Backcountry ski trip in Chelan County exposes travelers to all forms of snow

Urban legend maintains that the Inuits possess some 49 words for ‘snow’ while Westerners identify all frozen matter falling from the sky or sitting on the ground with the same label. Naturally every backcountry skier understands what a total load of you know what this legend is. Like indigenous people who lived in the snow, we maintain a rich vocabulary that helps us better understand the white matter at the core of our activity. To name just a few snow forms, we’ve got: powder, corn, ice, blue ice, Styrofoam, breakable crust, sugar snow, temperature-gradient snow, sastrugi, equi-temperature snow, and rime on the ground. Falling from the sky we might have stellar crystals, needles, columns, plates, graupel, hail, or sleet. And then there are all those technical terms born from the annals of ski journalism, including phrases like ‘snorkel powder,’ ‘blower powder,’ and ‘cold smoke’ to describe the euphoric pole of the white spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum, where character is built, we’ve got, sludge, concrete, breakable crust, trap crust, and body-slamming death cookies.

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