East Coast Snow Conditions

My first season back East after ten out West. Snow conditions out West basically consist of fluffy powder and not so fluffy powder. More likely it's "How much" new powder.

So time for a review of East Coast snow conditions:

Primary Surface Abbreviations
(from the Ski Vermont site)
PDR - Powder
PP - Packed powder
HP - Hard packed
LSGR - Loose Granular
FRGR - Frozen granular
WETPS - Wet packed snow
WETGR - Wet Granular
SC - Spring Conditions
VC - Variable Conditions
WETSN - Wet Snow

Now, you folks left of the Mississippi probably need some better descriptions. So here are some more descriptive, um, descriptions (hey I'm an engineer, lay off!)

• Powder - more than one inch of fresh snow that isn't mixed with ice; pretty much a myth, unless you ski at Jay Peak, somewhere affected by "lake-effect," or after a bona-fide Nor'Easter
  
• Packed Powder - when the resorts say its "Powder"
• Loose Granular - death cookies
• Frozen Granular - frozen death cookies
• Wet Packed Snow - um, snow that has been rained on?
• Wet Granular - death cookies in a rain storm
  

The Eskimos have like 65 native words to describe snow. So we added some of our own snow conditions:

• Death Cookies - "loose granular," if you don't know then you don't want to know
• Roar - fresh snow mixed with death cookies (from White Russian on the Rocks, or WROR)
• Skied off - basically the Western version of "ice" of any kind, there is no ice out West
• Sheet of Ice - literally like an ice rink stood on its side parading as a ski trail, usually referred to jovially since a decent skier can at least hold an edge if not make great turns, but anyone who ever uses this term out West has obviously never skied the East
• Blue Sheet of Ice - sheet of ice with a blueish tint, no one is quite sure how it gets the blueish tint, but its slicker than pig snot on a hot day
• Bulletproof - now you're speaking like a local, take it in context, but usually the most negative connotation possible
• Dust on Ice - or "Dice," to distinguish from the Western Dust on Crust, which really doesn't hold a candle to the East Coast version
• Frozen Ocean - when you have sleet and freezing rain overnight, leaving everything exactly like it was the end of the previous day, and pretty much bulletproof the whole next day or longer
• Frozen Chicken Heads - when smaller terrain features freeze solid overnight, usually softening the next day, actually more of a Western phenominom
• Water skiing - when it rains so much you're literally hydro-planing across flat sections of the trail
• January thaw - no snow at all, you are skiing on rocks and mud, if you're lucky enough your local resort even stays open
• Wintry mix - more of a traffic report phrase, usually sleet & freezing rain and sometimes snow (usually followed by their parental-sounding advice "stay at home unless you REALLY have to go somewhere")
  

And just for some balance, some of my favorite conditions from out West:

• Early season obstacles - a Mammoth favorite, basically means there isn't 7 to 9 feet of snow blanketing the mountain yet, and by 7-9' I mean base; don't go anywhere that isn't tracked yet or you risk dry-docking
• Dry docking - completely coming to a stop because you skied into an area where early season obstacles still exist and you just gave yourself numerous core shots
• Low tide - when early season obstacles still exist and it's easy to dry dock in certain parts of the mountain that otherwise look perfectly skiable
• Core shot - taking such a large chunk out of your ski base you can see the core, rocks back East can't do nearly the same amount of damage as volcanic rock, they call them the "Rockies" for a reason
• Graupel - little styrofoam-looking bits of hail, never good for avalanche conditions if they get buried
• Avalanche conditions - something to pay attention to out West, entire books have been written on the subject, I'm not going to even try to summarize here
• Crust - impenetrable snow that occurs when snow warms, then refreezes
• Corn - sun-warmed snow on top of a crust, can feel like feeling powder 10 times deeper
  
• Powder - anything that comes out of the sky
• Fresh - powder
• Blower - light dry, fluffy powder
• Pow Pow - affectionate name for powder, usually part of the phrase "sick pow pow"
• Bottomless - so much light powder, or a comparatively lesser amount of heavier powder, that makes every turn feel like bouncing up and down on a bed or a trampoline
  
• Face shots - when there is so much powder the force of making a turn blasts snow up from your ski tips and into your face
  
• Powder rules - varies from ski town to ski town, but generally any time you get over a foot of fresh, businesses close and all the employees go skiing or riding only to come in the next day as if they were in some parallel universe and the store never missed a day (except everyone spends the whole day reminiscing)
• Up-Side-Down cake - when heavy snow lands on light snow, not fun to ski and definitely not good for avi conditions
• Right-side-up cake - the BEST conditions you can ask for, happens when a cold front comes through but not before squeezing a bunch more wet & heavy snow out of the sky, then leaving some nice light fluffy goodness on top that causes everyone in a ski town to call "powder rules" and call in sick and have the best day of their life skiing anywhere on the mountain with complete bottomless snow with some blower pow on top giving you face shots every turn...