frozen chicken head
n.— «Hard ski surfaces come in many forms, from “boilerplate” or “bulletproof” after a January thaw/freeze (Vermont natives like to say the snow “toightened up” after the thaw) to “frozen chicken heads,” when spring slush refreezes overnight.» —“Ice advice: how to handle the hard cases” by Bill Kerig, Eric Deslauriers, Lito Tejada-Flores, Harald Harb Skiing Feb. 1, 1998. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and...