The world has rhythms. Sometimes we sense them, sometimes we don’t, but one inescapable to skiers is the glorious spring cycle of melt and freeze and melt again. Warm days and cold nights massage the snowpack, work out the kinks, break down the layers between November rain and December freeze and January thaw and February dumps, leaving delicious uniformity. Each night, the snowpack freezes solid and each day it melts slowly under the warmth of the sun, starting from the top and working its way toward the hidden soil beneath. At first, that top layer is so thin you can’t tell it’s melting–your skis skitter and scrape–but then it gives, an edge bites, and rock-hard resistance yields. Corn. The second season has arrived.

Like ice-cream eaters who let their treat melt a little before diving in with the spoon, skiers shave that yummy top layer and dig shallowly into the next. It’s hero snow, the most carvable, flawless surface known. Suddenly, you’re ripping turns and standing on your skis like you never could before. Just like the first time you discovered a deep sidecut ski, the sensation is immediate, magnetic, as if you’re glue to the hill. But unlike hardpack, corn snow gives just a little. It’s softer, more forgiving, yet solid. You can ski 60 mph or 60 degree pitches, thanks to corn.

Corn is fleeting. It exists within a small band of elevation, temperature, and angle to the sun. Low-elevation southeast slopes corn up first, followed by pure south, then southwest. Through out the day, the corn window moves around, moves up, leaves the lower pitches mush and creeps toward the summits. It’s like a spotlight or the earth’s shadow gliding across the face of the moon–the skier moves with it, following, anticipating, waiting if necessary and staying off snow that’s been baked so as not to leave trenches that will freeze in the night. This temporal nature is one of the neatest things about corn: It’s not corn, then it’s corn, then it isn’t corn. The timing is everything…but with corn, unlike with powder, there’s always tomorrow.

Skier: Scott Gaffney. Location: Squaw Valley, California.

The Elements of Skiing: Wind
The Elements of Skiing: Shade
The Elements of Skiing: Waiting for the Weather

The Elements of Skiing: Temperature

If you like this writing, you might also like The Powder Intros. LINK.

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Coming tomorrow…The Elements of Skiing: Rain
Coming Monday, last in the series…The Elements of Skiing: Trees

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Tagged as: environment, essay, skiing, weather