100 Words for Snow

Photo: Nick Rice

  controversy, and has even been called urban legend by some doubters.  Alta, however, is the world mecca of powder skiing, and our language really does have a hundred words for snow.  The rules of our game allow nouns, verbs and adjectives, for conditions, features, terrain, etcetera, of the white stuff… and so here are our hundred words for snow, in the Alta language.  To add your own word to the list, please make a comment below, by November 1, 2013.  We’ll update the list weekly on our Facebook page, and we’ll have an Alta Lodge ball cap for every friend who contributes a word that makes the list!

1. Bed Surface
2. Blizzard
3. Blower
4. Boilerplate
5. Bony
6. Bottomless
7. Buffed
8. Bulletproof
9. Bumped Out
10. Butter
11. Carvy
12. Cement
13. Chalky
14. Champagne
15. Chunder
16. Cold Smoke
17. Concrete
18. Corduroy
19. Corn
20. Cornice
21. Creamy
22. Crud
23. Crust
24. Crystals
25. Dank
26. Death Cookies
27. Debris
28. Deep
29. Dendrites
30. Depth Hoar
31. Drifts
32. Dumping
33. Dusting
34. Dust on Crust
35. Facets
36. Firm
37. Flakes
38. Fluff
39. Flurry
40. Freshies
41. Gnar
42. Grabby
43. Granules
44. Graupel
45. Groomer
46. Hard Pack
47. Heavy
48. Hero
49. Ice
50. The Kind
51. Lake Effect
52. Mank
53. Mashed Potatoes
54. Metamorphic
55. Moguls
56. Needles
57. Névé
58. Nuking
59. Orographic
60. Pellet
61. Pillows
62. Pounding
63. Pow
64. Powder
65. Puffy
66. Puking
67. Rain Crust
68. Recrystallized
69. Rime
70. Ripples
71. Roly Poly
72. Rollerballs
73. Sastrugi
74. Scratchy
75. Showery
76. Skied Out
77. Skiff
78. Slab
79. Sleet
80. Slick
81. Slide
82. Slippery
83. Slope
84. Sludge
85. Sluff
86. Slush
87. Snow (hello)
88. Soft Pack
89. Spindrift
90. Stellar
91. Styrofoam
92. Sugar
93. Sun Cups
94. Surfy
95. Surface Hoar
96. TG Crystals
97. Trace
98. Wind Buff
99. Wind Crust
    100.Wind Slab

Photo: Billy Haas

Photo: Billy Haas

Photo: Nick Rice

Photo: Nick Rice