Riding Lifts

[SILENCER]

I'm not sure who I'm agreeing with or not, but many, many moons ago when I started b/c skiing I roughly bucketed it as "if I want powder more often, my energy will go there"...regardless of terrain type. Yes, I've had plenty of ridiculously fun inbounds powder days (and few shitshows too) since, but I almost don't equate inbounds with powder anymore. Or at least I don't start there, and expectation-setting has treated me well. And I still love it. As I stated above, it's the adrenaline side of skiing, for me at least. It's where I try to improve with my actual skiing and fast-twitch strength. And guess what, from an avy perspective it's pretty damn safe too (to GB's point).

I live and ski in the I-70 Disneyland realm, and each year it gets incrementally harder. When it comes to inbounds, I'm the despised, hated Ikon Front Ranger I suppose. But so far I've been able to adapt to keep skiing, and to each their own but I'm still having a blast. Just yesterday I went out on a tour. Danger reduced a level on the forecast, and I went and found some powder (with a little effort) several days after any storm...and on some decently steep treed terrain. All in the calculus. While all the while I was across the highway from a resort on my pass and could see two others in the distance to boot. Had a significant storm & wind, etc. rolled in the day before, it might've been a coin flip, but there's a good chance just for the avy safety and not the pow I might've voted inbounds....and I might very well have been across the highway at the ski area, swingin' all day. I guess I'm just fortunate to have a choice I suppose. In the end, I just wanna ski. I try not to be too picky after that.

[Jason4]

Hitting on the reason I changed my name. As I got older and switched to skiing, I found that "Shredgnar" was no longer appropriate.

I used to ski primarily BC when I was a snowboarder, constantly pushing the limits in avalanche terrain. A couple of bad accidents made me to reconsider my path. Switched to skiing mostly to slow me down a bit. Wanted to get better before going into the BC more. Found a new love for inbounds skiing. Not having to walk uphill all day for one run that is usually mediocre at best, and constantly worry about layers and hidden dangers sure is nice. My legs are stronger than they've been in a long time from just skiing hard 2-3 times a week.

People who complain about lift served skiing just don't know how to adjust their expectations and still have fun. Powder snobs are dumb. Powder is great, don't get me wrong, but showing up at noon and busting out a bunch of high speed chalk laps on steep technical terrain is my new pow day. Nobody around, blasting some tunes in the helmet, poking into little nooks and crannies that no one else takes the time to mess with. That's my jam. The morning lineup for first chair on a pow day makes me kind of nauseous. All the hype and chatter just gets old (as I get older).

This really resonates with me. As I get older I find my risk tolerance is getting lower, I'm skiing more just to mitigate the froth I feel on a snowboard, I avoid the first chair rush as I just get stressed out, and I'm generally happier with meadow skipping than I used to be.

As an avalanche instructor and splitboard guide I often recommend that people choose mitigated terrain (the ski area) when the avalanche danger exceeds their comfort level.

[whipski]

Lift serve on powder mornings, skin with the pups in the after noon. No powder morning = BC morning = powder morning.

[Dantheman]

Perhaps that should sometimes say "today is a good day to shred pow at a local resort".

Pretty common to see this in UAC forecasts.

At some point my wife and I realized it was holding back development of skiing skills too. Compared to skiing primo pow or corn it is freaking hard to ski at a high level in the resort through chopped pow, chewed out chutes, etc. especially for more than a few laps.

Iron sharpens iron. Everyone's a hero in powder.

Xmas through New Year's this season the Bird had enough base that the whole mountain was open and skiable but still very much low tide. It hadn't snowed in weeks but the mountain was empty and Great Scott was perfect chalk day after day. While lapping holiday walk-on trams a friend and I said to each other in total seriousness, "I hope it never snows."