Alpine Break

On a recent post on the Snowheads forum there was some discussion of what the typical angles of black and red runs are.  I have gone to the effort of measuring all of the black runs at the Vars-Risoul ski area using my mapping software and calculating the angles of them.

Here are my results…

Vautour, 498m drop over 2018m distance = 13.8 degrees
Epervier, 402m drop over 1457m distance = 15.4 degrees
Mur, 177m drop over 512m distance = 19.1 degrees
Peyre Folle, 185m drop over 522m distance = 19.5 degrees
Grand Ubac, 199m drop over 788m distance = 14.1 degrees
KL, 413m drop over 920m distance = 24.1 degrees
Coni, 289m drop over 688m distance = 22.7 degrees

So as you can see the average angle of a black in this area is less than 18.5 degrees and even the piste for the World Speed Skiing Championships, the KL is only 24.1 degrees average with a maximum angle of 28.4 degrees.

Here is a google earth map which you can download to verify my measurements.

download it to view in Google Earth

Filed under: News on January 4th, 2009