Cedar Palmer

After finding or landmarks and a quick laugh at how much snow had fallen over night it was time for a little fun.

Cedar sending the pillow line

Making it look easy

Skiing out out the bottom of the run we all new we be back for more.

Cedar and his custom rockered Wagners

Skinning under a full moon is cool.  With headlamps off, shadows are so long and the muted glow reflecting off the snow provides a surreal lighting for travel through the lowland approach to the high peaks.  Partners are merely black silhouettes and the skin track is an ill-defined line across the crusty re-frozen snow surface.  Traveling across Bradley Lake and through the forest, we spent the pre-dawn hours quietly skinning through this dreamscape into Garnet Canyon.

As morning approached, the moon set and we were forced to turn on our headlamps for the last hour before sunrise, climbing up out of the forest and into the glacial basin of the Meadows in the canyon.  We stopped for a morning snack in the Meadows as the sun barely lit the eastern horizon and then bared our teeth for the icy, slick-as-snot-on-a-marble climb from the Meadows up into the North Fork.  The slope between the Meadows and the North Fork is about 35 degrees and faces south, so it bakes all day and then freezes overnight.  Skin tracks that get put in during the heat of the day get burnished to a high gloss with the water content in the surface snow and then freeze like glass.  Having forgotten to bring the ski crampons, we alternated between skinning and bootpacking as the snow conditions demanded on the climb up.  Skis on feet, skis on packs, skis on feet, skis on packs.

Mark below the North Ridge and the NW Couloir. Looks pretty thin. Anybody need to check their email?

The sun rose as we cruised through the moraines in the North Fork and we were able to make good time getting to the Lower Saddle.  We could see the BIG red duffel bag with Exum’s high camp in it as we scrambled up the scree towards the base of the North Ridge of the Middle.  Surmounting a series of benches, we soon gained a view of the route and quickly ascertained that it wasn’t going to happen on this day.  There wasn’t a shred of snow on the ridge, and the access to the NW Couloir was dry as well.  Standing in the shadow of the Middle with a chill wind cranking over the ridge and no harnesses or rock gear in our packs, none of us felt inclined to tackle 2000′ of 5th-class rock.  So we punted and decided to seek out the Pinnochio Couloir, a 1000′ line from the base of the North Ridge down to the glacier below.

With a narrow entrance that goes at ~55 degrees, the Pinnochio is a super aesthetic line that we got a good look at while skinning through the moraines an hour earlier.

Maybe this route will work?

Finding the top proved to be harder than we expected; after scrambling up and then downclimbing a few short pitches of slabby rock on misguided routes, we finally crested the Pinnochio Pinnacle and gazed down into the couloir.  My 25-meter strand of rope barely reached down to the notch at the top of the couloir, but with a brief body-wrap rappel we each made our way down to the entrance.

Mark sits back onto the day's first rappel, with the Grand Teton in the background.

Evan raps off the Pinnochio Pinnacle.

I cleaned off the cornice at the top while Mark and Evan found a rock horn to sling the rope around for our second rappel of the day, getting beyond a rocky pinch and into the couloir proper.  Going first, I found chalky powder in the couloir with excellent edging, which felt good in what seemed a bit like an elevator shaft.  55-degrees and barely wider than the length of my board, the Pinnochio Couloir was pretty sporty!

Snowboarding on rappel--not as easy or fun as it might look. But on a side note, this was my first day in the alpine with my new Wagner Custom board. Totally amazing--it's so lively, and with a bit more sidecut it makes tight turns in this kind of terrain feel easy. Awesome. Thanks guys!

After passing a particularly narrow pinch a hundred feet down, things opened up and I found really fun riding down to the mid-couloir rockband.  I pulled off to the side and yelled up for Mark to ski down to me.

Mark skis the upper pitch of the Pinnochio Couloir.

We poked around a bit for a route to downclimb while Evan made his descent to us, ultimately deciding to pull the rope out again for one last rappel past the 15′ band of rock that blocked our path.  Mark slung  another horn, we rapped past the rock, and then ripped dreamy turns out of the fan of the couloir and down the glacier to the moraines below.  The sun felt pretty damn good after spending a couple of hours in the shadow of the Middle, so we took the opportunity to eat a big lunch before exiting the mountains.

Evan skis across the glacier to the moraines after exiting the Pinnochio Couloir. Pretty skinny up top!

AJ and Mark soaking up the sun on the moraines.

More challenges awaited us on the way out, mostly in the variable and shallow snow conditions that we have this winter at mid- and low-elevations in the Tetons, but we eventually made it back down to the lake and cranked out the last two miles to the parking lot.  Though it was disappointing to get turned back from summiting the Middle, getting to ride the Pinnochio was pretty sweet and it was a fantastic day to be in the mountains with good friends.  Ultimately, the most disappointing part of the day was arriving back at the parking lot to find that somebody had taken the beers we stashed under the car to keep them cold!  So lame!

And so, we wrapped up the day with the standard trip to Dornan’s for a pitcher and some quesadillas while gazing back up at the Range through the gigantic bay windows behind the bar.  Another decent consolation prize.

The Observatory

After a season ending injury last year it feels great to get back into the snow get to it.  With a fragile snow pack and firm skiing on the ski area we decided the best thing was to hit the backyard for some mellow pow and some not mellow control work.  Patience has never been one of my strong suits when it comes skiing, but this year more than ever we have had to endure long periods of little to no snow, long cold days and a very tender snow pack.  I can’t take it anymore, it’s time.  One of my favorite zones to ski in the San Juans sits just over the ridge from the Telluride ski area, the Cirque above the Alta lakes Observatory.  With an unlimited variety of terrain, from mini golf power to the steepest of couloir skiing Garrett and I made the call the night before to go “play” in his backyard.

Skiing over from the ski area was more an exercise in avoiding rocks on the south-facing slope down to the Observatory.  Moving quietly through the trees past a few “Red Coats” on “break” we made our way down to the house for some left-over chicken and a hot drink.  After a quick bite we made our way up the skin track to the top of the Powder Reserve, ski cutting the pitch above the trestle we found light, dry snow perfect for skiing.  Making turns back to the house for another hot drink, we were putting our skins on for another lap, this time pushing higher to the top of the Bride’s maid couloir.   Putting in the skin track to the top of the Bride’s maid I was surprised to find the couloir was  holding better  snow than we expected.  It was satisfying to reach the top knowing that we had made the right call.  A few minutes to evaluate the snow pack, good to go.  Garrett dropped first, making little noise as he moved down thru the snow leaving his mark behind.  One more pitch of skiing back to the house we found perfect snow and few face shots as a wonderful bonus.

Garrett in his Backyard

Cold and a little tired we sat around telling a few jokes and watching the alpenglow fade on the west face of Palmyra Peak.  Nothing left to do now put grab our headlamps and puffy coats and head home.  Just another great day in the mountains playing in the snow with my Wagner skis.

Countervail is a visco-elastically dampened carbon fiber material

After 2 seasons of product development and testing with the Materials Sciences Corporation, Wagner Custom is pleased to announce that Countervail® (visco-elastically dampened carbon fiber) construction is now available as an upgrade on all of its designs.

The patented material, available for use in skis and snowboards only from Wagner Custom, is a structural fiber used to supplement fiberglass. It provides the smooth ride and stability of an aluminum or Titanal structure without the weight. In fact, Countervail® has the lightweight characteristics of carbon fiber.

Countervail®, developed to forestall flutter in the carbon-fiber control surfaces of supersonic aircraft, consists of a thin viscoelastic polymer cloth, with fine strands of carbon fiber woven along its length in a sinusoidal or serpentine pattern. Because the stiff carbon creates a two-dimensional pattern, it provides strength in both flex and torsional axes. The harsh reactive stiffness of the carbon is moderated by the viscoelastic fibers. The result: it’s a light, strong, whippy but self-damping structural layer. To get the same flex and vibration characteristics you’d need a heavier layer of aluminum backed up with a neoprene damping layer, or an even thicker sheet of very hard prepreg fiberglass.

The hyperperformance Countervail®, in short, gives you the speed and buttery smoothness of an aluminum or titanal ski, at considerably lighter weight and – this is critical – without the fatigue, bending or delamination problems common with metal skis.

Las Leñas Lunch

Gringo Tracks

Scoping New Terrain

Powerful Turns Ahead

Earning some turns in Las Leñas

TS Marte

Matt Lanning enjoying life in Las Leñas

Chalky Las Leñas Turns

AJ Linnell breaking trail on Treasure Mountain using Wagner Custom approach skis

AJ Incoming

AJ scopes the entrance

The Boy Scout Couloir is so named because it is the only clean line through the 400′ limestone cliff above the Treasure Mountain boy scout camp. Steep, narrow, and perfectly plumb, the couloir is a deep and beautiful cleft through towering rock walls. Ultimately, the reason that I hadn’t ridden it before was because of the long access and the difficulty of finding it from above. But with us camped on the summit of Treasure Mountain, we were perfectly set up for a descent and didn’t even know it. It would mean a long skin back to camp, but what better way to wrap up this trip?

AJ exits Boy Scout Couloir

What a ride

Skinning home

Chason Russell earned a podium spot at the 2009 Subarau Freeskiing World Tour Qualifier. Photo: Brett Schreckengost

The competitors and audience were stoked to see the finals take place on Telluride’s 13,300″ Palmyra Peak. Mark Welgos of Aspen impressively won the event with Arne Backstrom of Squaw Valley taking second place. Chason’s protege, 17 year old Michael Gardner of Ridgway Colorado, finished in fifth place. Claudia Bouvier of Vail won the women’s event. Results and more information regarding the event can be found here.

Placing third in the competition earns Russell a spot in all 2009 Freeskiing World Tour events, as well as the honor of recognition as one of the top freeskiers on the big mountain circuit.

Congratulations Chason!

The next Freeskiing World Tour event takes place in Crested Butte February 19-22. For more information, check out www.FreeSkiingWorldTour.com.

For more info on Chason’s skiing, check out his summer of 2008 trip report from Lanin Volcano in Argentia

The Why Couloir January 11, 2009 — Words and photos by Brad Foley

Scott in the Why

The Why Couloir

Scott skiing the upper pitch of the Why

Skiing the Exit couloir

Turns in lower Delta Bowl

Please drink responsibly

Travis Wolfe conducting durability tests on his Wagner Custom skis. photo: Zak Gerdts

Travis Wolfe airing the Shark Fin. photo: Chason Russell

Travis Wolfe above the Ophir valley

Road to Lanin

Just another bump in the road

Radio Flyer parked by the stable

By the dawns early light

Refugio

Dog Nap

Nick on the ascent

Nick and Chason on the summit

Looking down the east couloir

Nick making it look easy

Veiw from below the couloir

Ice on Lanin

Nick traversing across the ice field

8000 feet later

Ideal corn snow conditions led us to the point where we had abandoned our shoes for hard shell boots. Drew and ‘Perro’ patiently awaited us there. Regressing through the volcanic debris back toward the Gendarmeria, we were consumed with a sense of satisfaction, dehydration, and hunger. A ‘parrilla libre’ (all you can eat grilled meat) was awaiting us back in San Martin.

Sitting in my assigned window seat on the bus the following day, I struggled against the desire to sleep and glanced out the window to get one more view of Lanin as the bus made its way across the huge expanses of Argentina. Consciousness gave way to dream state and in a seemingly absence of time, I was being served dinner, as the bus made its way through the night en route to Buenos Aires.

View of Volcan Lanin from the bus

A typical narrow straight ski (take for example the 1995 Rossignol 4SV, 203cm, 64mm waist) had a bearing surface of about 1150 square centimeters. If a 165 lb. skier stood on one ski, the pressure underneath would be about .14 lb per square centimeter.

Doesn’t sound like a lot. But the 1990 Atomic Powder Plus — the first of the superfat powder skis — had a bearing surface of about 2000 cm2. A 165 lb. skier put about .08 lb./cm2 on that ski.

Neither of these skis is very versatile. They lie at either end of the soft-snow performance spectrum: the Rossi slalom ski was designed for hard snow and in deep snow liked to go to the bottom and stay there. The Atomic was famous for bobbing around on top, denying the skier one of the great pleasures of powder skiing, the face shot.

If you live to porpoise in and out of deep snow, you want something midway between these extremes. For resort skiing, with a firm surface under the new snow, you may be comfortable with a pressure pattern of about .11 or .12 lb/cm2; for backcountry and bottomless powder, .9 or .10 lb/cm2. For that 165 lb skier, this would imply a bearing surface around 1400 or 1500 cm2 for the resort ski, or 1600 to 1700 cm2 for bottomless snow.

There’s a set of simple formulas for figuring out bearing surface based on length and sidecut dimensions, but as a rule of thumb, with today’s sidecuts, at a length of 165cm, a 70mm waist will give you about 1200 cm2, 74mm is about 1300cm2, 80mm is about 1400cm2, and 90mm is about 1500cm2. If you need more surface, you’ll need to go longer, Big Guy.

Seth Masia
Vail Ski School

The ski is a spring, built to flex and rebound. Like any spring, it likes to vibrate at a characteristic rate based on its length, weight, stiffness and internal friction. Think of guitar strings: Heavy strings vibrate slowly, light strings vibrate fast. Shorten the string and it vibrates faster still. Switch from steel strings to nylon, and it vibrates with a softer tone and fades off more quickly. The fade-off is called damping. The rate at which your ski rebounds — its general energy level — depends a lot on the same things that govern the quality of sound in a guitar string: length, weight, and damping rate.

Big ski factories like to talk about damping, as if it’s a good thing. When you ski on a lot of ice, you do in fact want to dampen out vibration along the ski’s edge so it doesn’t chatter out of its own track. But snow itself is the world’s best vibration damper: It compresses, but doesn’t spring back, so the compression energy is removed from the system. Because of that, it’s easy to build an overdamped ski. Put too much viscoelastic foolishness inside a ski and it begins to feel like a long rubber eraser. It grows slow to rebound when flexed in powder, seems to take forever to return to the surface — and in any kind of wet snow the glide speed goes to hell.

To get a lively ski that rebounds quickly in bumps and comes arcing up in powder, you want hard structural layers, like steel guitar strings, that vibrate at a very high frequency and low amplitude. Carbon fiber will do this, and certain very high-quality grades of fiberglass/epoxy matrix. (High-zinc aluminum skis, made of Zicral or Titanal alloys, have great vibration characteristics, until the metal fatigues with age, or bends from overflexing in bumps.) Because these materials are quite stiff (an engineer would say they have high modulus of elasticity) they have to be used in very thin layers.

To get a damp ski for tracking on ice, you can use thicker layers of “softer” glass mat in a more viscous epoxy blend, or build rubber layers into the ski. In general, when a ski has a lot of layers that “shear” against each other, the effect is to soak up vibration energy. It’s converted to tiny quantities of heat and lost to the snow and air.

The core material can also contribute to a ski’s energy level. Vibration travels nicely along the grain of a tough hardwood, and dampens out in shear between the lignin fibers in softer woods. Most polyurethane foam cores are natural damping materials, while some very light, expensive acrylic foam cores don’t have enough mass to absorb much energy.

Another mode of energy control is called mass damping. If a ski has a heavy tip (some skis actually have weighted tips) it tends to behave a bit like the bob-weight at the end of a pendulum: It takes some energy to divert it from its trajectory, and then it’s slower to reverse direction and come back to neutral than a lighter tip would be. When the combination of materials don’t give the ski the vibrational feel the designer wanted, one fix can be to tune a ski’s vibration rate by putting metal weights or thin strips of rubber at strategic points on or under the topskin.

A properly designed ski made of top-quality materials shouldn’t need external vibration dampers.

Seth Masia
Vail Ski School

Some bright soul figured out that if you steamed the plank and bent it into a gentle arch (what we call camber), the skier’s weight would spread more evenly across the surface of the snow, and the skier’s weight would straighten out the camber instead of sinking into the snow. The loaded ski now made a more-or-less straight beam and could be pushed straight ahead. Running got a lot easier. If the camber were made high enough, you could carve the tip and tail a lot thinner, making the ends lighter and more supple. The ski became even easier to run on, and floated nicely over uneven snow.

By about 1840, in the Telemark region, local woodcarvers had figured out sidecut. Making the ski narrower in the middle helped the ski turn with better agility. But the narrower waist tended to sink deeper into the snow, so to avoid the original problem of the center sinking, the middle of the ski had to be made a bit thicker and the camber a bit higher. Thus, by trial and error, ski-makers learned the art of balancing flex pattern against sidecut and camber. Change any one element and you had to change the other two.

One more element entered into the balance: torsional stiffness. In a ski meant for running across uneven natural snow, you wanted a supple tip to float over and conform to the surface. But you needed strength, too — if the tip were too thin and soft it would break. As long as a ski was made from a single piece of wood, a clever solution was the ridge-top shape, carved with a central reinforcing rib standing above the top surface. The rib reinforced the ski’s beam flex (its stiffness in bending) but allowed it to twist a bit to absorb the impact of sastrugi, suncups, and the like.

After 1935, quality skis were laminated from a variety of tough hardwoods and lighter softwoods. As I mentioned yesterday, all alpine skis were still more or less the same shape, so the adustable elements were flex and weight. Now, by choosing and aligning the laminates, a skimaker could adjust the torsional stiffness more-or-less independently of the beam flex. The ability to do this took a quantum leap with the adoption of aluminum and fiberglass structures.

It became clear that racers wanted higher torsional stiffness than recreational skiers. For grip on ice, race skis were engineered with torsional stiff around 1.9 newton-meters per degrees. This proved to be a practical limit: if the torque went much higher (some metal skis went to 2.5 nm/deg) they felt harsh and hooky, and had to be edge-bevelled pretty aggressively. Most recreational slaloms — bump skis, for instance — torqued at about 1.7 nm/deg. At 1.5 nm/deg and below you had forgiving intermediate skis. And a balance had to be found between torsion and beam flex: one factory called this the “torflex ratio.” A stiff beam flex, for a stronger, more precise skier, could use a stiffer torsion.

When “shaped” or deep-sidecut skis first appeared, it took a couple of years for engineers to figure out new flex patterns and torque ratios. Early shaped skis had a tendency to “hinge” in front of the binding, so they sort of plowed in deep snow — it was the original sinking-plank problem all over again. Compared to straight skis, it was found that shaped skis needed a longer stiff section in the middle and softer ends, and the progression of flex distribution had to be matched to the exaggeration of the sidecut. Similarly, torsion had to be softened a bit at the ends to soften the edge bite. Otherwise, the new wide shovels had a tendency to climb up the sides of moguls, and the new wide tails were reluctant to release at the end of the turn.

Balancing flex and torsion to sidecut is an art. It requires skill in adjusting core thickness, and clever choice of core laminates. Getting it wrong isn’t a disaster — a ski that feels a little harsh at the ends can usually be fixed with some smart tuning. But it’s so much more satisfying to get it right.

Seth Masia
Vail Ski School

Buying skis has become both easier and tougher than it was 20 years ago. Before 1990, there were about 35 ski factories around the world, and they all made essentially the same product. The design of skis had been more or less frozen for several decades. The classic slalom ski was 205cm for men and 190cm for women, shaped 85-65-75mm. This gave roughly a 40-meter sidecut radius and a bearing surface of about 1300 square centimeters. The classic giant slalom ski was 210cm for men and 200cm for women, shaped 87-68-77mm — roughly 50 meters radius and a bearing surface of 1400 square centimeters. The big differences in skis were not in shape and size, but in flex and materials. Slalom skis were of fiberglass, GS skis of aluminum. Recreational skis were thinner (therefore softer) and made of less-expensive materials. Buying skis required a lot of trial and error to find the flex pattern that worked for your weight, strength, skill and snow conditions.

Today most of that trial-and-error is gone. You can choose a ski based on matching width and turn radius to the kind of snow you like.

For hard snow, get a ski with a narrow waist: 67mm or narrower.

For soft groomers or general western front-of-mountain skiing, get a moderate waist — 68 to 74mm.

For resort powder (with a firm surface underneath) get a mid-fat waist, 75 to 80mm.

For deep snow (with an unpredictable base beneath) get a fat waist, over 80mm. If you’re big and heavy or carry a heavy pack, go even bigger: 90mm and up.

What remains is length and shape. Most men skiing at resorts can get along very nicely on a 165cm ski, most women on 155cm. If you’re stronger than average, go a bit longer but nowadays it won’t buy you a lot of additional stability. If you’re much lighter than average, go a bit shorter — it will pay off in improved agility.

Shape means sidecut. A deeper sidecut with a shorter radius carves a shorter turn. In general, this helps best on groomers. It won’t help in bumps, where you want the tail to release to avoid hanging up at the end of the turn. A good mid-fat nowadays has a shape close to 112-71-100, which gives a theoretical radius of about 12 meters and a bearing surface of 1300. Note that the bearing surface — the ski’s ability to “float” on soft snow — is similar to the classic straight slalom ski. So is the ski’s weight. But the agility — the ability to bend easily into a turn — is vastly improved due to a turn radius roughly 25% of the old long, straight ski.

So what should shape should you buy? Start with that “generic” 112-71-100mm shape at your length, then blow the waist up wider if you’re going to ski a lot of soft snow, and pull it in narrower if you’re going to ski a lot of hard snow. If you’re an expert who loves to carve, go for a shorter radius. If you want to be able to slide the tail a bit in bumps and tight woods (or if you have to skid a bit when you teach intermediates) opt for a bit narrower tail.

That’s the basics. Next time, I’ll consider the relationship between shape and flex pattern.

–Seth Masia
Vail Ski School