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[Photo: Richard Price, Ski Utah]
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Packed Powder
This is what good piste skiing is all about. Over the days after a good, dry snow fall, the powder is packed either by skier traffic or by a ratrac. The result is a perfect surface: firm enough to bear your edges with precision, yet yielding and painless to fall on.
Slush
At the end of every season, or during any warm spell, the snow turns to slush. Individual crystals of snow have fused with their neighbours to form little balls of ice, floating in a wet paste.
Skiing becomes hard work and the risk of injury is increased. But you can still have fun: let your skis run and use a little extra speed to make them plane over the slush.
Artificial Snow
To protect their business from the vagaries of the weather, resorts are increasingly installing snow cannons (although even these require adequate water and low temperatures). The snow produced is much more dense than natural snow, making it less forgiving and more likely to become icy. Despite these shortcomings, and the strong environmental arguments against it, artificial snow looks like it is here to stay.
Ice
The snow condition most dreaded by the majority of skiers is ice. South-facing slopes, which have been warmed the previous afternoon, will frequently be icy in the morning and again once the sun leaves them in the afternoon. Slopes which are exposed to high winds will also be among the first to become icy, as will those which carry the greatest amount of skier traffic. It is possible to learn to love ice, if you master some cunning tricks.
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