Subscribe

Straight to the Point: Tahoe, Your Skin Tracks Are Too Steep

By

Kyle Neddenriep

Aidan Whitelaw track setting. Photo: Alex Shafer

Aidan Whitelaw track setting. Photo: Alex Shafer

If you’ve spent any time walking uphill on skis in the Tahoe Basin, you’ve likely experienced the following: backsliding on a freshly set skin track, a desperate pole plant at a blown-out kick turn, the creeping realization that ski crampons might be your only hope of topping out. It’s a familiar struggle, and the culprit…

Responses

  1. Pete Frazier

    Totally agree. Have experienced it.

  2. Duncan Masland

    It is believed Emerald Bay gets its beautiful hue from the tears of vanquished skinners.

    1. Jason Albert

      That’s a lot of green-hued tears and a very funny comment.

  3. Barry

    This comes across as super patronizing. It’s one thing to read guidelines in a book, quite another to break trail through 3+ ft of bottomless pow through complex terrain for 3k ft of vert.
    – There’s never been a higher percentage of people getting into the sport via a guide, whether through an intro to backcountry course and / or an AIARE 1. What’s different post pandemic is the sheer number of new people and the fact that most come from a primarily resort skiing background instead of a mountaineering background.
    – Almost everyone out touring knows what a good skin track looks like, the same way everyone knows what a good realist painting looks like. But they aren’t able to reliably make it happen until they get years of practice navigating off trail, reading terrain, and knowing how kick turns and other track features will end up looking when you put them in different types and depths of snow. And that’s assuming they already have the insane uphill fitness to be able to break trail in bottomless snow and still have plenty of brain cells left to manage all of the previous.
    – Even if you are an expert at putting in an elegant skinner, it’s impossible to reliably onsite one in new to you, complex terrain. The more consistent above treeline slopes common in the Alps are a completely different ballgame from the densely treed slopes with lots of benches, ridges, and other small features found around Tahoe. Over time you can learn the good routes through this terrain but your first time on a slope its easy to end up in a spot where too steep or too shallow is the only option to continue. Tahoe has always been a tourist destination and often the generally bad tracks are put in by out of towners.
    – If you are following someone who is breaking trail, the only non-asshole thing to say to them is to politely offer to take over. Think it could be done better? Don’t complain about their work, show them better work. On more than one occasion I’ve seen advanced beginners who have a very strong idea of what the track should look like be given the opportunity to put their ideas into practice but be unable to substitute that AVA turn on the less steep bench for the kick turn they swear isn’t necessary. They’re bringing advice from a boot-top pow day to a bottomless day and it just doesn’t hold up.
    – The only way people get better at making skin tracks is to practice and that means they make bad skin tracks for a while but beta-spraying them doesn’t help anything. If anything it just pushes them to opt for easier to skin terrain with more consistent pitch and less trees which is usually the best ski terrain and the worst possible outcome overall.

    Have you tried entertaining your ski partner by poking fun at the terrible skin track you’re on? If you aren’t going to put in a better track yourself it’s really the most productive way to handle it.

  4. Steve Bohrer

    I don’t feel like this is patronizing. When I started BC skiing 15+ years ago no one I knew said a word about the skin track angle. Mostly that was because no one I knew had ever skied with a guide, or had any formal training. And we were doing relatively short days where the exhaustion of a single climb didn’t really matter. Over the years, the concept of shallower skin track angles sort of became more self-apparent, but it really wasn’t until I got Rob’s book that it clicked for me. Then I skied with a guide a few times, and it made even more sense.

    Now I probably quote Rob nearly every time I go out and back it up with the guide on multi day trip perspective. It’s an easy and non-confrontational way to have a discussion and bring the group to a more consistent skin track angle strategy.

    The thing is, you really need to experience a good skin track to understand how bad the steep ones are. We ski a lot of lower elevation brushy terrain that forces occasional awkwardly steep moves or other tricks you wouldn’t ordinarily choose to do. But when you can put in that nice 13 degree track that uses the terrain and avoids kick turns, man that’s magic. So yes, put in a better one, but having a conversation and making a goal for better group tracks is the best long term strategy.

    1. Gavin Hess

      The way I see it, putting in a good track is a service to the community who will use the track until the next storm. Put in a nice track that is useable as it becomes firm or crusty and it minimizes the need for many tracks marring the snowscape.

      No one is obligated to perform community service. If I am working, it is both fun and my job to make sure the skin track is workable (at worst) and pleasant (at best) for my clients. Recreating, I usually have a bit more tolerance for a steep or poorly done track, depending on the conditions.

      I often get a good chuckle out of seeing the early morning efforts of a certain Teton local, who has a talent for improbably steep and direct tracks.
      All this being said, I think THR is a great place to educate and discuss skin track practices. I certainly agree with Barry that behind the track setter is not the correct location for airing these grievances.

    2. Doug Russell

      Putting in a good track shows that you know what you’re doing rather than being a hack. Plain and simple.

  5. Slim

    Barry, I agree with your point that it’s easier to recognize a good track than set one.
    At the same time I thought this article was a good call for everyone to try and do better.

    Here is another resource:
    https://gearysguiding.com/art-of-up-tracking-handbook/

  6. Cody Townsend

    Knowing very well two of the individuals responsible for setting 90% of the steepest skin tracks you’ve ever gone up in popular zones in the Tahoe Basin, I’ve often given them light-hearted grief for their 35% gradients. Having first done a bulk of my ski touring apprenticeship under the disciples of Ruedi Beglinger, the father of skin track etiquette in Canada, I too was as frustrated as the author with the slick, vertical tracks going to the peaks of the best ski touring zones in Tahoe. I frequently complained about them to others just like the author, with mostly a similar set of points. But if you happen to beat the two individuals–which is a near impossible feat–to the base of these lines on a powder day, you’ll quickly learn the pitch isn’t built out of ego, inexperience or malice. Having once or twice been lucky enough to be the first up on these zones, I quickly learned that through the bouldery, old-growth forests of the Tahoe Basin, the steep line is the most natural line. When I tried to set the track to that perfect 11-13% gradient, I found myself prematurely kick turning, side-slipping below the tree in my line to keep the pitch consistent, side-stepping up the boulder and falling off of any natural consistency and cohesion in the track. We don’t have many wide open, smooth alpine bowls like Chamonix or BC, so the steep trail becomes the most efficient for the setter. It was only then I realized that these two horse-lung equipped and iron-leg-driven skin track setters aren’t madmen, they’re following the natural line. So since then, I thank them for setting the track, drink some concrete at the trailhead to harden the fuck up and stopped worrying about it…because I’m getting a great workout in and it’s just skiing.

Leave a Reply

Latest Features