first days on my snowboard this february , and the weather is oka. A bit sunshine and lots of new fresh powder snow.

Tasks: getting better in powder riding, act as a group and offpiste.

Equipment: shovels, avalanche prope, savety gear, goggles, board

Powder:

everyone loves it, but for someone without experience it’s not easy. You need to drive your board totaly different. You need to balance the most of your weight onto the tail of your board. And if you want to make turns you need to controll the moves with your right leg (if you drive regular, if you drive goofy it’s the other leg). Ore you need to jump from edge to edge.

The good thing is, if you fall…it feels like faling into 100 pillows. The bad thing is, if you fall on a flat area…you can walk the rest of the way through deep powder snow.

We took the lift up to the top of the hill and went the rest of the way on the traditional way. By foot through deep powder snow. It was just 1200m but every step was really hard an the air was much thiner as on the ground (less oxigene).

The avalanche risk on this day was on level 3 so we decided as a group to go offpist on the south/east side of the mountain. On this side the snow was more compressed and so it was saver to ride it.

The first moments before the little drop on the top of the mountain, everyone had been nervous…but after the drop, everyone felt great. It was a great feeling to ride the untouched deep snow downhill and through a small birch forest. After a few times down on the southside, we went to the south east/ east sinde of the mountain. The weather there was horrible. It was snowing and fogy. The top of the mountain had been clear, but after 50 meters down, the side was maybe 5-10 meters. On one day it turns into a whiteout.

Whiteout:

It’s a dangerous weather phänomen. Everything ist white, Sky, bottom, everything. The horizon dissappeares and you can become sick. You feel like moving in a totaly white, bright room. It’s really bad and you can die in it if you are on a long trip through ice and snow.

Most of the time it happens cause cloudy sky but sunshine. Then it’s really bright. And if you add snowfall on it ore fog it can happens that you get a white out. Even if you wear skigoggles with yellow ore orange glasses it’s not easy to see shadows ore contours.

After a few hundret meters the sight was getting better. But during the whiteout I felt over and made a huge roll over in the powder cause I was not able to see the way. I thought i was driving down, but short before the roll over I was not able to see where I am. I felt a bit dizzy after it but okay. After an our maybe the dizzyness was over, but it was a really bad moment. Not to know where you are.

Avalanche:

This is the official rating scale of north america. It describes the danger of avalanches in the area behind this sign ore the mountain. Normaly the risk of an averlange is higher on the lee side. That is the “not wind side”.

On the first two days we had the risk of three the hole day. On the third day we had four. On that day the skicenter closed two slopes in the east of the mountain and the whole south-east of the mountain-