Editorial Balance:

In keeping with the mythbusting content of the last few posts, today I’d like to consider other sources you may turn to for your skiing information. The skiing universe is full of glossy magazines devoted to selling the skiing or snowboarding image and the products that are associated with it. No one really reads or is interested in the content of these magazines, but they are purchased and left lying around because everyone tacitly acknowledges that these magazines support fellow skiers and boarders who have had the courage to try to make their passion into their job without having to get up at ungodly hours like the ski patrol.

After the invention of the interwubs in 1998 it was inevitable that people who didn’t understand paper would try to replicate the success of ski magazines online. There are now literally jillions of websites devoted to travel info for skiers, resort information, weather forecasts, gear reviews and all the other stuff that people think will make them enough money to keep skiing. A vitally important category of the ski websites is websites that feature amateur footage (of skiing – whenever discussing anything to do with the internet is important to clarify that you’re not talking about porn). The proliferation of cheap digital video cameras has allowed human beings to fulfil two primal urges at once: The need to show off and the need to try to make money out of the internet.

The problem with these sources of ski information is that almost all of them are absurdly enthusiastic. As a ski magazine writer or a budding helmet-cam-internet-video maker there seems to be some kind of unspoken rule that your descriptions and reviews should be bombastic, hyperbolic and viewed through inch-thick role coloured lenses. The academic literature refers to this effect as the helmet-cam transformation. Thus:

“We are about to go skiing at Temple Basin.” Viewed through a helmet cam becomes “Here we are at Temple Basin, about to epically shred some gnarly lines covered in sick powder.”

“I had an enjoyable day” maps to “We just ripped up the hill and hucked cliffs and surfed through bottomless powder.”

It is important to understand that the helmet-cam transformation will add words like powder, epic, lines, ripped up, shred, gnar, and so on to your sentence no matter what actually happened or is about to happen. You could look into your helmet cam and say with all sincerity “The snow is pretty bad today. I’ll probably sleep in and eat bacon for breakfast until it softens up, ski some runs, then come inside before it freezes up in the evening.” But the camera is not interested in your honesty. It will record “The snow is completely powder sickfest. I’ll probably rip up some bacon until it’s shredded, ski some epic gnar, then huck some fresh tracks.” I suppose by convention the camera isn’t lying, but it’s certainly exaggerating beyond all reasonable bounds.

The problem with all this is that it’s completely useless. Imagine that you’re considering a ski holiday to Japan. You want to know which of two ski areas gets more snow, which has better terrain, what the attitudes towards backcountry and off-piste skiing are at each field. In short, you want to know what it’s ACTUALLY LIKE to ski at each field. But if you ask the helmet cam people, they will tell you that skiing at either field is like delivering a baby (edited so that you only experience the good bits) while experiencing a crack high as you win the lottery while a million synchronised North Koreans cheer, wave and chant your name in adoration.

Now, I’m all for a little poetic license. Reciting the contents of this blog in court would certainly leave me open to charges of perjury and probably a hearty dose of contempt of court as well. But when I lie to you it’s in the name of truth. By telling you that I have met the Temple Basin lion (I haven’t – I offered to make him cry but something in my manner made his minders quite uncomfortable) I highlight the absurdity of relying on a single friendly lion to provide water from which to make snow for your ski field. But when ski writers lie to you it’s completely uninformative. If all you hear about is epic sick powder and hucking cliffs and awesome lines (even when it’s very likely that such things do not reflect real persons or events) all you know is that the authors have had their helmet cams on their heads for a little too long.

For two awesome examples of ski internet informatising that actually tell you something about their subjects, check out www.powderhounds.com and this quite beautiful movie about skiing in Gulmarg.

The powderhounds usually tell you useful stuff about what the skiing is like, how to get around, the small practicalities you normally only found out about by making mistakes over there etc. They still seem to feel compelled to be nice to every field they review, but I guess that’s understandable. Imagine how much more credible their website would be if just once they said something like “Mount Thingo... Well, it’s crap. Don’t go there.”

The guys in Gulmarg actually make a documentary in which they admit they went ALL THE WAY TO KASHMIR and IT WAS TOO DANGEROUS TO SKI. Not being able to ski because the conditions are crap/dangerous is part of skiing, but you’ll never see it in the glossy magazines or on anyone’s helmet cam YouTube channel.

So, for editorial balance you can rely on me to tell be blunt when things are crap and bitter and jaded when they're good. Porters ski area? It’s crap. Maybe if it puked snow and there was no wind, but there’s always wind, so don’t go there. Hanmer Springs? Not worth the drive. Absent mindedly letting your hand get sucked through a pulley on a rope tow? I wouldn’t recommend it.