity - When I started I would want to ski as many slopes as possible, by going there as early as possible and stopping as late as the chairlifts would permit. Typically I would even try to reach the highest point just before that lift was shut down and then ski back to the bottom in a more relaxing speed. As I needed to ski as much as I could so I would also ski as fast as I could too. Thus I was “in a hurry“ whenever I was on a slope.
I believe my behaviour is not alone. As practice makes perfect a UK-based skier, for not having a lot of skiing opportunity in an foreign country, would naturally wishes to maximize the chance to improve himself/herself while on a skiing holiday.
Thus I would say this can be a phase a person could undergo while trying to learn to ski.
Quality - When one has done enough of skiing then one can become selective on piste condition, length of queues, crowd, scenery, food in the mountain, apres, chairlifts, value for money or luxury facilities, quality of accommodation, transfer time................... The urge to ski as much as possible could subside. In extreme cases when the piste condition is poor or the weather is bad one would stay away and not bother with the ski pass already paid for the day.
This is not much different from the European skiers who would go out skiing in a weekend after knowing there has been a nice dump of snow, web cams showing near perfect condition, weather forecasting everything is right, nice and thick snow depths reported by the resort web site and it is time to make a move.
There will be groups of skiers who want both quantity and quality but desire to ski as much as possible, which necessitating a "in-a-hurry" appearance on a slope may be a phase one eventually grows out off.
My purpose of this thread is to see if there is a connection between the safety issues we are discussing with skiers who is in the "in-a-hurry" phase of their skiing. The point of interest is when a skier is in a hurry his/her behaviour can be significantly different to one skiing leisurely on a slope.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I think you may have a point. Certainly remember having a NEED to try to ski non stop in the early days.
Not so much now, I just appreciate being in the mountains and tend to take it a bit easier - working more on technique rather than "how many km's can i ski today".
That said, because I don't get more than 1 or 2 (if I'm lucky) trips a year, the weather would need to be SERIOUSLY bad to stop me from going out!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Quality for me, although my definition doesn't appear in your list. My definition of quality is to ski a wide a range of terrain as I can: quiet pistes I can ski quickly, steeper terrain (on and off piste) that challenges me in different ways, bumps runs (easy and hard), tree-lined pistes, open bowls, off-piste through the trees, long runs without needing to catch a lift back up after 10 minutes of skiing, away-from-the crowd off-piste opportunities that aren't going to kill me, etc.
None of that has got anything to do with skiing in a rush from dawn til dusk. I don't feel I've grown out of skiing in a hurry, in fact as I've got better as I skier my speeds have increased a lot. And I really can't see how a quantity v. quality debate (which in itself is a false dichotomy IMO) has got anything to do with safety issues (which have got much more to do with personal responsibility, or lack thereof).
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Quality over quantity every time - I don't feel the need to have my ego massaged by clocking up loads of K's on a day with the sort of conditions you wouldn't put your dog outside in, or when the snow conditions resemble my freezer when the door is left ajar....
I also question the vast majority of those who claim first lift to last lift every single day - I happily admit to not subscribing to this particular school, yet still find myself with more time on the mountain. Are you sure you have adjusted your watches correctly to allow for altitude? The first lift is generally before 10:00 and there are certainly lifts after 15:00 - although many seem to believe this counts as a full day, and feel the need to brag loudly in the bar afterwards.....I suspect they are also the sort of people who drive Porsches during their mid-life crisis 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Quality: I want to feel relaxed and to enjoy it, not be stressed out trying to achieve some quantity based goal.
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I certainly used to be Quantity, but I'm trying real hard to move to Quality. Trouble is I have a few beers, start perusing the piste map and before long I've hatched a plan for a 40k route across 3 countries, using 72 lifts and which leaves no time for lunch! 
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Quality over quantity every time.
Thankfully when it comes to powder I can have my cake and eat it in the Niseko area of Hokkaido, Japan.
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Being out in the fresh air, beautiful scenery, convenience to actually get on the slopes. It doesn't worry me if I have to ski the same slope twice!!!!! Trying to perfect technique rather than speed. Most important of all; have fun.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I measure quantity in terms of cms of fresh snow, rather than kms of piste. I'd prefer to come back from a trip saying "I skiied 30cm of fresh powder every day" than say that I skiied 30km every day.
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I like to ensure that ski all of the marked pistes in a resort and tick them all off the map so I guess quantity. However, if a piste is particularly enjoyable then I will often ski it several times until I become bored with it and then move on. I don't ski any pistes particularly quickly unless they are empty or I've done them several times before as I want to enjoy the surroundings as much as the skiing itself.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Never mind the quality, feel the width ... is apparently what Jewish tailors say when showing you some cloth, or maybe a piste.
I'm with Fox. Never mind the quantity, feel the depth.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Either would do me, as long as I can ski.
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I think Roy Hockley has a good point too - it's fun, not an exercise with targets to be hit.
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You know it makes sense.
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Wear The Fox Hat,
Powder is easy to find in USA than in Europe I was told. Thus it may boil down to choice of resorts.
If you want it fresh too then it is weather dependent and would this not be a matter of luck?
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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It used to be quantity, I'd be out on the glaciers in October skiing icy broken pistes the locals wouldn't get out of bed for. Suppose now with a young family and less free time I pick my days more. A few years back I managed around 35 days and on ca 25 of them I was putting down fresh powder tracks.  I don't get to see the exoctic powder locations at the moment (Utah, Japan etc - nothing outside Austria really) but if it really dumps I just take a day off work and drive a couple of hours for a day of freshies.
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Poster: A snowHead
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saikee, weather dependent and luck come into it, as does planning - choose a resort that gets an average of 10m of fresh snow a year and has few lifts, rather than one that maybe gets 5m of snow but has loads of lifts. So, if the lift capacity is 10,000 per hour, it will have 1/10 of the number of people on the slopes as one with a capacity of 100,000 per hour.
Fewer lifts = fewer people on the slopes
More snow = more snow.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I like to ski as much of the day as I can.
But I'm not too worried about what distance I cover in that time, so I'm not rushing down the piste to get to the next lift.
So it is quantity in terms of time, but quality in terms of what that I am looking for.
Although being a one trip per year person, I will ski in poor conditions, or (as this year) when I shouldn't really due to injury, because I do want to maximise the time, even if that is at the expense of quality.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| Wear The Fox Hat wrote: |
More snow = more snow. |
Perfect reasoning once again, Your Excellency
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Be nice to have more admissions on Quantity as this may be in the majority.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I don't care how much i ski, it's how much i ski well. I'd be happy on one piste all day long as long as i'm making great turns, exciting myself and FEELING how great this particular session is.
Nothing worse that being at the top of the toppest lift with crappy conditions below and knowing that you might well clock up 10km getting home, but none of it will be fun.
It's not quantity OR quality, but quantity OF quality that is the benchmark...
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Less is more, more or less
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| Wear The Fox Hat wrote: |
More snow = more snow. |
Perfect reasoning once again, Your Excellency |
Hard to argue against it!
...but now I'll throw a spanner in the works... (i.e. make a potentially argumentative point)
Based on my (kinda) made up figures above:
Resort A has 10m of snowfall a year, and an uplift capacity of 10,000 per hour. That means 1mm of annual snow fall per person per hour
Resort B has 5m of snowfall a year, and an uplift capacity of 100,000 per hour. That works out at 0.05mm of annual snow fall per person per hour.
That means that resort A has 20 times more potential of a person finding fresh snow than resort B.
Now, let's say, for arguments sake, that resort B has 300km of slopes.
Two ways of looking at it:
1. If resort A has 30km of slopes, then it will be just as busy as resort B (1/10 the uplift capacity),
but more interestingly (argumentatively)
2. Resort A only needs to have 15km of slopes to have the same amount of snow per person as mega resort B with it's 300km of slopes and massive uplift capacity.
(edit: got my cm & mm mixed up, sorry!)
Last edited by Then you can post your own questions or snow reports... on Thu 14-02-08 11:47; edited 1 time in total
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You're also stating the argument for skiing very late or very early in the season, in a big ski area, when a sudden 50cm smothering gives you quantity, quality ... and nobody to be seen.
But you have to be lucky!
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Wear The Fox Hat,
Your averages may have the following difficulties in the practical applications
(1) Not every resort will be able to reach the limits of its lift capacities. There are many resorts with empty seats a lot of times
(2) The average snow may not fall at all during your stay at the resort.
(3) The weather may thin down the snowbase at different rates at different resorts. You need a good snowbase to enjoy any new snow fall.
(4) You can get the best snow at the top of a mountain especially in glaciers, where the snow can be presented to you horizontally possibly in a -30 degree C ambience. The skiing condition is not the same experience in a wind-shield valley.
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| saikee wrote: |
| (1) Not every resort will be able to reach the limits of its lift capacities. There are many resorts with empty seats a lot of times |
True, some resorts manage lift loading a lot better than others, but we can only go by what the resort claims to be their capacity if that is something important in deciding where to go.
| saikee wrote: |
| (2) The average snow may not fall at all during your stay at the resort. |
True, but looking at historic data can give a good guide. The average may not fall in one resort, and it may not fall in the other either, but if I'm looking at snowfall, I'd choose one with more rather than less, on the principle that there is more!
| saikee wrote: |
| (3) The weather may thin down the snowbase at different rates at different resorts. You need a good snowbase to enjoy any new snow fall. |
True, going for higher resorts helps with that, so resort A has a base at 2,500m, resort B is around 1,750m I believe.
| saikee wrote: |
| (4) You can get the best snow at the top of a mountain especially in glaciers, where the snow can be presented to you horizontally possibly in a -30 degree C ambience. The skiing condition is not the same experience in a wind-shield valley. |
Trees are also a great shield, and resort A has trees up to 3,200m (resort B the trees stop around 2,000m)
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Quality or quantity? As the fancy takes me. Some days I like doing lots of miles. Some days I'll stop for coffee. Some days I like to carve on motorway pistes. Some days I'll challenge myself on ice or in crud.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I can easily get bored with skiing so need to find interesting things to do.... so quality, for me
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You know it makes sense.
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Both. I want a large quantity of good quality skiing.
The more I ski off piste, the more I realise that you have to work to earn your turns, and the ski in and out can be part of the fun, but it's not always great quality, and often quite a lot slower than zooming around the resort.
On piste, some days it's nice to take it easy, others it's quite fun to cane it round the resort getting as much done as possible.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I don't find them opposites. I want quality skiing but I want to fit in as much of it as I can.
Since (as people probably know by now) I ski mostly off piste, quality has a very real meaning. I am happy to spend a while climbing up to get to a route which has untracked powder, rather than doing more hours on crust or breakable crust or crud. But then, who wouldn't if they had the choice. However if I start the day late or finish early, or spend a great deal of the day standing around or have a very long lunch - I feel cheated. I only have 3 weeks a year to do what I enjoy most so I want to do as much as I can. This is my problem with touring - I can't afford so much time walking just to get a little good skiing (which sometimes turns out not to be). If I lived out there I would tour (I understand why guides like doing it)
So for me it is "The greatest amount of the greatest quality" (to borrow from the Utilitarians) . If we could give happiness and quality a number no doubt you could write an equation: a x q = H. Those who say they just want quality seem to me to just be rationalising the loss of the passion of youth.
Incidentally, it may be the case that some places in North America have more powder fall out of the sky, but the much greater areas of lift served off piste in Europe means you can find powder long after the last fall. I was disappointed by how little powder I managed to ski at Whistler, considering new snow fell the night I arrived. It got skied out in a few hours. Yet in Europe guides have found me whole valleys of fresh-track skiing a couple of weeks after the last fall.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Quality for me every time in terms of both my skiing and apres ski. I'll always be on the very first lift on a powder day, but I'll probably ski hard for the first few hours and then take a leisurely lunch break when the fresh stuff gets more skied out or I'm just knackered! Then cruise the pistes for a couple of hours in the afternoon and chill out. Quantity for me simply means number of days skiing per year. It's the strictly 1 week per year keen holiday skiers who normally adopt the non-stop first to last lift charge, stuffing a couple of energy bars down on the lift. Not for me thanks.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| snowball wrote: |
| I was disappointed by how little powder I managed to ski at Whistler, considering new snow fell the night I arrived. It got skied out in a few hours. |
Whistler is a big international touristy resort. Try going somewhere more off-beat in Canada and it's a very different story.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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for me it's qulaity rather than quantity, although i do like to explore the resort and was very unimpressed with ESF on one holiday who didn't move us off the same 2 sloped until the last day. Personally for me at my level (crap) it is about the whole holiday experience so having a rest for an hour whilst having a beer in the sunshine is part of my day, and also those crusiy runs through the trees taken at a slow pace is also important to me. Maybe when i am a better skier and more confident to tackle any slope no matter what it rhows at me i will become more hardcore and be aiming to ski as much KM per day as possible
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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If I just wanted kms I would be skiing on piste. But if I skied off piste slower than I can - with fair confidence of not falling, I wouldn't be pushing myself and it wouldn't be so exciting. However if I felt I had skied with bad style, even if I had got down quite fast I would also be dissatisfied - it would probably be another way I had not pushed myself. (I must admit, though, that I'm not an elegant skier, but I am quite an efficient skier.)
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| uktrailmonster wrote: |
| snowball wrote: |
| I was disappointed by how little powder I managed to ski at Whistler, considering new snow fell the night I arrived. It got skied out in a few hours. |
Whistler is a big international touristy resort. Try going somewhere more off-beat in Canada and it's a very different story. |
Very true, both views.
In "many" (especially well-known) NA resorts, inbound powder got skied out quite fast, despite the seemingly low number of skiers. Contrast that to some European resort where majority of skiers stay on piste and left the perfect powder on the side of the piste un-touched for days.
On the other hand, there're also MANY lesser known resorts in the western part of NA where the snow was equally abundunt. I was at Canyon last weekend. 3 days after the storm, we still found un-touched powder within view of the lift!!! (had to hike to it though, but not a long hike)
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Width. Every time.
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| uktrailmonster wrote: |
| snowball wrote: |
| I was disappointed by how little powder I managed to ski at Whistler, considering new snow fell the night I arrived. It got skied out in a few hours. |
Whistler is a big international touristy resort. Try going somewhere more off-beat in Canada and it's a very different story. |
hmm like Fernie? maybe more off-beat still
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| abc wrote: |
| I was at Canyon last weekend. 3 days after the storm, we still found un-touched powder within view of the lift!!! (had to hike to it though, but not a long hike) |
Canyons, UT?
Which lift? 9990?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Yep!
But instead of droping in after the climb, we traverse all the way over pass the high point. The snow was un-touched on Saturday. And when we hiked out on Sunday, we just went a few feet beyond our own track the day before, there's still no new tracks from anyone else.
On Monday (windy and I was tired from both skiing and gettting up from falls in powder), I could still see only the 5 tracks we made the previous two days, partially filled in by the new snow blown in by the wind overnight.
(After Aspen and Canyons, I don't think I'll ever ski a resort without hooking up with a "local" in the future. The "quantity" of terrain NOT shown on piste maps simply blown me away)
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FAQ
