J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

AllyG wrote:

ise wrote:a glacier forms when the increase in mass of a body of snow or ice exceeds the decrease due to ablation and when that mass persists for some years. It's not related to artifacts of an ice age although some will indeed be that, in fact most alpine glaciers are exactly that but it's not part of the definition. Temperatures on a glacier are little different from any surrounding terrain excepting a local cooling of air directly over the glacier. That means they'll be well above freezing most of the time and you cannot run snow cannons any more often than any terrain of similar height or aspect.

Thanks Ise,
Well, I did say I wasn't a geographer! What's 'ablation' mean? And how old is the youngest glacier?

Ally

That's an interesting question, I've never thought about it. It would be hard to answer I think, the definition is slightly vague, I said some years so that's undefined, a couple of years just wouldn't do it. I also might have mentioned that the definition would typically include some movement of the glacial mass. Likewise, some glaciers now are loosing more through ablation than accumulation, so at some point they'll cease to be glaciers. I do happen to know that the one on Mount St Helens in the US is the youngest in the US as I happened to be reading something about volcanos the other day and it was mentioned.

Ablation is easy, it's loosing stuff from the surface by evaporation or erosion, it happens to other materials but it's important in a glacier.

a glacier forms when the increase in mass of a body of snow or ice exceeds the decrease due to ablation and when that mass persists for some years. It's not related to artifacts of an ice age although some will indeed be that, in fact most alpine glaciers are exactly that but it's not part of the definition. Temperatures on a glacier are little different from any surrounding terrain excepting a local cooling of air directly over the glacier. That means they'll be well above freezing most of the time and you cannot run snow cannons any more often than any terrain of similar height or aspect.

Snapzzz wrote:Being new to the Ski scene i maybe missing something but....... Do Austrians not do self catering??

The thing to remember is that Brits on package ski holidays are still the minority so the accommodation on offer reflects what the major markets want. In France the customers tend to be French not surprisingly and they're quite happy with small apartments where they'll actually self-cater. In Austria it's basically Germans and they prefer B&B or hotels, that's partly due to the huge numbers of people who'll ski at the weekend so self-catering doesn't work out. Partly this about extracting money from the Germans who'd load the car up with food, beer and supplies form home and not spend a cent in the village left to their own devices. There is a fair amount of self catering in Austria but it's spread around in units of one or two and it doesn't work for the UK TO's who are on wafer thin margins, that works for the TO's in France where they can bus hundreds of people into the same handful of locations and to be fair it works for the clients as well, they swap around but are basically the same people going to a tiny number of places which helps TO's get the costs down.

mfc wrote:

ise wrote:it might help if you gave dates, times and where they're from etc :-)

Bloody good idea!

Saturday to Saturday I guess ? 20-27th ?

it might help if you gave dates, times and where they're from etc :-)

midweek I'd go to Flumersberg, it's reachable by public transport from Zurich. There's some rental stores there, I've never used them so I can't say if they're any good, or a store in Zurich might be just as easy.

http://www.flumserberg.ch/winter/en/home/

Eggman wrote:
Quite right in what you say about journalism, I knew a guy who worked for a wellknown golf magazine testing golf clubs etc, He said that if you gave out to much negative feed back on their equipment, the magazine wouldn't get any more advertising from the manufactures. So you have too keep them sweet and not bite the hand that feeds. Not that this helps the consumer much :evil:

shocking isn't? it's every sector of magazines as well. You can pick up magazines in any country of the world and they're better. I was reading a technology mag' in Delhi a couple months back and it was superb, as was one I picked up in North Africa. French, German and US mag's seem way better as well and that's just embarrasing :oops:

I would imagine if you were launching a new ski rental business you might liberally give away free rental to generate good PR, apropos of nothing in particular )

Innsbrucker wrote:
Maybe the differences in skis, provided one has reasonable sitffness, sidecut, and length, and sharpish edges, are a lot of fantasy, fed by journalists and advertisers, in the heads of skiers who fancy themsleves as high level (with all respect to skiers, including some contributors here, who genuinely are at a high level, where different standards might apply). The really major differences and areas for improvement, are in our ski technique, not in some fancied difference in flavour from one intermediate carver to another, or between racing boots mostly used by recreational skiers.

I think that's pretty much on the money. There's clearly a difference between a pair of race skis and a 100mm powder ski but otherwise a lot less difference than people claim to find. If you read another forum you can find them knocking lumps out of each comparing skis with nonsense speak and gobbledegook after skiing down a 15' 100m long slope in a fridge. And there's clearly difference in construction and so on. But for the 80% or so of the mass market skis there's precious little difference and what difference there is isn't going to impact your skiing much.

I think it does matter to a degree as well, it's the sort of nonsense that's used intimidate less experienced skiers which is just isn't very nice. I've skied for over 20 years, thousands of days I would guess and a hundred odd each year and I can't tell the difference between some skis and I'm not even remotely embarrassed to admit it. More than that, where I can tell the difference between the skis, for example the three pairs of Black Diamonds I use, I also know it makes not one jot of difference to my skiing, on a good day I can ski on anything and on a bad day I can't ski on anything.