The Snowfall is
So Silent
The snowfall is so silent, so slow, bit by bit, with delicacy it settles down on the earth and covers over the fields. The silent snow comes down white and weightless; snowfall makes no noise, falls as forgetting falls, flake after flake. It covers the fields gently while frost attacks them with its sudden flashes of white; covers everything with its pure and silent covering; not one thing on the ground anywhere escapes it. And wherever it falls it stays,
content and gay, for snow does not slip off as rain does, but it stays and sinks in. The flakes are skyflowers, pale lilies from the clouds, that wither on earth. They come down blossoming but then so quickly they are gone; they bloom only on the peak, above the mountains, and make the earth feel heavier when they die inside. Snow, delicate snow, that falls with such lightness on the head, on the feelings, come and cover over the sadness that lies always in my reason.
Miguel de Unamuno
One
Contents Winter Edition 2014
Nature *Patterns in Nature *Northern Lights
Snow Creatures *Snow Leopards *Artic Foxes
Sports *First Winter Olympics
* The Health Benefits of Snowboarding
Maxed Out on
Everest Fashion *4 Ski Stylish Weekend Gear Essentials
*10 Features Every Ski Jackets Needs
Features * Why is Snow White?
* Ice Hotels
Meet the
Team
Editor-in-Chief: Ross Ford Rford@powder.co.za
Designer: Kiera-Marie Loughrey Kloughrey@powder.co.za
Sub-Editor: Natasha Van Blerk Nvblerk@powder.co.za
Marketing Manager: Sean Black Sblack@powder.co.za
Photographer: Joshua Oates joshuao@powder.co.za
Advertising Manager: Madien Van der Merwe Mvandermerwe@powder.co.za
Nature
Patterns in Nature:
Snow & Ice Ice Cave Ceiling Photograph by Carsten Peter Peaks and valleys ripple across the ceiling of an ice cave in Bavaria, Germany.
Ice Fractures Photograph by John Dunn Fractures create ribbon-like patterns in thick ice on Ellesmere Island, Canada.
Snowflake Crystal Photograph by John Dunn A snowflake appears translucent when photographed up-close
Seven
Glacier Ice Photograph by John Dunn A salmon-colouwred rock stands out from a background of patterned glacier ice on Baffin Island, Canada
Dendrite Snowflake
Snowy Hills Photograph by Jay Dickman The sun casts shadows on snow-covered hills in North America.
Photograph by Kenneth Libbrecht Dendrite snowflakes first occur when the temperature hovers between 30 degrees Fahrenheit (-1 degree Celsius) and 27 degrees Fahrenheit (-3 degrees Celsius).
What are the
T
he science behind the northern lights is that the sun that lies behind the formation of the auroras. During large solar explosions and flares, huge quantities of particles are thrown out of the sun and into deep
space. When the particles meet the Earth’s magnetic shield, they are led towards a circle around the magnetic North Pole, where they interact with the upper layers of the atmosphere. The energy which is then released is the northern lights. All this happens approximately 100 kilometres above our heads.
Living legend Perhaps not so surprisingly, the northern lights’ spectacle has given rise to as many legends as there have been people watching. Symbols linked to the northern lights are found on the Sami shamanistic drum. The phenomenon has several different names in Sami. It is, for instance, known as Guovssahas, which means “the light which can be heard”. The northern lights were traditionally associated with sound by the Sami, the indigenous people of Norway. And during the Viking Age, the northern lights were said to be the armour of the Valkyrie warrior virgins, shedding a strange flickering light. Be patient When dreaming about seeing the northern lights, you must remember that you are at the complete mercy of nature. The northern lights love to play hide and seek. Observing the aurora borealis is often a tug of war between your patience and the aurora itself. Stay in the northern lights area at least a week, preferably two, and you will be rewarded - unless local weather suddenly decides to obstruct your view with clouds.
Penitentes phenomena
O
n very high-altitude glaciers, such as those in the Andes mountains, where the air is dry, snow can grow into spectacular narrow blades of ice up to several metres high. They are called Nieves Penitentes or simply Penitentes. They take the form of tall thin blades of hardened snow or ice closely spaced with the blades oriented towards the general direction of the sun. They usually form win clusters and range from a few centimetres to 2 meters but penitentes
as high as 5 meters has been recorded. These pinnacles of snow or ice grow over all glaciated and snow covered areas in the Dry Andes above 4,000 meters. Penitentes are a common sight in the regions between Argentina and Chile. Penitentes were first described in the literature by Darwin in 1839. On March 22, 1835, he had to squeeze his way through snowfields covered in penitentes near the Piuquenes Pass, on the way from Santiago de Chile to the Argentinian city of Mendoza, and reported the local belief that they were formed by the strong winds of the Andes.
In reality, wind has nothing to do with Penitentes. They form when the sun’s rays turn snow directly into water vapor without melting it first, a process called sublimation. An initially smooth snow surface first develops depressions as some regions randomly sublimate faster than others. The curved surfaces then concentrate sunlight and speed up sublimation in the depressions, leaving the higher points behind as forests of towering spikes. At the micro-scale, similar-looking spikes help solar cell surfaces maximize their sunlight absorption.
Recently scientists have argued that the presence of carbon or any other impurities lead to some absorption of sunlight and the resultant occurrence of Penitentes. If this theory is to be believed, then the glaciers could be saved from the onslaught of global warming. There are counter arguments to this claim that if the Penitentes absorb more sunlight due to the presence of carbon, they may also result in the destruction of the icebergs. Studies are being pursued in this field to discover the effect of global warming on the formation of Penitentes.
Snow Roller: A strange meteorological phenomenon Kaushik Sunday
S
now roller is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which large cylinders of snow are naturally formed as chunks of snow are blown along the ground by wind, picking up material along the way, in much the same way that the large snowballs used in snowmen are made. But unlike snowballs made by people, snow rollers are typically cylindrical in shape, and are often hollow. The inner layers, which are the first layers to form, are weak and thin compared to the outer layers and can easily be blown away, leaving what looks like a doughnut or Swiss roll. Snow rollers happen with the combination of lying snow and high wind speeds, mostly in North America and Northern Europe, and they can be as small as a tennis ball or they can be as large as two feet across – depending on how strong the wind is and how smooth the surface of the snow is. Gravity can also assist snow roller formation. An inclined surface often needs just a little shove from the wind to get snow rollers in motion. Frank Barrow, a lecturer in meteorology at the Met Office, described the exact science behind the formations. They start off with a nice thick layer of snow, with the top snow just on the point of melting either because of general temperature or sunshine on the surface. The top snow layer becomes a bit sticky and you then need a fairly strong wind. The sticky layer can be peeled off the colder and more powdery snow underneath by the wind, forming a roll. The rolls are not hollow to begin with, as a number of layers build up as the roll gets larger the further it is blown. However, the inner layers are weaker as they are formed first and are easily blown away. Eventually the rolls become too big to be blown any further or come to rest against vegetation or at the bottom of a hill.
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Weather wonders: ‘Whiteout’
O
ne of the terms that High Plains residents do not like to hear during winter is "whiteout," but the term can mean different things to different people. "'Whiteout' is one of those meteorological terms with more than one definition," said Mary Knapp, who is the state climatologist for Kansas. "Here in the Plains, it generally refers to a situation in which blowing snow has reduced visibility to near-zero." In polar regions, however, it refers to an optical phenomenon in the atmosphere, which engulfs the observer in a white glow, Knapp said. The observer can see things, but the horizon and the clouds are indistinguishable. So, objects appear to "float," and the observer's sense of depth and orientation is lost. "In the air during a polar whiteout, you can't tell up from down," she said. The polar version of a whiteout usually occurs in areas of unbroken snow with a uniformly overcast sky, the climatologist said. The Plains version occurs when strong winds combine with a light powdery snow.
Snow Creatures
Snow Leopards Conserving snow leopards with community participation in Northern Pakistan Shafqat Hussain, who originally began his career as an economist, founded Project Snow Leopard in 1998 to save the endangered cat in Baltistan, Pakistan. Project Snow Leopard works to create and maintain livestock insurance schemes at the local village level. A primary threat to the snow leopard is trapping and killing in retaliation for livestock attacks. The insurance scheme, now working in ten villages and expanded to 15 with the help of the Big Cats Initiative, helps herders recover the monetary loss of killed livestock and mitigates their desire to retaliate. The organization is also building predatorproof corrals for households that have sustained repeat livestock attacks. Based on scat analysis, Hussain has found that the local snow leopards’ diets are 30 to 40 percent livestock. This highlights the delicate balance between conservation of the snow leopard and local villagers’ economic well-being.
Snowy Owls make mysterious migration The visitors from the Arctic have shown up as far south as North Carolina, on the island of Bermuda and in unusually large numbers in the Northeast and around the Great Lakes. Last year, on December 5, 15 were counted at Logan Airport in Boston. For reasons no one understands, snowy owl sightings are spiking in eastern North America this winter. "Maybe this is starting to shape up to be an irruption year," said Denver Holt, founder of the Owl Research Institute in Montana. 'Irruption' refers to the unpredictable migrations the birds make. This wouldn't be the first snowy owl irruption in recent memory; it would be the third. Two years ago, the birds showed up in unusually high numbers from east to west across the continent. One was even spotted in Hawaii for the first time. The following year’s snowy owl irruption was less widespread and more directional, with birds showing up in the northern Great Plains, northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest, according to the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count. This year, owls appear to be drawn to another part of the continent. In the central plains of North America, some owls, particularly young ones, appear to show up regularly. Likewise, most of the birds that arrive during an unpredictable irruption are young ones that hatched over the summer, Holt said. Historically, people have thought the
owls flew south because they weren't able to find food up north, but this does not appear to be the case, said Norman Smith, who catches and relocates snowy owls attracted to the tundralike expanse of Logan Airport in Boston. The arriving birds seem to be in good condition, and transmitters attached to them have revealed they are capable of returning to the Arctic. One flew back to the airport the following year for a round trip of more than 11,265 kilometres, Smith said. And, not surprisingly, it’s unclear what’s driving the owls' attention-grabbing appearances in recent years. "That's one of those things that is a good question," said Smith, who works for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. "Is it something that is happening in the Arctic habitat?" Since beginning to study the birds at Logan in 1981, Smith has seen seasons with as few as one bird and as many as 43. Male snowy owls can be almost completely white, while females have more brown flecks on their feathers and young birds have even more brown and can blend into the dead grass of a marsh, a location they are likely to turn up, said Geoff LeBaron, the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count director. "It often looks like a Clorox bottle on a fence post, and when it turns its head and looks at you, there are these glowing yellow eyes, and of course, they can turn their heads most of the way around," LeBaron said.
Longest polar bear swim recorded – 687 kilometres Study predicts more long-distance swims due to shrinking sea ice
A female polar bear swam for a record-breaking nine days straight, traversing 426 miles (687 kilometres) of water – equivalent to the distance between Washington, D.C., and Boston, a new study says.
twenty one
We’re pretty sure that these animals didn’t have to do these long swims before”
T
he predator made her epic journey in the Beaufort Sea, where sea ice is shrinking due to global warming, forcing mother bears to swim greater and greater distances to reach land—to the peril of their cubs. The cub of the recordsetting bear, for instance, died at some point between starting the swim and when the researchers next observed the mother on land. She also lost 22 percent of her body weight. “We’re pretty sure that these animals didn’t have to do these long swims before, because 687 -kilometre stretches of open water didn’t occur very often in the evolutionary history of the polar bear,” said study co-author Steven Amstrup, chief scientist for the conservation group Polar Bears International. Amstrup is also the former project leader of polar bear research for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which led the new study. Another female bear in the study swam for more than 12 days, but appears to have found places to rest during her journey.
Long Swims Deadly for Polar Bear Cubs
Sea Ice Loss to Continue
Biologists collared 68 female polar bears between 2004 and 2009 to study their movements. Thanks to what study co-author and WWF polar bear biologist Geoff York calls an “accident of technology and design,” the researchers noticed data gaps in the bears’ whereabouts. The researchers were later able to link the gaps to periods when the bears were at sea. The scientists examined GPS data for more than 50 female polar bears’ long-distance swimming events, defined as swims longer than 30 miles (50 kilometres). This data was then correlated to rates of cub survival. “Bears that engaged in long-distance swimming were more likely to experience cub loss,” said study co-author George Durner, a USGS research zoologist in Anchorage, Alaska. Five of the 11 mothers that had cubs before they began their lengthy swims lost their young by the time the researchers observed them again on land, according to the research, presented July 19 at the International Bear Association Conference in Ottawa, Canada. The study is not yet published in a journal.
Until 1995, summer sea ice usually remained over along the continental shelf of the Beaufort Sea, a critical habitat for polar bears due to its rich seal population. Now the sea ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas is retreating from the coast by hundreds of kilometres, Durner said. In 2010, Arctic sea ice extent was the third lowest on record, part of a long-term trend of ice loss that will continue for decades to come, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado. “So the sort of conditions that contribute to long-distance swimming are likely going to persist in the future, and if cub mortality is directly related to this, then it would have a negative impact on the population,” Durner said. It’s unknown whether the cubs are drowning at sea or whether the metabolically costly act of swimming long distances in nearly freezing water kills them after they reach land.
Emperor Penguins Escape Velocity
Awkward on land, emperor penguins soar through the sea. Now scientists have discovered the secret of their speed.
twenty five
R
oger Hughes has never seen emperor penguins in the wild. But when he saw them in a BBC documentary, rocketing through the sea with trails of bubbles in their wakes, he had an insight that would lead to a surprising discovery. A marine biologist at Bangor University in north Wales, Hughes had recently been talking with his wife about the lubricating properties of new competitive swimsuits. He wondered: Maybe those bubbles help penguins swim faster. Over beer in a pub, Hughes bounced his hypothesis off his friend John Davenport, a marine biologist at University College Cork in Ireland. “Roger thought I’d have the answer straightaway,” says Davenport, who studies the relationship between animals’ body structures and their movements. But he didn’t know what the bubbles did for the penguins. It turns out no one else knew either. The two men combed the scientific literature and found that the phenomenon had never even been studied. So they
decided to do it themselves. With the help of Poul Larsen, a mechanical engineer at the Technical University of Denmark, they analyzed hours of underwater footage and discovered that the penguins were doing something that engineers had long tried to do with boats and torpedoes: They were using air as a lubricant to cut drag and increase speed. When an emperor penguin swims through the water, it is slowed by the friction between its body and the water, keeping its maximum speed somewhere between four and nine feet a second. But in short bursts the penguin can double or even triple its speed by releasing air from its feathers in the form of tiny bubbles. These reduce the density and viscosity of the water around the penguin’s body, cutting drag and enabling the bird to reach speeds that would otherwise be impossible. (As an added benefit, the extra speed helps the penguins avoid predators such as leopard seals.)
The key to this talent is in the penguin’s feathers. Like other birds, emperors have the capacity to fluff their feathers and insulate their bodies with a layer of air. But whereas most birds have rows of feathers with bare skin between them, emperor penguins have a dense, uniform coat of feathers. And because the bases of their feathers include tiny filaments – wwjust 20 microns in diameter, less than half the width of a thin human hair—air is trapped in a fine, downy mesh and released as microbubbles so tiny that they form a lubricating coat on the feather surface.
Though feathers are not an option for ships, technology may finally be catching up with biology. In 2010 a Dutch company started selling systems that lubricate the hulls of container ships with bubbles. Last year Mitsubishi announced that it had designed an air-lubrication system for supertankers. But so far no one has designed anything that can gun past a leopard seal and launch over a wall of sea ice. That’s still proprietary technology.
Arctic Foxes The arctic fox is an incredibly hardy animal that can survive frigid Arctic temperatures as low as –58°F (-50°C) in the treeless lands where it makes its home. It has furry soles, short ears, and a short muzzle — all-important adaptations to the chilly clime. Arctic foxes live in burrows, and in a blizzard they may tunnel into the snow to create shelter. Arctic foxes have beautiful white (sometimes blue-gray) coats that act as very effective winter camouflage. The natural hues allow the animal to blend into the tundra's ubiquitous snow and ice. When the seasons change, the fox's coat turns as well, adopting a brown or gray appearance that
provides cover among the summer tundra's rocks and plants. These colourings help foxes to effectively hunt rodents, birds, and even fish. But in winter prey can be scarce on the ground. At such times, arctic foxes will follow the region's premier predator—a polar bear—to eat the leftover scraps from its kills. Foxes will also eat vegetables when they are available. Like a cat's, this fox's thick tail aids its balance. But for an arctic fox the tail (or "brush") is especially useful as warm cover in cold weather. Female arctic foxes give birth each spring to a large litter of up to 14 pups.
twenty nine
Melting sea ice causing decline in Harp Seal populations
W
arming temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean have lead to a decline in sea ice, which is leaving populations of young harp seals dead in the water, according to researchers at Duke University. “Stranding rates for the region’s adult seals have generally not gone up as sea ice cover has declined; it’s the youngof-the-year animals who are stranding,” said David Johnston, a scientist at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, of the pups not even a year old. “And it’s not just the weakest pups – those with low genetic diversity and presumably lower ability to adapt to environmental changes -that are stranding,” he said. “It appears genetic fitness has little effect on this.” Sizeable masses of sea ice play an important role in the lives of harp seals, which use the ice as platforms to birth and nurse young until they are big enough to swim, hunt and fend off predators for themselves. Johnson said that in years of extremely low ice cover, entire year-classes of seal pups may be wiped out. Prior research on harp seal populations in the North Atlantic indicates that sea ice cover in key harp seal breeding regions has declined by as much as 6 percent since 1979, when satellite records of ice conditions in the region began. Building upon the prior research, Johnson and colleagues compared images of winter ice from 1992 to 2010 in major harp seal breeding regions off of Canada’s east coast with instances of dead harp seals grouped by gender and age.
The comparison revealed a noteworthy find: in the years where ice cover was reduced, the number of dead seal pups rose sharply, even though stranding rates for adults remained relatively stable. DNA samples from 106 harbour seals dead on shore were compared with DNA from harbour seals accidentally caught by fishing boats in the region in the same period. “We used measures of genetic diversity to determine if the dead seals that came ashore were less fit than the presumably healthy ones that had been caught by fishermen, but found no difference,” said Thomas Schultz, director of Duke’s Marine Conservation Molecular Facility. “The stranded animals appear to have come from a genetically diverse population, and we have no evidence to suggest that genetic fitness played a role in their deaths.” The study is reportedly the first of its kind to assess harp seal stranding events in terms of the relative roles of genetic, environmental and demographic factors such as age and gender. Results of the analysis revealed that male seals stranded more frequently than females during the study period, and that during light ice years, that relationship was strongest. Researchers concluded that sea ice cover and demographic factors have a greater influence on harp seal stranding rates than genetic diversity. Kristina Cammen, a Duke Ph.D. student who also co-led the study, said the findings “provide more context for what we’re seeing in high-latitude species in general. The effects of climate change are acting on younger animals; it’s affecting them during the crucial first part of their life.
Sports
The health benefits of
Snowboarding
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Enjoying the Health Benefits of Snowboarding
Snowboarding Improves Flexibility Snowboarding significantly improves overall flexibility, as it requires you to change directions and pace frequently and suddenly. Snowboarding also requires good balance, so your balance will improve as you grow more proficient at the sport. It also strengthens your ability to concentrate, as you learn to pay close attention to the changes in the snow.
You can enjoy the health benefits of snowboarding even if you're not a proficient snowboarder. Beginners can receive a few lessons before heading out on the slopes and it's a good idea to wear a helmet, as well as elbow, knee and wrist guards, especially while you're learning. Those who wish to snowboard for fitness should choose terrain that's appropriate to their skill level. Choosing terrain that's too difficult for you increases your risk of injury. As you develop the skills required, move on to steeper, more challenging terrain. The steeper and more challenging the terrain, the more you'll build muscle in your legs, abdomen and core.
Skier JP Auclair This skier and artist has made a career out of reimagining and then redefining his sport.
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First Winter
Olympics - 1924
Forty one
I
n January 25, 1924, the first Winter Olympics take off in style at Chamonix in the French Alps. Spectators were thrilled by the ski jump and bobsled as well as 12 other events involving a total of six sports. The "International Winter Sports Week," as it was known, was a great success, and in 1928 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially designated the Winter Games, staged in St. Moritz, Switzerland, as the second Winter Olympics. Five years after the birth of the modern Olympics in 1896, the first organized international competition involving winter sports was staged in Sweden. Called the Nordic Games, only Scandinavian countries competed. Like the Olympics, it was staged thereon every four years but always in Sweden. In 1908, figure skating made its way into the Summer Olympics in London, though it was not actually held until October, some three months after the other events were over. In 1911, the IOC proposed the staging of a separate winter competition for the 1912 Stockholm Games, but Sweden, wanting to protect the popularity of the Nordic Games, declined. Germany planned a Winter Olympics to precede the 1916 Berlin Summer Games, but World War I forced the cancellation of both. At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, ice hockey joined figure skating as an official Olympic event, and Canada took home the first of many hockey gold medals. Soon after, an agreement was reached with Scandinavians to stage the IOC-sanctioned International Winter Sports Week. It was so popular among the 16 participating nations that, in 1925, the IOC formally created the Winter Olympics, retroactively making Chamonix the first.
In Chamonix, Scandinavians dominated the speed rinks and slopes, and Norway won the unofficial team competition with 17 medals. The United States came in third, winning its only gold medal with Charles Jewtraw's victory in the 500-meter speed-skating event. Canada won another hockey gold, scoring 110 goals and allowing just three goals in five games. Of the nearly 300 athletes, only 13 were women, and they only competed in the figure-skating events. Austrian Helene Engelmann won the pairs competition with Alfred Berger, and Austrian Herma Planck Szabo won the women's singles. The Olympics offered a particular boost to skiing, a sport that would make enormous strides within the next decade. At Chamonix, Norway won all but one of the nine skiing medals.
Fashion
10 Features Every
Ski Jacket
Needs
S
earching for a new ski jacket? Then be sure it has all the technical features you need, before you part with your hard-earned cash. After all, you’re going to be wearing it in some of the harshest environments you’ve ever faced. You don’t want to find it lacking when you’re stuck on a chairlift in a blizzard. Here, is the 10 most important things to look for: and to do so, I’ve had a little help from Are in Sweden. This cute little mountain town is the Swedish capital of skiing, and it’s been the birthplace of several ski-clothing brands, including Peak Performance and Elevenate. Needless to say, the locals spend a lot of time outdoors: so they know a thing or two about what works – and what doesn’t – in a high-quality ski jacket.
1. A waterproof, breathable fabric You need a fabric that keeps the snow and rain out, and lets your sweat escape too. Gore-Tex is still the industry leader in this respect: a membrane which is sandwiched between an outer and inner layer of fabric, and has over 1.4 billion pores per square centimetre. Gore-Tex isn’t essential, though – there’s a growing range of waterproof and breathable membranes available which do the job almost as well. Look for fabrics waterproof to 16,000-20,000mm which have a breathability rating of 10,000-15,000grams. There’s a great guide to what these ratings mean at Evo.com.
2. Taped seams There’s no hope your ski jacket will be waterproof unless it’s got taped seams. Why not? Because the stitching in a seam goes right through the waterproof membrane and offers the perfect entry-point for water. Pictured, left, are the taped seams on Peak Performance’s top-ofthe-range Heli Alpine jacket. Speaking of weak points in your jacket, remember that the main zip at the front of the jacket will let in moisture too, unless you’ve got some kind of covering for it. A fabric flap held in place by Velcro fastenings is best.
3. A high collar I’ve spent many a chair-lift ride on windy, sub-zero days wishing the collar on my ski jacket was higher. High collars can be pulled up over your chin, lips and even the tip of your nose to keep the wind off. If it’s properly Arctic, then you should probably invest in a neoprene facemask, too, but it’s great to have the extra protection offered by a good ski jacket. This one, modelled by Peter Sidebo at Peak Performance, does the trick nicely. If the jacket has a hood, make sure there are drawstrings which let you tighten the collar independently of it. Otherwise, the hood acts like a wind funnel, gathering any gusts and channeling them around your neck. Yuck.
4. A hood that fits over your helmet All sensible skiers wear helmets these days: and all sensible ski jacket manufacturers make jackets that fit over the top of ski helmets – like this Alpha SL jacket from Arctyerx. Otherwise, what’s the point? However, most skiers never wear a hood while they’re actually skiing – because it restricts their movement and messes with their peripheral vision. Personally, I’d love to be able to wear mine more often on chair lifts – if I could. But I’m always too preoccupied holding on to my ski poles and rucksack to be able to pull it up.
6. Underarm ventilation zips You’re on a mountain in winter. There’s a thick blanket of snow on the ground. By rights, you shouldn’t be overheating. But it happens all the time to skiers. Whether you’re skiing hard, or hiking to an off-piste route, or just out on a mild and sunny spring day, you’ll often find yourself ready to boil. That’s when big underarm vents can help. (And so too a double zip at the front of the jacket.) These are modelled by Elin Nilsson of the Are outfitters Are Skidsport.
5. Extra-long sleeves and/or snow-cuffs You don’t want snow up your sleeves, and there are two ways the design of a ski jacket can help you avoid the problem. The first, is if the sleeves are extra long (for example, the sleeves on a Peak Performance Heli Alpine jacket come right up to your knuckles). The second is by the inclusion of stretchy inner cuffs which hook over your thumb (as you’ll see in the Elevenate jacket shown here). Not only do these stop the snow from finding a way in, they are also prevent your sleeves riding up your arms.
7. A lift-pass pocket on your left arm
9. A snow skirt Anyone who skis powder needs a jacket with a snow skirt – which fastens over your hips, underneath the jacket, to stop snow getting up inside and making your base layer wet. You’ll be particularly thankful for it if you wipe out in deep snow. The posh ones are detachable, because the extra fabric in a snow skirt can be a bit of a pain if you’re wearing your jacket to hike or bike in the spring, autumn or summer.
Most lift passes are electronic these days; and in the Alps most of these are controlled by sensors which are on the left-hand side of the gates that let you onto the lifts. So, it makes sense to store your lift pass in a pocket on your left sleeve. On your lower arm, just above the wrist, is the most sensible position (so you can wave it around if the sensor is a bit slow on the uptake), although in this Elevate jacket at Are Skiskidsport, left, it’s on the upper arm.
8. An inside pocket for your phone Snow is cunning stuff: it’ll worm its way in through the smallest opening. Wipe out on a powder day, and – even if your pockets are only slightly unzipped – you’ll find them soaking wet when you get back to your chalet. This is bad news for mobile phones – and the only safe place to keep one is in an inside pocket. This should be entirely on the inside of the jacket’s waterproof/breathable membrane, with a zipped closure to keep the phone in place. Anything less than that risks disaster.
10. A colour you can live with The bright colours that have dominated ski fashion for the past few years look fabulous on the slopes. But you may feel ridiculous in them if you’re popping out for a pint in your local. If you ski a lot, and want a jacket which you’ll only wear on the slopes, then that’s not a problem. But many people are looking for a garment that will also serve them when they’re fell-walking, mountain-biking, or nipping out to the shops in the rain (and no wonder, given it’s going to set them back R2600-R12000. In which case, it may be worth considering black.
4 Ski stylish weekend
gear essentials By Amanda MacMillan
1. Fold-Up Footwear Strapped for space in your weekend bag? Teva’s Jordanelle boots R1860 are the perfect travel companion: They roll up slash collapse down to normal shoe size when you’re not wearing them, so they won’t take up excess room in your bag and they’ll keep you warm and cozy whenever you’re not on the mountain.
2. A Better Bandana Bandanas as neck warmers are totally stylish on the slopes, but those old cotton ones will do you more harm than good when they get wet and cold. Cotton and winter never do well together. Instead, sport a Buff tubular bandana (R306): It’s made with wicking microfibre, lined with insulating fleece and won’t come untied in the wind.
3. Ski-Lift Saviour If you tend to get chilly between runs, stash a Zippo hand warmer (R219) or two in your jacket before you head out for the day. The little metal gadget stays warm for 12 hours and can provide some much needed heat for your hands on really cold days-or just for those with poor circulation.
4. A Brand New Bag Now that you've got your new gear, you need a new bag to put it in, right? Try Dakine's Annie Boulanger Women's Team Heli Pro 18-litre backpack (R1040)-it's got a fleece-padded goggle pocket, straps for carrying your snowboard or skis, and even a built-in rescue whistle. And did I mention the matching gloves? Fashion, function, and fun on the slopes.
Features
Photograph by Cletus Nelson Nwadike
Cletus Nelson Nwadike Snow. Snow why do I love snow ? Snow, snow why do I love thy and waits for thy as if I wait for my country men and women.
#hardworld #snow #hardcountry #country #cold
Ice Hotels
A
s I walked into the snow hotel you are immediately aware of the -5 degree temperature, but as you make your way past the entrance into the corridor I forgot about the cold and was filled with a warmth at the beauty of the place. This long corridor lined with beautifully carved statues while bedrooms lead off on either side. Ahead of you lies the heart of the hotel, the ice bar. Funky, fun with more incredible statues. I was home.
Ice
Y
ou open your eyes to the soft, diffused light of fiber optics and dawn. Ice surrounds you -- some of it carved into furniture and sculpture, some of it in massive blocks that make up the walls, the ceiling and even the floor. But despite the room’s beauty, it’s time to get moving. After all, your room is -5 to -8 degrees Celsius and you’ve just spent the night in a mummy bag on a slab of ice. The beauty, the cold and the quick morning escape are all part of the typical ice hotel experience. Ice hotels are oversized, extravagant igloos. Solid blocks of ice make up their
can melt the heart
formidable, barrel-shaped structures. But inside, ice hotels glitter with elaborate ice furniture, ice bars and even ice glasses. Colorful lighting makes the structures look more like magical snow castles than frigid arctic dwellings. The hotels are built near rivers where workers can draw water, freeze it into ice and cut the ice into large blocks before trucking it into place. Extensive, largecapacity ice hotels take about five to six weeks to build. But when spring comes, all the hard work melts away, and the hotels must wait until winter to rebuild.
Ice hotels are part of a growing trend in destination hotels. People no longer select lodgings simply because they’re close to holiday spots. With normal vacations just not cutting it anymore, hotels have become destinations in their own right. Arctic resorts that once had to close shop for the winter can now attract tourists year round. People describe the experience of waking up after a night in an ice hotel as one of sheer exhilaration. Some say it even feels like an accomplishment.
Cory Richards: from an avalanche to the cover of National Geographic A few years ago Cory Richards survived an avalanche during his descent of the Himalayas, then took a selfie. The image, showing a human on the edge of survival, became the front cover of National Geographic magazine. Since then he has travelled the world photographing his inspiration: humanity. This awesome image shows you a bit more about a remarkable human – and will inspire you to watch the video ‘A tribute to Discomfort’. Cory talks about the role of discomfort in inspiring him to greatness.
Why snow is
white? To understand where the whiteness comes from, we need to back up and look at why different things have different colors in the first place. Visible light is made up of many different frequencies of light. Our eyes detect different frequencies as different colors. Different objects have different colors because the particular particles (atoms and molecules) that make up the object have different vibration frequencies. Basically, the electrons of the particle will vibrate a certain amount in response to energy, depending on the frequency of the energy.
Fifty nine
I
n the case of light energy, the molecules and atoms absorb a certain amount of light energy depending on the frequency of the light, and then emit this absorbed energy as heat. This means that objects absorb certain frequencies of light more than others. A couple of different things can happen to the light frequencies that are not absorbed. In some material, when a particle re-emits the photons, they continue to pass through to the next particle. In this case, light travels all the way through the material, so the material is clear. In most solid material, the particles re-emit most of the unabsorbed photons out of the material, so no light, or very little light, passes through and the object is opaque. The colour of an opaque object is just the combination of the light energy that the object’s particles did not absorb. So, since snow is frozen water, and we all know that frozen water is clear, why does snow have a distinctive colour? To understand this, we need to back up and look at an individual piece of ice. Ice is not transparent; it’s actually translucent. This means that the light photons don’t pass right through the material in a direct path – the material’s particles change the light’s direction. This
happens because the distances between some atoms in the ice’s molecular structure are close to the height of light wavelengths, which means the light photons will interact with the structures. The result is that the light photon’s path is altered and it exits the ice in a different direction than it entered the ice. Snow is a whole bunch of individual ice crystals arranged together. When a light photon enters a layer of snow, it goes through an ice crystal on the top, which changes its direction slightly and sends it on to a new
ice crystal, which does the same thing. Basically, all the crystals bounce the light all around so that it comes right back out of the snow pile. It does the same thing to all the different light frequencies, so all colours of light are bounced back out. The “colour” of all the frequencies in the visible spectrum combined in equal measure is white, so this is the colour we see in snow, while it’s not the colour we see in the individual ice crystals that form snow.
sixty one
Maxed out on
Everest
How to fix the mess at the top of the world By Mark Jenkins
sixty three
A
n hour above high camp on the Southeast Ridge of Everest, Panuru Sherpa and I passed the first body. The dead climber was on his side, as if napping in the snow, his head half covered by the hood of his parka, goose down blowing from holes torn in his insulated pants. Ten minutes later we stepped around another body, her torso shrouded in a Canadian flag, an abandoned oxygen bottle holding down the flapping fabric. Trudging nose to butt up the ropes that had been fixed to the steep slope, Panuru and I were wedged between strangers above us and below us. The day before, at Camp III, our team had been part of a small group. But when we woke up this morning, we were stunned to see an endless line of climbers passing near our tents. Now, bumper to bumper at 27,000 feet, we were forced to move at exactly the same speed as everyone else, regardless of strength or ability. In the swirling darkness before midnight, I gazed up at the string of lights, climbers’ head lamps, rising into the black sky. Above me were more than a hundred slow-moving climbers. In one rocky section at least 20 people were attached to a single ratty rope anchored by a single badly bent picket pounded into the ice. If the picket popped, the rope or carabiner would instantly snap from the weight of two dozen falling climbers, and they would all cartwheel down the face to their death. Panuru, the lead Sherpa of our team, and I unclipped from the lines, swerved out into open ice, and began soloing—for experienced mountaineers, a safer option. Twenty minutes later, another corpse. Still attached to the line of ropes, he was sitting in the snow, frozen solid as stone, his face black, his eyes wide open.
TAMING THE MOUNTAIN The success rate of climbers has more than tripled since 1990, largely due to more guides and better gear.
2012 547 56% 1990 72 summits 18% success rate
1,000
2000 145 24%
People above Base Camp (19,121) Successful summits (6,206)
0 1953
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2012
Martin gamache and matt twombly, ngm staff Sources: german aerospace agency; richard salisbury, himalayan database
sixty five
S
everal hours later, before the Hillary Step, a 40-foot wall of rock and the last obstacle before the summit, we passed yet another corpse. His stubbly face was gray, his mouth open as if moaning from the pain of death. Later I would learn the names of these four climbers: Chinese Ha Wenyi, who was 55; NepaliCanadian Shriya Shah-Klorfine, 33; South Korean Song Won-bin, 44; and German Eberhard Schaaf, 61. As I cramponed past their icy corpses on my own descent from the summit, I thought of the shattering sorrow their families and friends would experience when they heard the news. I too had lost friends to the mountains. Exactly why these individuals died still wasn’t clear. However, many recent deaths on Everest have been attributed to a dangerous lack of experience. Without enough training at high altitude, some climbers are unable to judge their own stamina and don’t know when to turn around and call it quits. “Only half the people here have the experience to climb this mountain,” Panuru told me. “The half without experience are the most likely to die.” Too often, it’s not the mountain’s harshness that kills climbers but their own hubris.
Six ways to repair Everest * Fewer permits to limit the total number of climbers and Sherpas on the mountain * Smaller teams To reduce dangerous traffic jams on the standard Southeast Ridge route * Certify outfitters To make sure that they meet acceptable standards of safety and mountain knowledge * Require experience To ensure that climbers and Sherpas are prepared for high-altitude challenges * Leave no trace To remove human waste and garbage from the mountain, with penalties for noncompliance * Remove bodies To show respect not only for the dead but also for the living, who encounter corpses on main routes
FEWER ROUTES With the rise of guided climbing, most ascents are made on only two routes: one in Nepal, the other in China.
Summit by Routes South Col (Nepal) North Col (China) Other
12
20
40
5
1990
55
85
138
409
2000
2012
NO RISE IN MORTALITY Despite the recent boom in the number of climbers, the death rate has not increased. 10%
2012 10% deaths 1% death rate
No climbers above Base Camp
0% 1953
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2012
Everest has always been a trophy, but now that almost 4,000 people have reached its summit, some more than once, the feat means less than it did a half century ago. Today roughly 90 percent of the climbers on Everest are guided clients, many without basic climbing skills. Having paid $30,000 to $120,000 to be on the mountain, too many callowly expect to reach the summit. A significant number do, but under appalling conditions. The two standard routes, the Northeast Ridge and the Southeast Ridge, are not only dangerously crowded but also disgustingly polluted, with garbage leaking out of the glaciers and pyramids of human excrement befouling the high camps. And then there are the deaths. Besides the four climbers who perished on the Southeast Ridge, six others lost their lives in 2012, including three Sherpas. Clearly the world’s highest peak is broken. But if you talk to the people who know it best, they’ll tell you it’s not beyond repair. Russell Brice, 60, runs Himalayan Experience, the largest and most sophisticated guiding operation on Everest. Himex, as it’s known, has led 17 expeditions to Everest, on both the Nepal side and the China side. Brice, a Kiwi transplanted to Chamonix, France, is famous for running a tight ship. Every climber and Sherpa on a Himex team is issued a radio and is required to check in every day. Each is also required to wear an avalanche transceiver, a helmet, a harness, and crampons and to attach themselves to safety lines. (During the spring 2012 season a Sherpa from another team failed to clip the safety lines and fell to his death in a crevasse.) To avoid getting into trouble, clients must keep pace or turn around. Despite the relatively large size of Brice’s teams—as many as 30 clients matched
with 30 Sherpas—they leave a small footprint on the mountain, removing all of their excrement and rubbish, a practice not followed by most teams. Cleanup efforts by the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, a sort of Everest city council, have improved conditions at Base Camp (human waste goes into barrels that are later removed), but they haven’t had much impact higher on the mountain. Camp II, at 21,240 feet, is particularly disgusting. Camp IV is little better, the tattered skeletons of abandoned tents snapping in the wind. “We can manage the numbers if all the operators talk to each other,” Brice insists. “It’s all about good communication.” If only it were that simple. There are other factors at work. One, ironically, is improved weather forecasting. Lack of information once led expeditions to attempt the summit whenever their team members were ready. Today, with hyperaccurate satellite forecasts, all teams know exactly when a weather window will open up, and they often go for the top on the same days. Another factor: Low-budget outfitters don’t always have the staff, knowledge, or proper equipment to keep their clients safe if something goes wrong. The cheaper operators often employ fewer Sherpas, and those they do hire sometimes lack experience. “All of the clients who died on Everest this past year went with low-budget, less experienced operators,” says Willie Benegas, 44, an Argentine-American high-altitude guide and co-owner, with his brother Damian, of Benegas Brothers Expeditions, which has led 11 trips to Everest. Besides holding Nepalese outfitters to the same standards as international ones, the brothers say, Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, which regulates climbing on Everest, should promote better education
for Sherpas so they can perform their duties as well as international guides. To prevent crowding on the mountain, some have proposed limiting not only the total number of permits per season but also the size of each team—to no more than ten clients per team. Others are skeptical. “That will not happen,” says New Zealander Guy Cotter, 50, owner of Adventure Consultants, which has led 19 expeditions to Everest. “Everest is big business for Nepal, and they will never turn down the money.” In Nepal, a country of nearly 30 million, one in four citizens lives in poverty. The country itself is in limbo. A ten-year civil war between Maoists and government loyalists ended in 2006. The monarchy was later dissolved and a coalition government created, but the past seven years have been deeply troubled, with belligerent political parties operating under an interim constitution. The political system is “so corrupt and so feckless,” Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times, has said, “that not having a government is actually beneficial, because there is no one to make all those mistakes.” Expeditions on the mountain spent almost $12 million in Nepal in the spring of 2012, according to Ang Tshering Sherpa, owner of Asian Trekking. The ministry took in more than $3 million in permit fees from climbers on 30 foreign expeditions. “You have to remember, Nepal is almost a failed state,” Cotter says. “More government intervention would only encourage more corruption.” Dave Hahn, a high-altitude guide whose 14 Everest summits are an American record, agrees. Expecting the Nepalese government to institute solutions isn’t realistic, he says. “Everest operators must come together to self-regulate the situation.”
“The ministry is an expansive, dysfunctional bureaucracy,” says Conrad Anker, 50, who led the National Geographic-supported expedition in 2012. “Of the $3 million generated in permit fees each year, only a small amount makes it back to the mountain.” (The ministry was repeatedly contacted for this article but declined to comment.) The so-called liaison officer system is a perfect example of this dysfunction, Anker says. Every Everest team is assigned a government liaison officer, or LO, who is paid by the team and is supposed to make sure regulations are followed. But none of the LOs actually go up the mountain. “Most don’t even stay in Base Camp,” Anker says. “They go back down where it’s warm.” LOs should be replaced, he argues, by climbing rangers with the knowledge, ability, and desire to patrol the mountain and enforce regulations. Everest also needs a permanent search-and-rescue team: “Eight Sherpas and four Western guides, all paid through the ministry,” he says. “This would make the mountain safer.” A decade ago Anker, with his wife, Jenni, founded the Khumbu Climbing Center (KCC) in the village of Phortse to improve the mountaineering skills of Sherpas and thereby increase the safety margin for everyone on Everest. Many of the center’s 700-plus graduates are now working for outfitters on the mountain. The Sherpas, after all, are the ones who perform most of the rescues. Danuru Sherpa, a KCC graduate who has summited Everest 14 times, told me he has dragged at least five people off the mountain to save their lives. “One of the obvious problems is that clients don’t respect the knowledge and experience of Sherpas,” Anker says. The Sherpas are, in a way, partly to blame. Most of them are Tibetan Buddhists whose culture and religious principles discourage confrontation. “Clients sometimes disregard their advice and die,” Anker says. “Last year was a case in point. We’re trying to help the Sherpas become more assertive.” Modern technology, which is already ubiquitous
on Everest—everyone at Base Camp has access to a cell phone or the Internet—could also make the mountain safer. In a meeting with the ministry last summer Anker proposed something new: identification cards issued with every climbing permit. “The Everest ID would contain data that could save the life of a climber or Sherpa,” Anker explains. It would have the climber’s photo, of course, but more important, a QR code—a type of bar code. “Scanned with a smartphone by an Everest climbing ranger, the QR code would reveal all pertinent information—age, experience, health history, allergies, insurance, family, emergency phone numbers, everything.” Anker said the Kathmandu bureaucrats sat there looking at him with blank faces. “I even got out my phone and showed them how it would work,” he says. “It’s 2012. This isn’t difficult. It’s just like a ski pass.” Despite all the problems on the mountain, Everest still stands alone. There will always be people who want to climb the world’s tallest peak, because there’s more to being on Everest than getting hemmed in by crowds or confronted by heaps of trash. The mountain is so high and so indifferent it calls upon every climber, at one time or another, to rise to his or her better self. There is also beauty on Everest. I’ll never forget the breathtaking view from our perch at Camp III, clouds roiling up the Western Cwm like a slowmotion reverse avalanche. Or the visceral relief of a cup of scalding soup at Camp IV. Or the crunch of my crampons in the crystalline labyrinth of the Khumbu Icefall just above Base Camp. I’ll treasure the memory of climbing with friends on the mountain. I committed my life to them, and they committed their lives to me. Such moments are the reasons climbers keep coming back to Everest. It’s not simply about reaching the summit but about showing respect for the mountain and enjoying the journey. Now it’s up to us to restore a sense of sanity to the top of the world.
A History of
Skis After the last ice age, Stone Age hunters began strapping long pieces of wood to their feet to travel farther and faster over snow in pursuit of the game that flourished across Europe and Asia. Adaptations for terrain and snow conditions influenced the design of the skis in different regions.