Flying Sideways

I can still remember, or perhaps more accurately, feel what it’s like to fly from a few intense dreams over my life. The vivid dream of falling and floundering about, out of control with a green grassy field rapidly approaching and imminent death, is burned into my memory as if it happened recently. At the last moment, just before impact, somehow I became a bird, opened my wings as they instantly transformed air into something solid I could carve through with amazing control and agility, as if the knowledge of flight were an instinct. The ground peeled away, gaining elevation as quickly as previously lost, and in that sweet defiance of gravity and death was forever instilled something that must be pursued.

Fast forward and you’d think I became a pilot. At 16 years old, after seeing “Top Gun,” I did visit the naval recruitment office with dreams of becoming a jet pilot. With brutal dry honesty, the naval recruitment officer gave it to me straight: Odds are I’d more likely be cleaning bird shit off the deck. I suppose that’s not what I’ll be doing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had already found another way to fly.

Snowboards had just made their way onto the shelves of sporting goods and ski shops of Bozeman, Montana. Standing sideways and sliding down a hill was instantly addictive for me. The plank of wood with simple straps for bindings picked up speed so much faster than a sled. I pointed the board straight downhill, as that’s what you do with a sled and that’s all I knew to do. Descending past the midway point of the hill, it became clear my trajectory was toward a barbed-wire fence, and I was certainly going to tangle with those rusty barbs. Options were falling or turning. My first turn was heel edge, and it came at the right time – just in time to avoid the wire. It wasn’t flying, but it was the best sliding experience of my life. I fell in love; I wanted more.

The following winter, a snowboard was strapped to my feet and I was a regular at the local ski hill. It didn’t take long for myself and all of us learning this new method of sliding down a hill to realize it’s better when the snow is new, deep and untracked. The chase was on for many of us, and the local hill offered accessible backcountry through a gate if you had a partner, avalanche transceiver, shovel and probe. Twenty minutes of hiking from the highest chair lift opened up a large stash of terrain, almost as much as the entire ski area offered via chairlifts.

The experience of going fast enough to get the snowboard on the surface of that deep snow versus suffocating under it was addictive. Surface area became a primary consideration for my next snowboard. My first was 154 cm long; the second was 175 cm. In retrospect, for a 5’9”, 160-pound human, 175 cm might have been a wee bit large, but at the time it was the perfect upgrade to get me “floating” on the surface.

Now with a gray beard, lifetime of snowboarding, and some snow science as evidence, I’m going to adjust the way I look at “flotation” and snowboarding.

When aspiring backcountry snowboarders and skiers go through avalanche education, they are introduced to a handful of snowpack assessment techniques. Avalanches are the downside of backcountry snowboarding. Avalanches kill an average of 10-20 people per year in the United States, with 11 fatalities in the previous season. Education is essential for anyone traveling in avalanche terrain; backcountry snowboarders and skiers need to be able to identify avalanche terrain and assess snowpack stability every time they go into the backcountry. One element of avalanche education introduces the concept of identifying snow density, or more specifically, how much water is in the snow. In snow science terms, it’s referred to as Snow Water Equivalent (SWE).

SWE can be determined in several ways, but imagine a large test tube filled with snow and then allowed to melt – how much water remains within the snow once it melts gives us the SWE. This concept seems to support the “flotation” terminology used within the snowboard industry. So far, it’s all about water. However, snow isn’t 100 percent water – not even close – and that greatly varies based on the “age” of the snow, or how long it’s been on the ground.

If we dig a few feet into the snowpack, we typically see SWE results showing the snow has a higher water content. From a snowpack stability standpoint, that’s what we want to see. The other element in snow is air. The amount of air in snow varies depending on temperature, wind and rate of accumulation. If you fill the SWE tube with fresh snow following a storm and allow it to melt, the resulting water volume will be about 30 percent of the original snow volume. This indicates that the fresh snow was approximately 70 percent air. Are we not mostly riding air following a storm? A snowboard doesn’t float – life jackets float, boats float, and I suppose you could argue avalanche airbags float if deployed in time. Evidence suggests once we get enough speed and get on the snow surface, we are mostly flying on air.

This explains why when riding at a ski area, I typically feel as if I’m taxiing about a runway looking for the next place to fly. I don’t mean to discredit a groomed run, park, pipe or rail. It takes a team to make a ski area work, and fresh snow doesn’t happen every day. I wouldn’t know what I know without a ski area allowing access to the backcountry and starting me on the path of flight. Every turn made on the fresh stuff offers a taste of that first flight dream. From here on, I’m elevating my powder day snowboard adventures to logging flight time. Perhaps an aviator jacket and glasses are in order. I can’t wait for the next chance to fly sideways.   X