 Poster: A snowHead
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I'm confused as to whose agreeing with who now 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I don't care. This is comedy gold.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| Harry Flashman wrote: |
| I don't care. This is comedy gold. |
At this point - the only thing that could make it more amusing would be if I uploaded a video showing my deep commitment to not carving!
I know everyone says I'm in the majority and most people can't carve - but I think there are likely few people out there who have skied as many resorts and runs as I have, in as many different conditions, using such a range of equipment, over as many years, while still failing to string together even just a few carved turns! 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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@frejul, And who are apparently so proud of their inability to do so 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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@frejul, You wrote earlier in the thread that you still wanted to improve in other areas, like skiing powder. Being able to carve your turns will help with powder too.
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I've not participated in one of these "How/Why carve?" discussions for several years, but I see there is as much BS being spouted now as then. In terms if efficiency there is one - and only one - reason to carve....to make the ski go as fast as possible - railing the ski minimises the friction against the snow so you bleed kinetic energy as little as possible. Cruisey turns on a red normally involve quite a lot of skidding to maintain a sensible speed, but engage your edges fully and you take off like a rocket. (OK, second reason: you of course get far more mileage for a given vertical drop when carving as you are spending so much time going horizontally across the piste rather than vertically down it.
If you want to control your speed, by far the least tiring way is to side-slip; the ski rubs off speed by scraping the snow and transferring your energy into the ground. Control the amount of edging to govern how much resistance you get and how hard your muscles have to work to handle that. This is most useful when going down a narrow track; making carved turns in such a narrow width is either not possible or archives nothing, but a little twitch of the skis across the direction of travel (basically a mild form of 'braquage') does all you need (Just don't get the skis too flat or you are prone to catch a downhill edge and encounter a sudden unscheduled face-piste interfacing event!  )
For recreational skiers the point of carving is to get the enjoyment of those high-energy, high-G turns, but your muscles are working hard to absorb and retransmit the forces involved. It is far from an efficient way to get down a slope - it is immense fun, can verge on the orgasmic, but is far from efficient. Talking to one 20yo-ish guy I knew from the dry-slope racing circuit after he returned from a season trying it out on the FIS circuit, he said he was more knackered after a 90ish second slalom/GS run than after 90 minutes of football. High energy turns done properly ARE tiring!
The reason being able to carve makes it seem much less tiring is that you've sorted out your posture in the process of learning how to do it. And really the best exercise to sort that is learning how to make linked turns on one foot (slow, skidded is fine, rail them later if you wish). Don't do this on anything more than a gentle blue, and greens are good to start with. Turning on the inside edge of the ski is simple - it's what we do all the time - but turning on the outside edge is the difficult bit, but where the real benefit comes in.
You'd think one foot stuff is primarily working on lateral balance, but it really shows up errors in fore-aft balance. If you're not on it you struggle and fight to get the ski pointing in the right direction (normally fighting to pull the tail round with your heel...not what you are trying to achieve), but get on the front of the boot and it suddenly works much better. So once you've got the ski doing roughly what you want it to, work on each run thereafter to improve your posture such that you can relax into the turn, and spend less time fighting with your heel. It doesn't happen in one pitch, but feel the difference as you get closer to the right position and rsfine it over tens to hundreds of times until it becomes second nature. Once you are properly in the middle of the ski just stand on its edge and you will get a basic carve. You can then start playing with how your balance affects the turn at the beginning and end (early pivots, jetting etc.)
And once you've got that taped, on to my favourite exercise of all....White Pass turns    .
(The reason this all comes to light when skiing one footed is that this brings you - or at least the vast majority of us - much closer to the limit of your strength, so the extra effort required when you do it wrong becomes much more noticeable. You don't need to take the second ski off, just lift it off the snow, so it's there for when you get things wrong and need the extra security. When you can do it reliably, by all means leave one ski at the base of the lift, and then you really find out whether you can do it! Another reason why this stuff is best practiced on the nursery slopes)
Also, the stuff about carving in deep/heavy snow is really a bit more BS - a deep snow carved turn is mechanically completely different to a hard piste carve. The latter is all about getting the edge to bite into the top few mm to bend the ski through its side cut, and the ski needs to be stiff enough for the pressure to be transmitted along the full length of the edge. But the former is about you pushing into the snow at the bindings, and the surrounding snow pushing the tip and shovel into the reverse camber due to the flex of the ski, and sidecut is much less relevant. It does have a secondary effect in that the tips and tails then end up being wiider, so the same displacement under your bindings develops less pressure on the snow at the ends of the skis and the snow can then resist it better, and you get more bend on the skis...and hence a sharper turn (which has nothing to do with the ski edge radius itself). Hence why race skis are built much stiffer, and off-piste skis are generally much softer. My off-piste skis (essentially a 100mm wide GS ski) do a much better job on piste than most, at the expense of needing to be driven extremely hard off piste (or requiring more jumpy turns when going slowly  )
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Some fantastic replies on here from people far more experienced that I couldn't come close to. But perhaps a perspective from a dad skier who has learnt to do it recently could help. I learnt to carve following my kids on a camp at landgraaf last summer and it is all I wanted to do on the two holidays I have had since. It is something you can and should learn to do if you like skiing. I would echo some of the advice in the comments above, start on wide greens that aren't tracks or easy blues, forget black runs. When you can ski those well and actually generate speed rather than lose speed from turning then move up to harder blues and easier reds. What you will find then on steeper runs with the same technique is that you are skiing very fast, then you need to hold the turn longer to control speed and it requires more fitness, that is where im at now and unlikely to improve much unless I make an effort to improve my fitness. I am at landgraaf for a couple of weeks in august and will be doing exactly that, if you fancy joining me for a day send me a PM, that includes anyone else not just the OP 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@GrahamN, I gave up after the insults started to fly. Let's see how your comments your comments sit.
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@Mollerski, You did throw a few insults yourself. However if one was a sensitive type. There were a few that it seemed like ganging up against you with patronising catch you out posts. Its understandable you came out swinging a bit.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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@Mollerski, way fewer than you threw around. And had you read it, you'd see I was mostly coming down on the same side as you!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| GrahamN wrote: |
| Also, the stuff about carving in deep/heavy snow is really a bit more BS - a deep snow carved turn is mechanically completely different to a hard piste carve. |
Can't help but think you're missing the point here by focusing on the differences between them instead of the similarities. Both techniques that you've outlined use edge or pressure inputs first, and rotational (steering) inputs last, or not at all in the case of railing. For an intermediate that has spent their whole ski life making skidded turns, rotational input has always been the first action with edge and pressure second and third.
Learning to carve means learning to turn without rotating the feet. Two inputs only and completely different to everything an intermediate has previously learned. Anyone that tries to sideslip, hockey stop or "heel flick" off-piste is going straight over. That's why learning to carve helps with off piste skiing - it teaches the skier to change the order of input priorities and use small amounts of progressive rotation rather than sudden, sharp rotation.
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@Je suis un Skieur, +1.
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You know it makes sense.
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@Je suis un Skieur, but to say the deep snow and flat piste carves are essentially the same is just misleading. As Phil Smith, BASI and others teach, there are the three fundametally different ways of generating a turn...roration, pressure and edging. I don't disagree for one second that rotation is by far the lesser component in carved turns, and never said otherwise. But the deep snow carve is primarily pressure (ok you need to angle the ski to get the horizontal component rather than just bounce up and down - and that is by virtue of angulation and inclination rather than edging) as the ski edges have very little to do with it, and you can carve with a perfectly straight ski. It's not the sidecut of the ski th at makes the difference, it's that you are pushing it sideways away from your body. Whereas in a flat piste carve the edges and sidecut are by far the most important, and the pressure requirement is pretty much handled by your body weight and you coping with the G forces generated by the turn (one if the best racers on the domestic circuit always said his success was by staying as light on his skis as possible) And as an illustration that they are fundamentally different, I could carve deep snow turns way before I got them sorted on piste.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| GrahamN wrote: |
| @Je suis un Skieur, but to say the deep snow and flat piste carves are essentially the same is just misleading. |
But nobody is saying that. Not me anyway. What people are saying is that they are both fundamentally different to a skidded turn and have more in common with each other than either of them have with a skidded piste turn.
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Poster: A snowHead
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@Je suis un Skieur, ok, accepted and, checking back, you weren't one of those blurring the difference. But if you think I'm overstating the difference, I have to say that your previous post sounded very much like you were understating it. I just get irritated by having listened to 20 years of BS making out that carved turns on piste are the holy grail and solution to all one's problems. Do so where appropriate (and that is way less than is mormally made out), but way more tools are required in the box. As (IIRC) Lane said some way back, 10-20% is probably an upper limit...even WC SL and GS racers are probably well below 50%, as the courses are set so you can't!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| GrahamN wrote: |
| In terms if efficiency there is one - and only one - reason to carve....to make the ski go as fast as possible |
Nonsense.
I mean, if you want to go as fast as possible then clean carving is the way to go, but to suggest that it's the only, or even the main, reason for doing so misses the point by a country mile.
| GrahamN wrote: |
If you want to control your speed, by far the least tiring way is to side-slip; the ski rubs off speed by scraping the snow and transferring your energy into the ground. |
Equally erroneous. If you've ever side-slipped your way all the way down a slope you'll realise that it takes a lot more effort to do so than to simply ski it. You're still having to use your leg muscles to counter all the forces generated by the snow you're moving sideways, you're just doing it more gradually so not overloading said muscles, but overall they're doing at least as much work as if you were carving - indeed, the amount of snow you move is a good indication if how much work you're doing (paraphrased from Phil Smith) so in fact you're doing a lot more.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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BZK is reassuringly dependable.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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@Chaletbeauroc, tosh.
Yes, the amount of snow you move indicates how much energy you are dumping into it, and is required to keep your speed under control for a given vertical drop (as you transfer potential energy into kinetic you go faster, bleed it off through friction to go slower). The only way you control your speed in a carve (where you've minimised the frictionagainst the snow) is to go back uphill...which converts it back to potential energy. But you've not then got down the hill. As I said above, the secondary reason to carve is to have fun, and get more mileage for a given vertical drop. But to do so your muscles have to work harder, managing the G forces, and that's energy wasted if your objective is to get down the hill (you get hot, your muscles are expending energy to resist the forces in the turn rather than handle the transfer of energy into the snow)
And if course you don't sideslip the entire way down the slope, as that's not the objective of our recreational sport, but it's the skiddiness of the turn that controls the speed. And yes it is way less tiring to control speed with selective skidding than it is to carve. And yes I have done both.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Don't you just love the philosophical battle of "carve or skid".....I know I do!!!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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There are those who seem to like carving and those who think it is not the best way to ski. But for sure it CAN be a very, very efficient way to ski. That is just how it is. And it is also not the holy grail, that is also how it is.
Trying to find reasons to dispute that carving, particularly on less challenging slopes, is not efficient suggests more of a bias than true understanding to me.
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| GrahamN wrote: |
| @Mollerski, way fewer than you threw around. And had you read it, you'd see I was mostly coming down on the same side as you! |
Apologies. I'm a shocker for skim reading and therefore missing the finer nuance. Note to self.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| zikomo wrote: |
| There are those who seem to like carving...for sure it CAN be a very, very efficient way to ski very fast. That is just how it is. |
FIFY
So you then charge off, on anything more than a moderate red at speeds incompatible with most resort skiers, then skid to a halt and wait for the rest of your group to catch up.
If you need to stop.in a hurry, do you carve out a turn or skid to a halt.? Oviously the latter, and in extremis, it's a hockey stop. Unless of course you can't skid....it's highly amusing watching high end dry-slope racers trying to stop at the end of the course, as they put such a burr on the ski edge that it's physically impossible for it to go sideways (and it's pretty heart stopping if you get into that position yourself)
I'm not "trying to find reasons to dispute that carving, particularly on less challenging slopes, is not [an] efficient" way to ski fast, just that for the vast majority of resort skiing it's frequently not the least tiring way. But you added an important qualifier there..."on less challenging slopes". Of course on greens and the easiest blues there is little speed control required, so allowing the skis to go as fast as they can is not often a problem. Once you get on to a stiff blue or red, it's not the right tool to choose for an easy ride. Remember the Women's downhill at Val d'Isere is a red, and when they ran the men's down the black Face there was virtual rebellion amongst the competitors because it was too fast.
And also remember that the majority of the useful input in the first few pages was that the OP needed to sort put their stance
...that's the crucial point (whether or not they are carving or skidding)
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@GrahamN, I have tried to be reasoned and balanced, something you seem to struggle with. Carving is indeed efficient. Other way of turning are valid. What exactly is your problem?
Your other points are nonsense. Those that I ski with (mostly my family) are all able to ski at broadly the same speed as me. So no, I have not experienced racing off only to have to skid to a halt to wait for others.
If I need to stop in a hurry I can indeed choose to do so with a hockey stop. Again I don't see your problem. Somehow suggesting that all those who carve do not have any steering or skidding skills (I have actually said repeatedly that these are equally important to master) is ridiculous.
The steepness of slope that you can carve efficiently is determined by your skill level, and only that. It does not relate to the efficiency, but to the skill level. Also the turn shape you choose is a bigger determinant of effort than steepness of slope.
You seem to also ignore that turn shape then carving can be adjusted at will to adjust line and relative speed. Particularly important to ensure that you overtake any other slope users safely. If you cannot change the shape of your turn using only more or less pressure then you should not be carving at all frankly. As is the case if you cannot alternate between carving and steering/skidding at will at any point of the turn. Interesting that you have left both aspects out in your rant, whilst claiming to be a capable carver.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| Rogerdodger wrote: |
| Don't you just love the philosophical battle of "carve or skid".....I know I do!!! |
Would sir like the £5 argument today or the full £20?
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@zikomo, since you appear to not have any desire to understand what I am saying (I've said nothing that you attribute to me), there seems little point in continuing with you.
(And you don't change trunk shape on a hard piste by applying more pressure, you change your edge angle. More pressure works in the soft snow carve)
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| GrahamN wrote: |
| @Je suis un Skieur, ok, accepted and, checking back, you weren't one of those blurring the difference. But if you think I'm overstating the difference, I have to say that your previous post sounded very much like you were understating it. I just get irritated by having listened to 20 years of BS making out that carved turns on piste are the holy grail and solution to all one's problems. Do so where appropriate (and that is way less than is mormally made out), but way more tools are required in the box. As (IIRC) Lane said some way back, 10-20% is probably an upper limit...even WC SL and GS racers are probably well below 50%, as the courses are set so you can't! |
I skied the last four days on my FIS SLs - firm but grippy morning pistes, softer in the afternoon and really quite slushy lower down late in the day. I can assure you I was carving most of my turns, setting high edge angles and leaving trenches all over the mountain. On a short radius ski you can carve a very high proportion of your turns. It was fast, fun and very controlled. The range of turn shapes you can deploy with real precision makes it easy to adjust your line to keep away from traffic etc
Now on cut up slushy pistes (and on really quite good grippy bumps at the top of the mountain) I was definitely using more rotation. But that was the more physically demanding skiing - much more tiring than higher g carving. When you pivot and drift into chop or bumps you have to absorb the impacts and I think that is much more physical than setting your edges and stacking your skeleton against the g forces and carving through it.
A proper slalom ski makes carving very achievable on even fairly steep pistes. They aren't hard to use. And I've got zero racing background. Just a keen recreational skier who has been focused on improving.
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You know it makes sense.
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@GrahamN,
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So you then charge off, on anything more than a moderate red at speeds incompatible with most resort skiers, then skid to a halt and wait for the rest of your group to catch up.
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Funnily enough, the last four days I have been skiing with my wife who uses a more typical blend of rotation and edging. I didn't have to wait for her much. The reason should be obvious - I was sking faster but MUCH LONGER DISTANCES as I was travelling further across the piste (or making many crossings of a third of the piste) because I was using turn geometry/gravity to shed speed not skidding! It's the whole slow line fast vs fast line slow thing that means you can get to the lift at similar times.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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BTW to be clear I'm not saying pivoted turns are WRONG or even not the most functional approach in many situations but I do disagree that carving has very limited application outside east blues and greens. At least not on shorter radius skis designed to carve.
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Poster: A snowHead
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@GrahamN,
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When you can do it reliably, by all means leave one ski at the base of the lift, and then you really find out whether you can do it!
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I remember, many years ago now, seeing you do this at Hemel. I was totally in awe, particularly since, at the time, I couldn't ski for toffee on two skis, let alone one.
Mind you, I did once - quite efficiently I thought - side slip down the entire length of the Ladies' Downhill in Cortina. I wasn't particularly tired when I got to the bottom, but then I didn't displace much snow, since it was mostly hard (very) pack. This was prompted by seeing another snowHead cartwheeling down, luckily sustaining no injury. Side-slipping seemed the better option...
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Quote: |
Would sir like the £5 argument today or the full £20?
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I've told you twice already.
I remember once I accidentally linked three carve turns together on an exceptionally favorable pice of piste. It felt so good I almost wooped but stopped myself because so many people do it just before they die.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@ronniescott,
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| GrahamN wrote: |
| I just get irritated by having listened to 20 years of BS making out that carved turns on piste are the holy grail and solution to all one's problems. Do so where appropriate (and that is way less than is mormally made out), but way more tools are required in the box. As (IIRC) Lane said some way back, 10-20% is probably an upper limit... |
Is it possible that you're a little over-sensitive on the subject? I haven't said carving turns on piste is the "holy grail and solution to all one's problems", I said something earlier in the thread to the effect that learning to "stand on your ski" and let the ski do the work is a fundamental breakthrough in technique. That's where the efficiency pluses come from, you don't need to be full on charging to benefit from riding the sidecut and not skidding around 100% of the time.
I think that the way I'd look at it, even if it is only 10-20% that's available for a full on carved run, it's likely to be available several days a week to the average punter skier and is a lot of fun. In comparison, the opportunity to use a "deep snow carve" as you call it comes up once in a blue moon. Useful if you've got the budget for heli-skiing.
Interesting also that you mention Phil Smith. He personally taught me to carve in my eighth week on snow. It was a revelation that skis turned themselves if you just rolled them and I could leave two clean tracks in the snow long before I could competently ski bumps, steeps, off-piste or slush. It poses the question though, that if the need for carving skills is 20 years of BS, why would someone as revered as Phil Smith choose to teach the skill to someone like me who was little more than an upper intermediate punter at the time?
It clearly is an important tool in the box if you want to ski at a better level and that's why myself and several others expressed disappointment that the OP is making a conscious choice to discount the technique completely.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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@Je suis un Skieur,
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It clearly is an important tool in the box if you want to ski at a better level and that's why myself and several others expressed disappointment that the OP is making a conscious choice to discount the technique completely.
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Terrific. Renders the rest of this thread entirely obsolete. But there's BZK for you. 'twas ever thus.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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@Hurtle,
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@Je suis un Skieur, PS, forgive me for asking, but is your name correct? I thought - and I would welcome correction if I'm wrong, my French is quite rusty - that one would say, "je suis skieur". 
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| Hurtle wrote: |
| my French is quite rusty - that one would say, "je suis skieur". |
A play on 'Je suis un rockstar' perhaps?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| Mollerski wrote: |
| Hurtle wrote: |
| my French is quite rusty - that one would say, "je suis skieur". |
A play on 'Je suis un rockstar' perhaps? |
oh. I don't know.
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| jedster wrote: |
Funnily enough, the last four days I have been skiing with my wife who uses a more typical blend of rotation and edging. I didn't have to wait for her much. The reason should be obvious - I was sking faster but MUCH LONGER DISTANCES as I was travelling further across the piste (or making many crossings of a third of the piste) because I was using turn geometry/gravity to shed speed not skidding! It's the whole slow line fast vs fast line slow thing that means you can get to the lift at similar times. |
Yes, fine, agreed. As I've said several times, the secondary purpose of carving is to have fun, and get more mileage for a given vertical drop...which is what you report, and I have no quarrel with "patk and ride" it being the most efficient means .of travelling in the direction the skis are pointing (which is different from getting down the hill). Thinking about this walking back to the hotel this evening (hopefully the snow will be stable enough for us to actually ski tomorrow), I think the main mechanism of losing that potential energy on a carve is air resistance....I suspect you will lose way more through that than through the residual snow friction when truly carving. But your legs will be working much more than hers, as our muscles are far from a 100% "perfect machine".
On that point, think about the old exercise of sitting against the wall. You are doing exactly ZERO work (in the physics, mechanical sense), but your biochemistry is doing loads to maintain that position against the wall and not collapsing in a screaming heap. You need to do the same to manage the turn forces for the higher G turns and greater distance you travel. So I still reject the idea that carving (on a hard piste...the soft snow discussion is a diversion from the main subject of this thread) is the least tiring method to get down a hill.
And skiing chop is simply just harder work than flat pistes, however you do it...that's why resorts spend so much time bashing pistes to give us a nice time.
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FAQ
There's a pack mentality with most high volume forum users, not just this one. Virtual 'friends'. 