Sunny and bluebird: splitboard and tourski alert!

No snow for the next 6 days and according to some calculations even for the next 10-14 days. And that after a period with fantastic conditions and cold blower pow, check this video from Paul, Koen and Irian, shot by Loïc in and around the Arlberg region! You won’t regret it!

Tips for riding powder in the coming (sunny) week

Put an ice cream on a dry day in the sun and it melts quickly, put an ice in the shadow and it takes much longer. Put that same ice cream on a layer of snow in the shade and you will see that it takes even longer before the it melts. This also applies in the mountains. In fact, put an ice cream on a snowy shadow slope in the middle of the winter and you will see that the ice cream does not melt. Even if the temperature in the free atmosphere is clearly in the plus and people are relaxing in the sun.

It works like this. The snow cover itself is not directly susceptible to changes in the air temperature due to the insulating capacities of the snow cover. For warming the snow cover, the following three elements are the most powerful:

• Direct radiation of the sun
• Relatively warm air and clouds. This is because the clouds conduct the warmer, humid air into the snow cover
• Rain

The sun is lower in the winter. The result is that it only directly affects the southern slopes and the steeper western and eastern slopes. On the other slopes, the sun is at most gently touching the snow cover and as a result the warm air can not penetrate the snow cover. As a result, the temperature of the snow cover on more shady slopes, but also those slopes where the sun does not directly hit, remains considerably lower. Often even well below zero. Especially when the nights are clear and the moisture can radiate considerably. Days on which you can see nice amounts of surface hoar on the snow cover on the shadow slopes.

Warm but sunny days do not mean that this is the end of the fresh powder snow. You just have to work a bit more for it. It is only mid February and the sun is still relatively low. This means that on slopes with an N, O or NW component you can still ride powder for a while. Especially when there are also trees on these kind of faces, then the sun does not hit the snow cover at all.

But how do you know if a ski area has enough N, O or NW slopes? You can check that out yourself with a compass, but you can also take a look at the exposition maps when you are a wePowder Pro. Below you can see the map of the Tannheimertal as an example.

The red colors on the map indicate the Northern and Northeastern slopes and if they are a bit steep, the snow stays good, light and fresh.

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As wePowder Pro you get access to exposition, freeride routes, slope angle maps and the 14-day forecast per resorts (we’ve got all the resorts in the Alps covered). You never have to miss a dump anymore. When you are wePowder Pro you also have access to 1000+ inspirational freeride routes in the most beautiful freeride areas of the Alps. Sign up as wePowder Pro today. It works great for your karma as well and you’ll support the development of the wePowder platform! Thanks!
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If you want to ride powder in the coming days, then you should search for:

1. ski areas with plenyty of northern slopes where the powder remains cold enough;
2. and look for family areas with lots of trees and little obvious terrain, that scares beginning freeriders.
3. and delete the usual suspects and areas with a lot of easy access terrain.

With these tips you will certainly find some fresh powder.

Stay stoked,
Morris