Learn
The language of the face
Reading a mountain
is a discipline.
A freeride face is not a slope and a leaderboard. It is a piece of terrain with aspect, fall line, features, exposure and consequence. Inspection is the work of seeing all of that — calmly, from the bottom — and turning it into a line you can ride. This page is a primer on how to do it well, and how Facecast helps.
Fundamentals
Four things to see
before you draw a line.
1. Aspect
The compass direction the face is pointing — N, NE, E, S… Aspect drives sun exposure, snow quality and danger. A north face holds cold powder days after a storm; a south face goes from boilerplate at sunrise to slush by noon.
On Facecast: the venue card shows aspect explicitly. Inspect at the same hour you plan to ride — the snow at 09:00 is not the snow at 13:00.
2. Fall line
The line a ball would roll if you dropped it from the top. Every line you draw is a negotiation with the fall line: stay on it, traverse it, or break it with a feature. Knowing where the true fall line runs is the first thing to mark.
3. Features
The face’s vocabulary: cliffs, spines, ribs, gullies, chokes, pillows, rollers, runouts, aprons. Each feature changes commitment and consequence in a different way. The point of inspection is naming them — not just looking at them.
4. Exposure
What happens if you fall. Exposure is the consequence of a missed turn or a missed landing — measured in metres of slide, not in style points. Two lines can look equal from the bottom and have completely different exposure.
The inspection ritual
How riders read a face
before before the drop.
There is no single right method, but most experienced freeriders move through the same five stages. Facecast was built around them — the canvas mirrors the order in which a rider’s eye actually works.
Stage 1 · Frame
Stand at the bottom of the apron. Take in the whole face at once — left edge, right edge, top, bottom. Decide where the face “begins” and “ends” before you zoom into any feature. On the canvas, this is the photo you load.
Stage 2 · Trace the fall line
Find the true vertical and trace it with your eyes from drop to runout. Note where it bends, where it forks around a rib, where a cliff cuts it short. This is the spine of every future line.
Stage 3 · Name the features
Walk your eye top to bottom and name each cliff, spine, gully, choke and roller. Naming forces specificity: “the second cliff skier’s right” is a real reference; “that drop” is not. Mark each one on the face.
Stage 4 · Build candidate lines
Draw two or three lines you could ride. Not the line — candidates. Each one is a sequence of features (entry, middle, exit) connected by transitions. Stack them side by side on the face.
Stage 5 · Compare and commit
For each candidate, mark exposure and runout. Then choose — the line you can ride on the snow you’ll find, in the visibility you’ll get, with the body you’ll have at start time. That is the line you walk to the gate with.
Stage 6 · Revisit
Inspection is not a one-pass exercise. Save the face. Sleep on it. Open it again the night before the contest, with a coach, in flat light. Lines you trusted at noon look different at 22:00 — that is normal, and useful.
Reading the snow
The features
and how to mark them.
Cliffs and drops
Vertical or near-vertical step in the face. Inspect for: height, lip quality (clean / cornice / corniced and overhanging), landing zone (flat, sloped, gully, into-cliff), and what follows the landing. A 6 m drop with a clean lip into a 35° apron is not the same as a 6 m drop into a flat shelf.
Spines and ribs
Convex shoulders that fall away on both sides. Spines reward fall-line skiing and edge control — slow turns wash off. Read where the spine narrows, where it widens into a face, and what is on either side if you slide off.
Gullies and couloirs
Confined, walled-in fall lines. Read width, sluff path, and the exit: gullies funnel everything you knock loose into the runout. Time your turns so you are not under your own sluff at the choke.
Pillows and rollers
Soft, convex features formed by snow over rock or vegetation. Soft to land on, but the convexity hides what is downhill. Mark where the roller breaks — that is the point of no visibility.
Choke points
The narrowest section a line passes through — between two rocks, under a cliff band, through a tree. Choke points decide commitment: you cannot bail mid-feature, you ride them or you don’t enter.
Runouts and aprons
What lies below the last feature. A clean apron is forgiving; a runout into rocks, a flat, a cliff or a crevasse is not. The runout is part of the line — never inspect a feature without inspecting what catches you under it.
Risk & commitment
The two questions
every line has to answer.
Most freeride mistakes are not “wrong feature” mistakes — they are “right feature, wrong day, wrong consequence” mistakes. Facecast separates two ideas judges and athletes routinely conflate.
Commitment
Once you enter the feature, can you exit cleanly if it goes wrong? A traversable face has low commitment — you can wash a turn and recover. A mandatory air over a cliff band has high commitment — there is no “abort”. Commitment is decided by the rider’s options mid-feature.
Mark it as: the points on the line where bailing stops being an option.
Exposure
If you fall, what happens? Exposure is the consequence of failure — measured by what is downhill of the place you might fall: clean apron, rocks, cliff, ice, trees, crevasse. Two lines with the same commitment can have very different exposure if their runouts differ.
Mark it as: the zones of the face where a fall has serious consequence, independent of how committing the riding is there.
A good line is one whose commitment matches what you can ride and whose exposure matches what you are willing to accept on the day. Facecast does not pick that match for you. It just makes both visible at the same time.
Glossary
The words riders use
when they read a face.
Apron
The wide, lower-angle snowfield at the base of a face. Usually the runout for everything above it.
Aspect
The compass direction the face points to (N, NE, E…). Drives sun exposure and snow quality.
Bail
To deliberately abandon a feature mid-line to avoid a worse outcome. Only possible on low-commitment terrain.
Cliff band
A continuous horizontal line of rock cutting across a face. Either you find a window through it or you go over.
Commitment
How many options you have once you enter a feature. High commitment = no exit until the feature is over.
Couloir
A steep, walled-in gully — usually narrower and steeper than a generic gully.
Drop
A short, near-vertical step a rider can air over. Smaller than a cliff in common usage, but the line is the same.
Exposure
The consequence of falling — what is downhill of you, not how hard the move is.
Fall line
The natural vertical line gravity follows down a face.
Gully
A confined drainage running down the face. Funnels sluff and reduces exit options.
Inspection
The act of reading a face from the bottom before riding it from the top. The work this whole site is about.
Lip
The takeoff edge of a cliff or drop. Lip quality (clean, soft, corniced) decides launch behaviour.
Mandatory air
A point on a line where you must leave the snow — the geometry leaves no other option.
Pillow
A rounded, snow-covered convex feature, usually soft and forgiving on landing.
Roller
A convex roll in the slope that hides what’s below until you go over it.
Runout
The terrain your body and skis travel over after a fall — clean apron or rocks decides everything.
Sluff
The loose snow a rider releases under their skis. In steep terrain, sluff management is part of the line.
Spine
A convex ridge of snow falling away on both sides. Rewards fall-line riding, punishes washed turns.
From page to face
Read the face.
Choose your line.
Reading is half the work. Drawing on the face you’ll actually ride is the other half. Pick a venue, open the canvas, and put what you just read into practice.