realskiers

Couple things,

Hey 'Bush, I never said a word about people getting deeper in the snow then or now.  What I really like about that video is how similar, at the high end, powder technique is across time and space.

What I do know (and can observe) is this:  Speed is no longer a critical factor in successful powder skiing.  Alf is absolutely trucking in the deep pow, and of course he had to or his skis wouldn't plane up high enough to turn.  One nice thing about modern pow gear, is that allows us to ski slower in powder...a really nice thing for tight trees.  I often hear how big skis promote 'too fast skiing', and maybe in some cases that is true, but they also allow for slower skiing as well (in fact, the video mentions the problem with high speed powder skiing and trees...).  Big skis certainly reduce drag in deep snow and allow for higher critical speeds than in the past...but they also allow skiers to ski pow slower and more deliberately than in the past as well-it's the give and take of float.

By the way, Alf was also one of the first people to strongly advocate using different skis for skiing powder...he was pretty forward thinking and he probably would have loved some of the modern designs (look at the step up in  the video between the early 1946 segment and the later segments).