Steep Technique: Uphill Ski Management, Cont’d

I continue to focus on management of the uphill ski as the key to unlocking the secrets of steep skiing technique. Those of you who follow my site know this has become something of an odyssey for me, starting with my initial belief that steep turns should be initiated from a weighted uphill ski, which led to basically two long years of frustration (more…)

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Bare Mountain

Perhaps I go too far in comparing yesterday at Bear Mountain’s “Access Express” chair to a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare, but if you’re worried about what the endgame for Southern California skiing might just look like, this was surely was an unsettling landscape. Ribbons of brown snow wound through muddy fields, whilst crowds of people shuffled slowly across it (more…)

Posted in Current Conditions | 6 Comments

Snow Summit: Top to Bottom

It’s been far too long since we’ve had a new edition of my critically-acclaimed top-to-bottom video series. True, you generally need snow to make skiing videos. But snow or no snow, I will not be defeated by this cursed 2013-2014 Winter! I will not be beaten. I will endure. I will endeavor to persevere.* I will…ah, heck. (more…)

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GoPro Hero3+

GoPro’s Hero3+ is one of those vexingly-horizontal iterations that make it almost impossible to know whether it’s worth it to upgrade. Still, GoPro is making a number of claims of superiority regarding the 3+’s image quality, audio quality, and battery life. And then there’s the new SuperView mode. Plus a new included wireless remote. Existing Hero3 owners can be forgiven if, after hearing all the buzz (more…)

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Gorgonio Is In

Where did all the snow go from last weekend’s massive wet system? San Gorgonio, apparently. If I’d seen this look at the north face a few days ago, I’d have tried to ski it. Instead I took the kids to Snow Summit, and picked up a pass for the rest of this and next season at the (you will feel like) Screaming Deal price. First of all, the snow: (more…)

Posted in Current Conditions | 4 Comments

San Jacinto Sunday

As I wrote awhile back, you can use the SoCal ski resort webpages to get a pretty good idea as to what’s happening in the higher backcountry elevations. Two of those key indicators are (1) is Mt. Baldy Ski Area open? and (2) is it raining at the top of the Palm Springs Tram? The mid-storm answers to these questions were not promising (more…)

Posted in Current Conditions | 4 Comments