Best snow conditions

[rilliet]

I would like to make a few comments about the snow quality that fits to extreme carving.
Since the begining of this internet extreme carving adventure (last spring), I noticed that lots of people believe that Patrice and I are always riding on perfect snow. The cause of this may be the huge snow sprays you can see on the photos and movies, which suggest we are riding in powder snow...

In fact, It's easy to ride like this in nearly any snow conditions.

Here are the limits:
Too fresh snow or too hot weather are not ideal because it's too soft, so the snow can't resist to strong pushing and the body tend to dive in.
Furthermore, in conditions of fresh snow, we go freeriding in soft boots off piste...
Normaly we have to wait 3-4 days to get what is for us perfect snow. Then the snow hardens itself every day and will progressively become very very hard (for us, no problem, it's still very good snow).
The limit comes when the ice is so hard that it hurts the body (for example on a glacier in the morning, in summer).
In these conditions, it can be dangerous: one day in summer, I nearly broke my thumb laying down a turn on not perfectly flat ice, but the board made the turn without problem.
The biggest problem comes usually in the middle of the day when big snow heeps are appearing: it's very difficult to lay down without hitting them with the body!... This is an advantage of very hard snow: snow heeps never appear, so it's possible to extreme carve untill the end of the day.

In fact, extreme carving is one of the snowboard discipline that is the most often practicable: No snowpark, halfpipe, race piste or deep powder needed. Only well prepared normal pistes.

The snow sprays that appears in extreme carving are caused by the fact that the board is nearly vertical on the piste. So, the spray follows the sole surface and is ejected verticaly. Of course, the stronger the edge pressure is, the higher the spray will be. That's why these sprays appear on ice too.

Have a nice low carving.

Jacques

[McFussel]

Yeah, you are right....

Too soft snow is not so good for carving - the best is hard snow, if it is pure ice its a little dangerous, because the hands are getting too warm and if you hit the slope with your face it really hurts

And after midday, when all the skidrivers have build their little hills in the slopes Its not so easy anymore.....

So the best is toi be up at 8 in the morning and enjoy the first 2 hours where all the drunken party people still are sleeping

Get up early and lay down CARVES

McFussel