Corn Snow

[NtrentT]

Ok,
Ive skiied everything lift served in the east, and am looking for a new feat. Tuckerman's is it. I plan on going in Mid to late April.
Could some one exactly describe to me what corn snow is like. Just large granuals? Whats it like.
Whats to be expected if we have a good winter at tucks in Mid to late April. I want to be able to ski back down the trail after the trip, is april too late for that? :happydog:

Thanks All
Cant wait to go.

Has Killington started to make snow already? I didnt know it was that cold up there yet.
:snowflakes:

[DMC]

Corn Snow (http://www.csac.org/Education/glossary/corn-snow.html)

It's granular and wet but feels light... Your board(s) will rise up and slid very smoothly...
After a hard freeze and warm AM sun... If you catch it at just the right time - it's heavenly..

The Upper Snowfields above the Headwall is a sweet meal of corn if you hit it in the AM - just as it softens... mmmm...

[Jolly J]

Sometimes I like a little mashed potatoes with my corn. I've heard people argue that corn snow is more fun that powder. I love corn but I'll take a foot and half of fluff over pretty much anything, anyday.

[M@]

Personally I like corn snow quite a bit.

The trail from Tux to your car (i.e. Sherburne) is usually open until mid april, but then it closes. I hit the last weekend to ski from top-bottom this year on April 13th.

[kfarrar]

I love it and my wife hates it. I usually end up skiing alone in the spring. Tuckerman's is great place to find solitude if you ski it in the earlier months.

[elwood]

Jolly J:
Sometimes I like a little mashed potatoes with my corn. I've heard people argue that corn snow is more fun that powder. I love corn but I'll take a foot and half of fluff over pretty much anything, anyday. you said it brotha. Give me the marshmallow fluff over the corn snow anyday. I'd pretty much launch myself off of anything as long as there was some pow-pow to soften my landing...

[Castlerock]

Real corn is the easiest snow to ski of all. It is just very very difficult to find. The snow has to fall, melt, freeze, melt and freeze again a time or two, WITHOUT BEING SKIED. Then it needs to melt just enough.

It is not ever found at an eastern ski area. It is a backcountry phenomena only.

[DMC]

Jolly J:
I love corn but I'll take a foot and half of fluff over pretty much anything, anyday. I'd still rather ride corn than lets say 6" of fluff... A foot and a half... Well thats a different story alltogether...

[RR]

I like the sound of corn-snow sloughs. Especially right above the Hourglass, kinda sounds like a Transporter beam..."beam me up Scotty!"

[TheOctopus]

Castlerock hit it right on. You'll hear people talk about the corn "cycle," which is the freeze-thaw-repeat pattern that's necessary to "grow" the corn," as it's sometimes called. It's got to freeze at night. It's got to get above freezing, and be sunny, during the day. And this has got to go on for a while. (Btw, it's also what makes for sugaring season!) And to make sure you've got corn and not knee-breakin' crap or super avi-prone junk, you've got to hit "the corn window," which is that 1/2 hour or so when things are just perfect. Add in elevation and exposure to further complicate trying to figure out the correct timing.

What makes Tucks different from a lot of other steep backcountry (out west) is that the snow gets a lot of skier traffic, which keeps things compacted, and that the Tucks snow-pack is so ridiculously deep, which keeps the thermal radiation from cooking the rocks beneath the snowpack and melting things from both below and above. That's when you get rotten snow (literally impossible to ski) and wet-snow avalanches that'll slide to the ground (the sloughs in Tucks are dangerous, but they ain't what I mean here). Ski Tucks at 4pm on a sunny day and things might be heavy and seemingly bottomless, but it ain't no biggie. Ski anything in the Sierra that was "ready" at 10am instead at 4pm and you'll die. Be careful out there.

[LeFemmesauCanada]

Corn. Laissez les bons temps rouler.

[RR]

Parlez vous Zydeco?