 Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| roga wrote: |
| ....The thing about whiteouts is they sure teach you to ski by feeling the terrain which is no bad thing to be honest ..... |
That's the thing about flat light. Whiteouts are more serious. In the near whiteout I was in, I could quite easily have been feeling the terrain - until it disappeared as I went over a cliff. Fotunately I was in an area where that was not going to happen - and with a guide who seemed to have a GPS in his head.
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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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Always worth skiing with a guide or host who knows the resort like that
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Last year, for an hour or so above Samoens and Morillon. It was okay but not hugely fun, and I was very glad I knew the runs like the back of my hand. Except I couldn't see the back of my hand ... In those conditions the only thing to do is head home and wait for better visibility.
There is of course a difference between flat light and a complete whiteout, but trees,or any fixed reference points, are essential to help navigate home of course. Even if you are navigating by touch.
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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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To replicate whiteout conditions, try skiing linked turns with your eyes closed, when the pistes are empty. Don't cheat, not even for a quarter second peek. It ain't easy, I once managed 7-8 turns but I was heading straight for some tricky offpiste when my friends shouted at me to stop.
(Actually, in a real whiteout, it may be better to close your eyes. You don't see anything anyway, and it removes a distraction).
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Anybody ever tried thermal imaging goggles in a whiteout?
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In the early nineties I was lucky enough to spend a reasonable amount of time at Red Mountain in BC, well known for its tree skiing. When they had reasonable snow whiteout conditions were never an issue as you would ski in the forest, and always have definition. These days we get to ski the forest in La Tania, also well known for tree skiing and also good fun. These are obviously very limited examples but IMO the North American resort is better when it comes to tree skiing.
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| mfj197 wrote: |
| Last year, for an hour or so above Samoens and Morillon. |
Know that feeling, had a day earlier this year which had visability Perce-Neige down to about 5m with snow blowing upwards off the ridge. Not being able to see the difference between the drop on either side, keeping enough speed to keep moving in the high wind and dodging fallers suddenly appearing out of the fog, the phrase 'Frozen hell-scape' was used once or twice.
Was great down in the trees towards Les Carroz though - lots of fresh and people were staying indoors. Cleared up into a nice day in the afternoon too.
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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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| mfj197 wrote: |
| Anybody ever tried thermal imaging goggles in a whiteout? |
no but now i want to so very very much... 
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| Quote: |
It does get challenging if it's a whiteout up there, but by god it shows you whether you can ski or not!
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very good point. I think some instructors get people skiing "blind". ie on a nice empty blue slope, close your eyes and do a few gentle turns. Very good practice for whiteouts, and extraordinarily difficult not to cheat and squint a bit.
Standing on one leg in your sitting room with your eyes closed is a good preparation....  When you've cracked that, do it whilst waving your arms about.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Richard_Sideways wrote: |
| mfj197 wrote: |
| Last year, for an hour or so above Samoens and Morillon. |
Know that feeling, had a day earlier this year which had visability Perce-Neige down to about 5m with snow blowing upwards off the ridge. Not being able to see the difference between the drop on either side, keeping enough speed to keep moving in the high wind and dodging fallers suddenly appearing out of the fog, the phrase 'Frozen hell-scape' was used once or twice.
Was great down in the trees towards Les Carroz though - lots of fresh and people were staying indoors. Cleared up into a nice day in the afternoon too. |
I wonder if it was the same day - it was Perce-Neige I was thinking of!
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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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| mfj197 wrote: |
I wonder if it was the same day - it was Perce-Neige I was thinking of! |
We were there 2nd week in March (blimey that seems so long ago now) Imagine P-N can catch quite a bit of weather on the right day!
For those who don't know the area, Perce-Neige is a narrowish run following a ridge which leads from the top of a chair on the Samoens side of the Grande Massife into the next valley of Les Carroz. We were boarding and there is a long narrow flat/slight incline section to the run with a drop off on both sides. When we got there cloud had rolled onto it and wind was whipping snow up off the right hand side of the drop.
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I've had one true whiteout day in about 20 years of skiing the Alps. Couldn't see a piste marker until you crashed into it. At one point, I stopped to get my bearings and was pretty shocked by a piste marker shooting up the hill at 20mph!  At that point, I decided it was probably time to call it a day. Lucky I was near the piste marker when it went past me otherwise I probably wouldn't have noticed I was moving and shot off a cliff or something.
Next day was fantastic though. About 30cm of fresh stuff and blue skys.
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You know it makes sense.
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| truffaut wrote: |
| After two visits I would suggest Obertauern gets a lot of flat light and semi whiteouts with few treelined runs to retreat to. Webcams transmitted on local tv showing multpile angles from neighbouring lower resorts showed much better visibility generally so there's definitely a price to be paid for guaranteed snow. Similarly lowish Zell am See was fine early last December but our instructor pointed out that Kaprun had been shrouded in cloud for much of the time. |
i concur.. i have had some shocking days up there. im sure one time i had stopped but didnt realise it..also enjoyed finding out i had been following the piste poles down on the wrong side .. on th eplus side tho your never far from a bar
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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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| achilles wrote: |
| roga wrote: |
| ....The thing about whiteouts is they sure teach you to ski by feeling the terrain which is no bad thing to be honest ..... |
That's the thing about flat light. Whiteouts are more serious. In the near whiteout I was in, I could quite easily have been feeling the terrain - until it disappeared as I went over a cliff. Fotunately I was in an area where that was not going to happen - and with a guide who seemed to have a GPS in his head. |
Yeah, it helps if you're within ski area boundaries and have some knowledge of the lay out of the place - luckily that's always been the case for me in Scotland when I've experienced these conditions in a bad way.
The freakiest experiences I've had were one time completely loosing all sense of what was down and what was up when I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face and I also sometimes have problems with my eyes in flat light so have to make sure I have the correct eye protection on at all times.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Quote: |
you would ski in the forest, and always have definition.
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then it wasn't a whiteout. 
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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 fell over side ways on Cairngorm summit some years back, I really did think I was moving slowly when in fact I wasnt moving at all, it was also accompanied by very bad nausea. I took my skis off and had a hot ribena while checking the map and gps, then walked off the hill until the vis' was better. I havent had true white-outs in Europe yet, guess Ive just been lucky, Scotland however has been a different kettle of fish 
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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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Someone mentioned skiing in a white-out with thermal image goggles on! would probably work great if there were other skiers around you who had better visibility. I have skied with NVG's on before and that is total poo-poo if its snowing or very misty as you cant see a thing due to all the white static on the screens!
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| thefatcontroller wrote: |
| schuss in boots had the experience of seeing me in a whiteout in La Plagne. I am a wreck, I feel queasy and want to vomit, bit like sea sickness. mrsfatcontroller has seen me a few times in whiteouts and finds it funny. I now head in once a whiteout starts, they terrify me. |
I've never been in a total whiteout, but we had very bad visibility one day in Le Deux Alpes - felt exactly as you describe, seasick! Absolutely hated it, couldn't seem to tell whether I was going downhill or along the flat, felt uphill some of the time. Wonder if it's related to getting car sick (which I do)?
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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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It's really crippling, that nausea/vertigo feeling. Very, very, few people can cope well with a total whiteout - I certainly can't, even on 100% familiar terrain. When people say things like "the trees always give you definition" you know they've not experienced a whiteout.
You end up not knowing which way is up, which way is down, and whether you are moving. You lose all points of reference. Horrendous. Thankfully it happens very rarely. I had never experienced a whiteout, in 20 years of skiing, before spending whole seasons in the mountains and even now, after 7 seasons, I've only had a couple of days when it came in like that. Then you're in the survival zone. When it's not snowing it's easier, because it's easy to tell when you've wandered off the piste. But when everywhere underfoot is much the same, navigation becomes virtually impossible. A GPS set which actually knew the pistes might be very useful in those conditions.
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pam w, last spring we got caught in nil visibility on a run I have skied dozens of times. I was really scared, and didn't even know which way I was facing at times. No sickness, but scary. There's no trees there either.
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yes, I've not personally felt sick in those conditions, but I can easily understand why people do. And trees wouldn't have made the slightest difference in conditions where - as someone said above - you know where the piste marker is because you just hit it.
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Targhee in WY and Schweitzer N. ID both get terrible whiteouts and it does get old getting up after falling over because you're making that hard turn only to find out you are standing still holding that turn and, it's just the wind going by giving the sense of motion. It does help with learning skiing with soft knees ready to extend or absorb in a microsecond, great fun. Without the wind no problem wind and blowing snow well see above.
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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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| Quote: |
Targhee in WY and Schweitzer N. ID both get terrible whiteouts and it does get old getting up after falling over because you're making that hard turn only to find out you are standing still holding that turn and, it's just the wind going by giving the sense of motion. It does help with learning skiing with soft knees ready to extend or absorb in a microsecond, great fun. Without the wind no problem wind and blowing snow well see above.
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just reading that gives me a reasonable impression of being in a "tourbillon" whiteout. 
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pam w, I suffer badly from the nausea thing and will tend not to ski in whiteouts - unless I can find good trees.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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under a new name,
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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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The first week I ever had skiing, was in Val d'Isere and a few of the days were White Outs. We still went out and it was disorienting, but I think it also helped loads for me and my confidence, because the next season It was QUITE the opposite (but a bad season for snow in general)
It is scary and disorienting though for me now, especially if I'm in a resort where I've never been before, which has always been the case so far for me.
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mfj197, it's the bit where you think you've stopped then hit a tree springing out of nowhere in the fog that gets me.
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You know it makes sense.
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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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pam w, I'm with under a new name. mrsfatcontroller does not get effected by the whiteout but I just want to die and at times I think I might. I can't tell uphill from downhill. I find it hard to stop and I can't tell gradients and when I do manage to stop I want to vomit. The tree lined runs in Les Arcs offer me no cover, if you suffer, you suffer. I now just go back to the apartment.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Quote: |
mrsfatcontroller does not get effected by the whiteout
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well she might not feel sick but presumably she still doesn't have the slightest idea where to go, or which way is up? It's interesting that giving the small number of "whiteout days" which have been experienced by people posting here who have skied a great deal, the majority of holiday skiers just doing a week or so a year might never have experienced one - and perhaps, if they're lucky, never will. It's the same with the "flat light" phenomenon. My sister in law, a nervous skier who had had clear blue skies for her first two weeks skiing was convinced, the first time the sun went in, and the definition therefore became less, that this was "flat light". It certainly wasn't.
My son knows the Espace Killy well, having spent two seasons there. I was skiing with him one day, of muggy cloudy drizzly weather, which was deteriorating, when he wanted to take a different route down, to do an off piste and very mogully alternative. I had no wish to do it so we arranged to meet at the bottom by the chair we were taking back up.
After a minute or two he came down the piste behind me - he'd stood at the top of where he knew the moguls to be and said the whole thing looked completely and utterly flat. Not a mogul in site. That's flat light and he had decided he couldn't ski invisible moguls.
I don't personally get sick or feel ill in a whiteout, though I've skied with people who do. I just feel completely lost and disorientated and have little or no idea where to head, whether I'm moving, or what direction to head in the hope of getting a glimpse of a piste marker. I also usually get very tired - because inevitably I head off the piste, often down a steep bank, and then have to climb back up again.
Frankly I'm not sure I believe anybody who says they enjoy skiing in a whiteout. They're either weird or they mistake poor vis for a whiteout.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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About 5 years ago in Mayerhofen i was in a whiteout.Totally disoriented,vertigo and then panic hits me hard.At that time i was hit from behind by snowborder and together we slide happily on our backsides to the piste marker.First time ever i was grateful that somebody hit me on the slope!
P.S: You can be in a whiteout in the mountains not only in snow.Rocks and trees are no helps,you are disoriented just the same.
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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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Not everywhere on a mountain gets whited out at once. If its whiteout up top - chances are there will be some lower runs with functional visibility or in trees will help to diffuse the fog. Sometimes the answer is to head high and stay up as inversions occur. Real whiteouts as pamw says are pretty rare and even the sitting it out for an hour in cafe can change the situation. No joy to be had in trying to ski in one though - survival skiing only.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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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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Had a few in my time, usually resolved by heading for the trees. By that, I don't mean tree-lined pistes (where I agree with previous posters that they don't help that much if it's a for-real whiteout) but off-piste riding between the trees, which can make days which are truly hideous on piste into some of the best ever. Had one memorable trip to Val d'Isere years ago where it snowed over 1.5m in 3days. Most people had given up and gone to the pub, me and two mates were lapping the trees of the gondola in Le Fornet. Just epic, by the time you came back up, your tracks from the previous run were already hard to spot.
Only time I've been proper scared was last season up on the north face of La Fogliettaz in Sainte Foy. I know the face well and went up with a mate. Weather on the hike up was pretty OK, bits of cloud around. Had completely clear visibility at the summit, but by the time we got geared-up ready to drop in, it had clagged-over again. We dropped in anyway, expecting to come out the bottom of a patch of cloud after a few turns, but ended up with a very long and scary descent in proper inside-a-milk-bottle conditions. As I said, I know the face, but I don't have a perfect photographic memory of EXACTLY where the cliff bands are or EXACTLY where to safely ride into the exit couloirs as opposed to the massive cliff band. We did actually end up turning around and climbing back up at one point because I (rightly as it turned out) had a "very bad feeling" about where we'd ended up. We were only about 50-100m from where we needed to be, but that wouldn't have been much consolation!
NOTE TO SELF: Next time, make sure there are batteries in the GPS!
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| pam w wrote: |
| Quote: |
mrsfatcontroller does not get effected by the whiteout
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well she might not feel sick but presumably she still doesn't have the slightest idea where to go, or which way is up? |
She'll use the piste markers for guidance but she can tell gradients, me, I'm just following her hoping not to vomit. She thinks it hilarious 
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| Quote: |
If its whiteout up top - chances are there will be some lower runs with functional visibility
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very true - and using the webcams before heading out can give you some useful info. stevomcd, that sounds horrendous. I find it hard enough on a nice blue piste where I know there are no cliffs.
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If a skier has skied 20 years and never ran into a foggy and snowing weather where visibility reduces to minimum then good luck to him/her.
I often go for a two-week duration so may be I have a fair share of bad weather myself. In recent years the wife and I would use the white out day to visit the nearby city instead.
The snowing itself isn't that bad but it is the fog could kill everything because once the visibility has gone one cannot judge the terrain gradient, condition or the limit. I don't see skiers able to do what they are capable of in good weather then and everybody get by with skiing close to the marker posts at the piste limit. Even with marker posts, which are installed at 100m intervals approximately, one has to search for it and thank to God when that he/she is in the right course after the next one has been found.
I would say off piste skiers will be in a much dire situation as they have absolutely nothing to refrence to. Indeed skiers who wondered off a safe area and suffer fatalities were invariably bad weather related and that the poor visibility could be a contributory factor.
One event that the wife and I still talking every now and then was the decision she made at a bend during a white out at Alps Du Huez when I skied in front of her at only 20 to 30m apart. She could not see the direction and could have skied down a steep slope and there would be no way I could find her. When I noticed she wasn't coming I went back immediately to search and caught her before she went down. She did skie down because of the hesitation only. Had she not hesitated she would gone off the piste into a gully and it would be too late when I could find her again.
However if one goes only during term time and stay at the low altitude of a busy resort where the visibility is better due to the concentration of body heat then the anxiety of skiing "seemingly alone" in a foggy mountain top cannot be appreciated. From my experience everyone will try to ski down once the visibility has gone so it cannot be an enjoyable experience. I actually spent nearly the entire morning to ski down just the first run at Les Contamines when I experinced the worst visibility I came across. The groomed characteristic of the piste was gone once it has 150 to 250mm snow on top and the only way to ski down was to "feel" our way. We know there were many people down too but we could only see them if they were within 10m.
Opposing to the white out we can also have a black out scenario when a skier missed the last chairlift/gondola/cable car from the top of the mountain near Christmas time. The day light can disappear very quickly and on the way down of the mountain part of the jouney could be done in darkness. Did this once in Saalbach and now there is always a torch in my rushsack.
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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've been out in whiteout anowy conditions and didn't like it one iota, I'm not huge on flat light, or dense fog either. It doesn't make me sick, but I have experienced feelings of dissorientation and not knowing if I am moving or not, which is very disconserting. It would no doubt bother me to encounter these conditions if I was somewhere that I didn't know, as it is its been VT which I am now quite familiar with when its happened and normally I know where I am, through I was on that big wide expanse above the knife and fork on day and it completely threw me to not be in sight of the piste markers which I had been following until that point.
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| pam w wrote: |
| You end up not knowing which way is up, which way is down, and whether you are moving. You lose all points of reference. Horrendous. |
That is why you head into the trees, as long as they are close enough together you will have reference. Trust me, it works.
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FAQ
