Line of Skiers

Skiing was constrained by only a few simple rules: don’t ski past the lead guide, leave space between skiers, and have fun. Will, our tail guide would bring up the rear. Occasionally, Andrew (our lead guide) would tell us to stay to one side of his tracks in order to avoid some objective hazard. In this photo, we’ve spread out in a line, and each skier is skiing left of the previous one to get fresh tracks. Joni is the 2nd skier from the front of the line followed by me, Brian, Gene, and Avrum. When I followed Andrew, I would often figure-8 his tracks, especially if the visibility was marginal.

A lot of the skiing was on relatively low-angle slopes like the one in this photo. We did do some steep pitches almost every day; on one occasion, Andrew skied ahead, over a lip and out of sight. Will asked us to guess the angle of the slope. I chimed in with 28 deg. at which point Will whipped out a high-tech inclinometer and measured the top half of the slope at 33 deg. at the bottom half at perhaps 38 deg. It was a great run, and I must have one of those inclinometers. (I played with it after skiing that day.)