Off piste

Written Saturday, February 05, 2005 @ 10:08pm

When you ski, there are areas that are marked off for you to ski. You know, trails. They usually have poles of some sort as boundaries. For your safety, you’re supposed to stay on the trails. Of course this means that there’s another option. Going “off piste”. This is where you may run into trees, rocks, you know, uncharted territory. Grounds that haven’t been skied on, with fresh snow.
Now, I’m NOT stupid. I’m not going to ski where it’s not safe. Think of it like how at Mount St. Louis/Dagmar/Blue Mountain/Whatever, you go off little bumps, or just off the course. Same kind of thing here. I actually didn’t go to completely uncharted terrain. I only when where I could see tracks (ie. a couple other skiers when there)

Note: I keep writing “skiers”, but of course I also mean snowboarders too.

Off piste means deep powdered snow. Think what you’ve seen on TV/movies where skiers are knee deep in fluffy snow in the middle of completely open terrain.
On one day, we found the perfect off piste area. I felt such a thrill. It’s such a different feeling skiing through that type of snow. On trails, you’ve got pretty much packed down snow, and maybe a top layer, but it’s still pretty hard. Off piste was a feeling that I can’t explain (seems like I’m having a hard time explaining many of my experiences).
It was really fun, but you’ve GOT to be careful when going off piste. You never know what kind of terrain you’re going to get. Trees and rocks can pop out of nowhere. You don’t know how deep the snow is (one off piste experience led me to do a face plant, because there was a huge pothole, but you couldn’t tell with all the snow on top of it, so I just sank into the hole, and kept tipping forward because, well, because the fronts of my skis got stuck and then I tipped forward until the action of face planting fluffy snow – I guess that’s one good thing about off piste-ing. It’s so fluffy that falling doesn’t hurt – but you can lose a ski or pole VERY easily.) Oh yeah, and there’s the whole thing about avalanches. Going off piste could potentially cause avalanches, but that’s if you’re doing some serious off piste-ing.
I feel like a pro now that I’ve off piste-ed. Booyah.