Post-holes in your skin track?

Sky's solution is the best. As backcountry areas get busier and various forms of snow transport become popular, we should get used to this. <br><br>Anyway, in popular areas, who's to say the skin track was the original track? Several times I have skied on snowshoe tracks heading up to Muir. In deep snow, it sure beats breaking a new trail. If I'm in a skier group, after 4 of us go by, it just looks like a skin track. Then a snowshoer might legitimately complain that we're messing up the snowshoe track. <br><br>Postholers are far worse, but like someone previously said, they don't get very far unless it's a really firm track (and then it doesn't matter so much for skinning on).

Skiing down Alpental today, I passed a group of three snowboarders postholing up VERY slowly with snow shovels (the kind you do your driveway with). They were really struggling, and a couple hundred feet up from the bottom of the lift as I passed. Twenty minutes later, after I had finished my lunch, they had still only gotten about 2/3 of the way up the first face. Didn't have the heart to tell them not to walk in the skin track.

<br><br>bike = snowboarder <br>car = skier<br><br>

<br><br>car?! cars suck!<br><br>I like to think of skins and skis as an analogous technology to the bicycle, applied to snow. Both human-powered, efficient alternatives to the cro-magnon default.<br><br>postholers are joggers. And we all know jogging sucks ass compared to cycling, and those damn joggers always screw up the paceline. Also, not all snowboarders are postholers.<br><br>If your skin tracks are postholed, you are not in the backcountry, but the frontcountry--which means you're just as lazy as they are.

"If your skin tracks are postholed, you are not in the backcountry, but the frontcountry--which means you're just as lazy as they are." Thanks for that, brilliant use of the cranium, guy.

username, cars suck? well let me know the next time you decide to ride your bike to Baker on a powder day. i'll be sure to honk and give you a friendly wave when i drive by in my glacier melting transport.<br><br>and yes, not all snowboarders are postholers...i've seen many alpine skiers postholing. but when the original post mentioned monkeys, the first thing i thought about was snowboarders.<br><br>i personally don't think there is a difference between postholes in the frontcountry and the backcountry. its all a matter of etiquette. if you let them do it, they won't learn any better, and then others will think that screwing up a skin track is OK. its not OK and people need to learn that. if all you do is skin by with a nod and a smile they won't get the picture. sometime you gotta shout in order to get the message across. most of the time the monkeys are too busy wondering if their pants are baggy enough or whether their ipod has enough battery power left to play the next Blink182 song to notice that they should choose a different form of snow travel...or that they might be messing up someones skin track.

Deepak, I dont think he got your analogous efficiency equation. It was pretty obscure and hard to understand. Ha,Ha. It was established early in this thread (first post)that this was mostly a "frontcountry" problem, as this is where I have only been affected. It seems that it's a split down the middle, more or less, on this issue. I can say it has been interesting and surprising reading the replies, knowing now that some don't mind postholers in the skin track. I think I am akin to the Euros who prefer to "lecture". Just stating physical reality, and consequence of action, really. I just don't think that they would hear me over the Blink 182 on the ipod, or care. Let's put a nail in this one and lay it to rest.