"Ed Pauls" wrote in message
...


foot2foot wrote:However,


The powder out there can get so light that nothing will
float you except a pair of those ridiculous stick 300mm
waist powder skis that couldn't possibly be used to ski
any other conditions.

If there's thirty feet of it, and you ski into it, you're going
to the bottom. Snowshoes won't even help you. Neither
will Bandit, Launcher or 4x4, unless it's steep enough and
you go really, really fast, two conditions I don't find myself
involved in very often.

As such, powder itself is an altogether different
consideration. I'm still not sure it's *possible* to find a ski
that can float me in the lightest of powder conditions you
encounter in the continental northwest.

You must be one heavy SOB!

Good Ol' Ed

Just pick a steeper slope.

Well, all that's relative, but for example, a place called
Showdown, in Montana, a weekend I believe, this place
is relatively in the middle of nowhere even for Montana,
and first chairs on *two to three feet of new pow* virtually
everywhere on the hill (they had fallen behind with the
grooming or something) were there for the casual taking.

With the blow and all, the terrain park, a significant one
at that, could barely be distinguished. The area had clearly
been overwhelmed by this amount of snow as quickly as it
fell.

I'm the second one down a decently steep blue run, and
I pick a line next to this big chasm in the new beautiful pow.

"Lousy snowboards" I thought.

But, I then leave my own chasm, as the three feet of snow
is so light I am actually skiing on the pack at the bottom,
blowing the pow clean out of the way.

This isn't even fair eh? If I want to ski the pack I sure
won't go looking so hard for powder.

I was demoing Bandit XXX at 180. I'm about 180 plus.
Never mind my height.

You tell *me*. What ski will float me in that stuff?

I saw the same conditions in the panhandle of Idaho later
on in the year. Feet of fresh, but so light, snowshoes
were of little use. Not the kiddie ones, the big long
expedition types. I had to slug through it as though I had
only shoes on. It compressed under my feet as if it were
feathers. Perhaps more easily than that.

Two years ago near Grand Targhee/Jackson Hole, I was
skinning, stepped off a ski and sank to my hips. The more
I struggled, the deeper I dug myself in.

I saw the same conditions at Soldier Mountain two years
ago late in the season. Spring snow that was so light it
couldn't be skied. Only avoided. It only stopped you in
your tracks leaving you with a nightmare of trying to get
back out of it. It was slushy, wet spring snow, but it
was still so light it would not float a skier.

Granted, steep "enough" would have made a difference
maybe, but who can ski a vertical slope?