Tips on how to ski Breakable Crust?

[Bottleman]

I most likely could, but... Why would I want to?

Cuz all the kool kids are doing it?????????

[Cabinfever]

Switch - no poles

[icelanticskier]

Possibly the worst 1 minute beach-skiing video ever made.

oh, i'm crushed, cramp de pee-on.

rog

[retirwntm]

Skiing a gorilla crust / death crust has always been an act of survival in my experience. You don't go looking for it, but you've found it and now you need to deal with it. Whenever I've been in that type of situation, I just survival skied.

There is no technique and I'm not going to try to advance my styrofoam lid popping skills with skis. I'm using whatever I've learned skiing plus any raw athleticism plus any other experience from any other sport to get through technically unskiable conditions.

I'm certainly not going to go out looking for it either. Gorilla crusts are the things of tib/fib fractures and career ending knee damage. If I was going to do it just to see if I could, I definitely wouldn't go into a hardwood forest to do it.

[Johnny Deep]

Fat skis.

add tip rocker.

^^^This.

Also technique. Must keep forward. Backseat = spanked

[Ski to Be]

Rocker helps a lot!! & I have never been able to make it look pretty on traditional cambered skinny skis with the exception of hop turns . It also depends on how breakable the crust is and what is underneath. Driving back from Valdez on the Alaska highway a friend and I stopped to tour up a small mountain on a warm day in early May and I could tell it was going to be bad on the way up. Coming down it was like skiing on a giant eggshell except that when you broke through you dropped a foot below almost to the ground . You could not hop turn it as you were too far below the crust to get above it. In sections you just pointed em straight and hoped that you wouldn't break through and basically I skied in a wedge just to get out of it. After skiing the raddest terrain in my life and feeling good about my skiing I was quickly humbled by what would be an intermediate level slope with that nearly unskiable crust. I used to mach down breakable crust in younger days till one day at Blackcomb I windmilled down the glacier trying to make a GS turn. I could not turn my head to one side for a few days after that. Since I have been on rockered fat skis for the most part I don't notice it that much anymore.

[ak_powder_monkey]

find better snow?

99% of the time there's either thicker crust or less crust somewhere.

[raisingarizona13]

Speed? Maybe some of us are thinking about a different breakable or wind effected snow but in the wind funk we get here on the Peaks you are asking for a serious whoopin if you charge to hard into it. Add some exposure and steeps and you could die. I slow it down and focus on being smooth, as I said earlier, drive hard but pop harder. I would love to see the speed commenters try their techniques on the breakable wind effected snow we deal with here.

[mcski]

Open up your top boot buckle. Unless youre a goofy-footer. In that case , open toe is the way to go.

[wcf3]

Here are some tips:

[weasel1]

The Worth Crusty: ...Breakable...Crust. By themselves those two words don't mean much, but together they strike fear and conjure up visions of broken boot buckles and lower tibial fractures. The impossible just became possible with Worth's latest skiing breakthrough: hover technology. You've been riding the lifts all week eyeing that backwoods creme brulee. Well get ready to eat up, you've just been handed a spoon. Using military grade hover technology developed in conjunction with the Vermont National Guard, Worth directs over 150 cfm of air downward through the base of the Crusty. The cushion of air allows you to glide over any hard surface without breaking through. Go ahead Rambo, ski right past the base lodge and over to your car, then flick the "off" switch on the Crusty's iPhone app (or handy remote control*) and you're back on solid ground. The Worth Crusty: try it, it's delicious and it beats taking the shuttle bus.

*remote available separately
iPhone is a trademark of Apple Corp, Cupertino CA

Actually, we license the tech from these guys:

[My Pet Powder Goat]

NY style or chicago?

[hortence]

that ain't breakable crust, shame on you.

this is breakable crust. on real equipment. 60mm waxless xc skis with lace up ankle boots. skiing freeheel on xc equipment forces you to weight yer skis properly when conditions aren't green circle out west snow conditions.

rog

Um no. It forces you to confront your own inability to adapt to newer, better technology and inability to learn new ways of doing things.

[icelanticskier]

Um no. It forces you to confront your own inability to adapt to newer, better technology and inability to learn new ways of doing things.

Yer wrong. Learning to do it well with less under you makes it much easier when you have more. If you reverse that, you'll likely be flailing in a huge way. Or broken

rog

[Lostinthetrees]

HUVr (skis) - Anywhere and everyday is a powder day.

[JONG SLAUGHTER]

The rog doesn't fall

Skiing fast in breakable is a good way to eat shit hard when you least expect it.

rog

THAT'S CUZ YOU SUCK AT SKIING, FUCKIN' BEATER.

[icelanticskier]

THAT'S CUZ YOU SUCK AT SKIING, FUCKIN' BEATER.

give it a rest, brett the rog would ski circles around yer non laced flappy tongue herman survivor work boot'n ass any day. grab any ski setup you want. my tummy hurts from laughing already!

rog

[baron]

Skiing a gorilla crust / death crust has always been an act of survival in my experience. You don't go looking for it, but you've found it and now you need to deal with it. Whenever I've been in that type of situation, I just survival skied.

There is no technique and I'm not going to try to advance my styrofoam lid popping skills with skis. I'm using whatever I've learned skiing plus any raw athleticism plus any other experience from any other sport to get through technically unskiable conditions.

I'm certainly not going to go out looking for it either. Gorilla crusts are the things of tib/fib fractures and career ending knee damage. If I was going to do it just to see if I could, I definitely wouldn't go into a hardwood forest to do it.

I hear that;crust is smthin U hit by accident;and accidents it can cause

[icelanticskier]

crust is no accident. it's there and could seperate you from an objective or the way home. not liking or avoiding breakable crust altogether is fine, but if you want to be a truly well rounded skier that can handle pretty much anything that presents itself to you, and handle it well, then you must learn to love the crust. at least a lil bit. injuries happen cuz yer either not paying attention to what yer doing, are careless, or yer doing something that's beyond yer ability level.

rog

[strawjack]

good god, give it up with your life lessons according to rog.

you are a gaper on skinny skis that can't even handle one heady topper.

[hortence]

Yer wrong. Learning to do it well with less under you makes it much easier when you have more. If you reverse that, you'll likely be flailing in a huge way. Or broken

rog

Well there is truth to that, but that's not what you said originally. Skiing on 30 year old equipment is just stupid and masochistic. Reading about ad naseum thread after thread is boring.

[GPP33]

Speed? Maybe some of us are thinking about a different breakable or wind effected snow but in the wind funk we get here on the Peaks you are asking for a serious whoopin if you charge to hard into it. Add some exposure and steeps and you could die. I slow it down and focus on being smooth, as I said earlier, drive hard but pop harder. I would love to see the speed commenters try their techniques on the breakable wind effected snow we deal with here.

I've found that Mach 12 can keep you on it enough to make it skiable. The fact that you're one muscle twitch away from total disaster makes it exciting (which makes it fun, I guess). The problem is at some point we need to slow down and cross that line where it's bound to hurt like hell.

[JONG SLAUGHTER]

the rog would ski circles around yer

I ENJOY IT WHEN YOU WORK CIRCLES AROUND MY SWEATY ASSHOLE WITH YOUR TONGUE, GAPER.

[icelanticskier]

Well there is truth to that, but that's not what you said originally. Skiing on 30 year old equipment is just stupid and masochistic. Reading about ad naseum thread after thread is boring.

Who was skiing on 30 yo equipment? And tell the extreme skiers of 15-30 years ago that skiing all conditions well on skinny gear is masochistic. You'd get laughed at.

rog

[jonesy]

Fkn red alret.....Dive dive dive.