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What does snow feel like around the world? Olympic ski racer Tommy Ford joins Condé Nast Traveler to share what years of World Cup racing and global travel as part of the US Ski Team have taught him about snow conditions, from champagne powder in Japan to icy race courses in the Alps. Ford explains how different climates, mountains, and preparation methods shape the way skiers experience snow across Europe, Asia, North America, and the Southern Hemisphere, revealing why no two runs are ever the same.
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00:00You gotta learn to love every condition.
00:02Buttery feeling, sandier snow, champagne powder,
00:05pretty styrofoamy, rattly, bulletproof ice.
00:08I'm an Olympic ski racer.
00:10I've been on the national ski team for 17 years.
00:13I've been fortunate enough to be able to travel the world
00:15all due to ski racing.
00:17From China to New Zealand to Canada to South America.
00:21I'm Tommy Ford and I chase snow all over the globe.
00:23So the World Cup hills we have in the U.S. are in Beaver Creek.
00:31That's probably one of my favorite hills.
00:33I've actually won there, which is fun.
00:35Because it's high, it's drier.
00:37Snow is very small crystals and it crunches under your feet.
00:41Faster you go, you're actually melting the snow.
00:43The skis are designed to perform on ice and firmer snow.
00:46And it's actually safer and more consistent.
00:49The way they prepare, they add water into the hill.
00:51They inject it and spray it.
00:52Makes for really reactive snow.
00:54So when you roll your edges up, immediately your skis react.
00:58And with a lot of power, they don't release.
01:00It's hard to beat that as a ski racer.
01:02I was born out east in Vermont.
01:03We moved out to Oregon when I was about six months old
01:06and grew up skiing at Mount Bachelor.
01:08Mount Bachelor is a volcano.
01:10It's a lot of natural flowing terrain
01:12because of the lava that spewed out.
01:13So the snow shapes to the contours of the mountain
01:16and then makes for a lot of fun, natural jumps and powder.
01:19And powder is just a general term for new, fresh snow.
01:22There's different types of powder.
01:23If it has a lot more moisture in it, it's pretty heavy,
01:25which is typical in Northwest.
01:27And then as you work your way more inland
01:29to the inner mountain area, it's much drier.
01:31They call it champagne powder.
01:32But I'm a racer, so we chase firmer snow.
01:39Alta Badia is set into the Dolomites.
01:42Different than the Alps, different than the Rockies.
01:44It's more vertical walls.
01:46It's a cool contrast, like white snow, reddish Dolomites.
01:49The race hill is called the Gran Riza.
01:51It winds its way through a pretty thick fir forest.
01:55There's this cool yellow gondola that goes up,
01:57just pops out of the trees.
01:58And when you get to the top of the gondola,
02:00just sparkling snow.
02:01Like there's some sundogs, huge cliffs all around you,
02:04like 360.
02:05When you kick out of the gate, it's pretty steep right away.
02:08And there's a huge fall away left foot turn.
02:10And then a really long rhythmical section
02:12that's 25 seconds of left, right.
02:14And that's one of my favorite sections in the world.
02:16And you can start to see the finish.
02:17First time I did that course, I came around that corner
02:20and like my head was like bobbing down.
02:22I was like, are you kidding?
02:23Like I have to keep skiing.
02:24I can barely see where I'm going.
02:26I was so tired.
02:27You just got to keep going.
02:28Somehow you do it.
02:29This hill in Alta Badia is just their,
02:31their pride and joy for the Italians.
02:32All their skiing kind of shaped around this hill.
02:34For a little while they were doing this thing
02:36where they'd slide at the top of the turn a little bit,
02:37but they're able to go have a more direct line.
02:40It's such an athletic skiing and so iconic
02:42because of the way they do it.
02:44It's like pretty stylish.
02:45They got their hand up.
02:46When we went to Japan, we raced in Naiba.
02:52It snowed a ton while we were there.
02:54You can hear it as it hits your body
02:56when you're skiing through it.
02:57It's like the crystals just like bouncing off you.
02:59So cold and so light and deep.
03:01Naiba is a old resort town.
03:04It has multiple of these massive resorts.
03:07Only one of them is up and running.
03:09They built them during the ski boom in the eighties.
03:11And after that race, I got to travel over to Nozawa Onsen,
03:14which was more of a village feel.
03:16It's a hot spring is running through town.
03:18That's how they actually clear their roads.
03:20They redirects the water, just melts the snow away.
03:22That was pretty cool.
03:23And then right next to it, they're steaming dumplings
03:25on wooden crates and eat delicious food
03:28on the side of the hill.
03:29Copenhagen.
03:33While we were there, there's, we learned there's a incinerator,
03:36a huge trash incinerator that has a ski hill that wraps around
03:40the outside of the facility.
03:42Fully artificial, like not man-made snow, but a plastic slope.
03:45I've never skied on it before, so I had to give it a try.
03:47Right, did some skis at the bottom.
03:49I'm used to like some pretty high quality equipment.
03:51I got on those skis and they pointed it down this hill.
03:54I had no control.
03:55I felt like I was going to slide out and like,
03:57I was lucky to stay on my feet for that.
03:59It's pretty steep actually at the top of it.
04:02And there's like little terrain features in there.
04:04Put some like little jibbing boxes for sliding, doing park stuff.
04:08I was surprised.
04:09You actually need some sharp edges for that.
04:14We flew into Beijing during COVID.
04:17For a little while, I was quarantined in a village below the ski area.
04:21But once you take the bus up to the athlete village,
04:24there's no natural snow around.
04:26It's freezing though, like negative 40 at times.
04:29So cold, very little snow, no moisture.
04:32Artificial snow from top to bottom, like six or eight trails.
04:35It was kind of strange to see this white ribbons all over this mountain.
04:38So that snow was the most unique snow I've skied on ever.
04:41It was like styrofoam, so strange.
04:43We trained on that the whole week.
04:45On race day, they got record snow.
04:47Like they have never had that much snow in like the last 10 years or something.
04:50It's just dump snow.
04:52It's like fresh powder, pretty light.
04:53It was nice, fun, pretty wild experience.
04:58We had the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
05:01And man, was it cold?
05:02South Korea was cold, cold.
05:04It was strange in that it created like a drier snow for some reason.
05:07We would train at the Haiwan Resort in South Korea.
05:10They have, it's like permanent netting along these trails.
05:13So you can't really leave the trails.
05:15There's tons of people skiing and snowboarding.
05:17You could see everyone was working on their technique.
05:19The Koreans are really good at stable upper body.
05:23So they have their arms out like this.
05:24That's where a lot of times you see like the French like this,
05:26or the Americans kind of low hands.
05:27They're like up here and they're ripping perfect arcs all the way down.
05:31They're very disciplined in that.
05:33And the snowboarders too are carving.
05:34It's all about carving and clean turns.
05:41Germany for skiing is low altitude and usually pretty wet.
05:45It's pretty rare when we have good snow in Germany,
05:49but the Germans love their ski racing.
05:51It's one of the biggest markets in the world for spectators.
05:53They love watching.
05:54We race primarily in Garmisch, which has Zugspitz,
06:00a big peak in the background of the town.
06:02And there's a U.S. Army base there, which is kind of fun for us.
06:04We spend so much time in Europe.
06:06We can go visit and like do laundry and like eat some chicken wings.
06:10Snow can be pretty sloppy.
06:11It can be spraying all around you and larger crystals that are rotten.
06:15So they don't stick together that well.
06:16It's a kind of ski on ball bearings.
06:18We call it rotten because when you step on it,
06:20it breaks and like your boots sink in or your ski sink in.
06:23It feels pretty rotten to ski on if you're trying to
06:25do like a nice clean racing arc.
06:28But if you're just free skiing, there is a way to ski it.
06:30It's actually kind of in the spring.
06:32Like the snow melts and the crystals become looser.
06:35And you kind of smear your way down the hill.
06:37And it's like a lot more like buttery feeling.
06:40And you call that corn skiing or corn o'clock.
06:42Let's go out and ski.
06:43Gotta learn to love every condition.
06:49We have a World Cup in Val-des-Zeres, France.
06:51It's one of the most challenging courses for GS.
06:53It's steep, steep, steep.
06:55It's pretty short as far as time goes.
06:57But you're working the whole way.
06:58And the terrain is like so steep.
07:01And like also doing this as you're going down.
07:03Every turn, the hill is changing direction.
07:06And you've got to really be on it.
07:07It's their opening weekend when we're there.
07:09So it's kind of bumping, which is not great for sleep.
07:13But the way they prep the hill there,
07:15it's hard to get cats on the hill because it's so steep.
07:17They keep the hill lit up at night.
07:19A lot of the volunteers, which are ski school,
07:22they slip the hill all night.
07:23Slipping is side slipping.
07:24So you're not actually skiing down the hill.
07:27Like with turns, you're sliding sideways
07:30and just pushing snow.
07:31It's not that much fun.
07:38Skied in Formigal, Spain,
07:40right on the border of Andorra and France.
07:43We had World Juniors there.
07:44Big downhill jump.
07:46It was kind of spring, warm snow, refreeze.
07:49Refreeze snow is where it's like pretty warm
07:51during the day and colder at night
07:53and usually clear at night.
07:54So the snow freezes at night.
07:55And then during the day, it slowly warms up.
07:57These European winters are so warm,
07:59it's becoming more and more common.
08:00Like sharp little ridges and just different terrain.
08:03As you, when you look at it,
08:03it looks like a coral reef kind of.
08:05It's more rattly, a little rougher and sharp.
08:11We'd usually start our racing season in Sol in Austria.
08:14It's on a glacier there, ever shrinking.
08:16It's changed drastically since I first started going there.
08:19So that race starts in October, which is very early.
08:22And it gets kind of people stoked for skiing.
08:25The crowds turn out there for that race.
08:26That's our first race of the year.
08:28And it's pretty warm.
08:29You hear like the ice cracking once in a while,
08:32or like calving falling off.
08:34Creating like some landslides around.
08:35A lot of glacial melt.
08:37So you see some streams that are raging and cold.
08:40And we usually do some cold plunges in there.
08:42Glacial skiing, especially in the summer, it's warmer.
08:45So the snow is a little bit softer.
08:47And we sometimes throw some salt in North America.
08:50We're allowed to throw salt, so it firms up the snow.
08:52You might use it for sidewalk to melt.
08:55It does raise the melting temperature.
08:57So it actually freezes on top, makes it better for us.
08:59In Europe, you can't use salt on most of the glaciers
09:02for environmental reasons.
09:03Looser snow scrapes off and you get down to glacial ice,
09:06which is kind of rugged ice.
09:08Then that has like a bunch of little pebbles in it too.
09:11And dust, which really chews up the skis
09:13and makes it really tough to maintain a good edge.
09:15You got to tune your skis every day there.
09:21Argentina, Ushuaia, the end of the world,
09:23southernmost tip of South America.
09:26The ski area is Cerro Castor.
09:28It's dark.
09:30The sun comes up for a little while
09:31and it's like kind of low angle, so it's pretty shady.
09:34And the snow can be pretty moist, a lot of humidity down there.
09:38And it can rain kind of out of nowhere.
09:41Because of that rain, it creates this natural injection,
09:43it makes some hard snow.
09:44And once we get that, like this year it sounds like it rained,
09:47it froze, and they didn't touch the hill.
09:49So it became rattly.
09:51It makes it pretty real for training.
09:53And a lot of European teams come down there
09:55because it's actually somewhat close for Europe.
09:57But the weather is definitely a little tricky down there.
09:59It's more volatile.
10:00Swiss Alps, you can't really go wrong in Switzerland.
10:08Mountain ranges for miles and miles.
10:10We have a couple different World Cup races there.
10:13And we have a GS and Slalom race that's kind of a lower key area.
10:16You don't hear about it as much as like the Matterhorn or Wengen.
10:21Just as beautiful, I think.
10:22It's a little lower elevation.
10:23Really fun terrain.
10:25More rolling hills.
10:26And there's like a delicious pasta hut in the middle of this valley where you can see everything.
10:31You feel like you're a little more in the wilderness,
10:32whereas a lot of Europe has a developed feel.
10:35With Switzerland, you can get a little bit further out there and see less development.
10:42Another Southern Hemisphere stop for us.
10:44Full-on winter down there from May through the end of September.
10:49We typically travel to the South Island, fly into Queenstown,
10:53and go to a handful of resorts.
10:55We usually start up at Lake Tekapo.
10:57There's a small family hill there called the Round Hill.
10:59We actually do train on these moderate to easier hills,
11:03so we actually like really hone in our technique.
11:05And Round Hill's a great spot for that.
11:07Really nice terrain.
11:08It is called the Land of the Long White Cloud.
11:10A little foggy.
11:11It's pretty low altitude.
11:13The mountains aren't too tall, but they are dramatic.
11:15They call them the Remarkables or Southern Alps.
11:18And when you look from the valley floor up at the ski area,
11:21there's a distinct snow line.
11:22It's kind of lush rainforest look of fir trees or some rolling hills.
11:27And then above that is just white because the freezing temperature is right there.
11:34Growing up, it's a little colder up in Canada,
11:37so we'd drive up to Banff to do a Thanksgiving camp up at Mount Norquay.
11:41It was dark and cold and we could get on snow earlier than we could down in Oregon.
11:45It's just beautiful up there in those Canadian Rockies.
11:47As I got older, we started racing World Cups in Lake Louise, not far from Banff.
11:52It's cold at that time of year.
11:54In negative 40, like freezing.
11:56So the snow is actually pretty friendly.
11:58It's not too reactive and kind of fresh, slippery snow.
12:01Like in Whistler, snow can be warm and wet, similar to like Northern Washington,
12:06but they get a ton of snow.
12:07Whereas like in Alberta, Panorama, those resorts are colder, darker, better for racing.
12:13But man, some of those days in Panorama, you could only be out for a run or two
12:17before you go in and like warm your feet up.
12:19Otherwise, you're getting frostbite.
12:21You got to learn to love every condition.
12:23And that's part of skiing.
12:24With racing in particular, you got to show up and race on any of the snow conditions.
12:27And of course, you have an ideal snow that you love to ski on.
12:30It's not always bluebird and beautiful, but there is still a joy in being out in the rain slush.
12:35Like the snow is actually pretty fun and forgiving.
12:37It's just like maybe get a little wet, just dress for it and you'll be fine.
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