How to Find Good Tree Skiing– Before You Leave Home

While many backcountry skiers might covet steep couloir and alpine faces, I love hunting for those perfect trees – widely spaced, brush free, with silky powder between. My name is Kyle McCrohan and I’m a PNW skier and author of the blog climberkyle.com. My goal is to share a few tools for finding good tree skiing, along with evoking some admiration for the forests we move through.

Skiing deep powder in a nice PNW forest.

Why Ski in the Trees?

Tree skiing offers some very distinct benefits:

• Trees provide protection from wind, so the snow is often much less wind effected.
• Trees often decrease avalanche danger, by providing anchors for the snowpack.
• Trees provide visibility during foggy, low visibility days.

In the stormy PNW, trees are often the most viable terrain option. Learning to ski in the trees, and identify good tree skiing, is a necessary part of backcountry skiing.

NAIP False Color Imagery

My favorite layer for finding tree skiing is CalTopo’s NAIP False Color IR Layer. The “false color” means that the colors are modified to enhance detail. In this case, it makes it easier to see individual trees and other features.

NAIP false color really shows the difference in trees around Snoqualmie Pass.

Not all forests are created equally. In this image, it is extremely easy to see the different types of forests. The old growth has a certain larger texture. The dense new growth (which you want to avoid) is much finer, and has predictable patterns, because it was planted by humans. The less dense second growth looks logged, but you can see the space between trees, indicating better spacing. Open glades also become very obvious.

It might not be immediately obvious to you what type of forest makes for “good” tree skiing – that only comes from experience. But when you go skiing, take notes, and compare them to the imagery in this layer. This will allow you to learn the characteristics of your local forests, and recognize “good trees” from satellite imagery.

On certain northern aspects, the NAIP layer is too shadowed to be useful. In that case, the standard Imagery Layer is helpful, although it does not have a False Color IR option.

Custom Terrain Shading

Another helpful CalTopo tool is custom Terrain Shading, which allows you to look for terrain of specific elevation, slope angle, canopy cover, and aspect. To add a custom layer, select “Add” then “Terrain Shading”.

Highlighting a specific type of terrain with custom terrain shading.

On this day, I was looking for very specific terrain. It had snowed two days ago, but the sun came out the day before and warmed the solar aspects. Tree bombs rained down in the tighter forests. Wind had damaged the open alpine slopes. So I was seeking moderate angled, north facing glades (canopy cover 30-70%) above 4,000 ft.

The purple shows the moderate north facing glades above 4,000 ft.

At Peace in the Trees

I’ll be honest – tree skiing is not the sexiest part of backcountry skiing. But it can be really fun, high quality, and adventurous in its own way. And when you find that centuries-old patriarch of the forest, or that sunlit hallway through the trees, it feels special and personal. After all, we are like the woods – a few trees in a forest of humanity.

A golden sunset hallway through the trees.

Author Kyle McCrohan is a member of the CalTopo Educational Ambassador team as well as an avid backcountry skier, climber, and storyteller at climberkyle.com.