It rained today in Duluth now we have a 1/4 inch of crust in the surface of the snow, is this what you call a death crust?


I wiped out a couple of times catching my ski on the hard snow, it is still a soft padded landing under the crust.


My biggest concern is my kite, can the ice cut my lines or my kite?

yah death crust is bad in many ways. Depending on how much snow is below the crust. It will cut a track and lock a ski in a groove and make it extremely difficult to turn and often causing you to fall. A little deeper snow and skis get under the crust and the harder crust will be banging into your shin in the boot or even higher. The crust is bad then combine it with a slush sandwich and not much you can do. We had rain all day saturday and the small lake near me melted all the snow down (not 100% so fisherman left tracks in slush). The majority was a couple inches of water or more on top of ice and it had a thin freeze over top at night so it looks frozen but you punch through the thin top re-freeze, 2-3 inches of water and then the ice below. We'll need colder temps to get it back into shape and then some snow would be nice to cover the ruts.

The crust really sucks all around. Hard on the knees trying to hold an edge on it and, really sucks when you fall through and get hung up on it. The hardest part on gear that I've found is, wax job wears down fast (its like sandpaper), and its real great for snagging lines.

Fat skis (min 105mm under foot) and flat turns can make a doable day of Death Crust.

It can in some cases cut kite skin and human skin. Can also knick a line in a snag.

Death Crust= :evil:

I was really worried about my lines, every time I tried to launch all the bridals where getting snagged, I tried not to pull on them but they where geting yanked on no matter what I tried.