Ski-Way Code

A snowHead

Potential for thread to be well and truly hijacked:

GS Carving turns - Oh dear should this be in the BZK section - I thought that the radius ascribed to a specific ski was the carving radius.
Hence any other radius of turn (such as "when it gets busy I revert to short carved turns down the side of the piste") isn't carving on rails, but must by its very nature and definition include some skidding...

Or have I got it all wrong?

Meanwhile, FIS rules:

The rules are listed on the Arc1950 TV channel every 10 mins (which is where all the snow forecasts and lift opening & piste conditions are), with each rule in turn having an explanation section at each loop on the .
Like the stuff on the pylons, not likely to get everyone, but subliminally it must be doing some good.

A snowHead

Often there's no other choice than the edge of the piste, we watched a dad take his two kids down a wide piste traversing all the way across each time before turning. We've always applied a rule with our kids however small, never use more than half the width of the piste.

There is always that idiot though, they always seem to have a superior grin 'look at me, I'm fast'. It was great last holiday when an idiot, head down, bottom and sticks in the air, raced down the edge through a crowded group on a path tapping his sticks together and yodelling, only to find my tiny son racing past him in full view of the crowd when it had all thinned out.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

JimW, yes, difficult to see fully carved turns with less than about a 9m radius, there's bound to be an element of steering. These short turns are most often the old fashioned wedel, which could be performed on entirely straight skis.

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alex_heney, I often keep to the sides of the piste in an attempt to avoid the madly swerving idiots, but saying that.. I always slow down when passing people. The alernative would be to turn around a stopped group and get channelled right into the stream of crowds doing the same. Groups of people who stop and block about one quarter of the piste area a right pain in the butt. If you stop you should line up below one another and not spread out across the slope.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

I often find the side of the piste is safer, from a snowboarders point of view, than the centre. As a firm believer in trying to always be as spacially aware as possible it is best to position myself so that my 'blind side' has as little space behind it as possible for slope users to go. Excluding any idiots who decide to jump from off-piste to piste without looking this allows me see a nice 180 degree arc down and up the slope.
If there are groups stopped on the slope, it is obviously de rigueur to slow down, but also from this perspective safer to pass behind them (where they are unlikely to travel) than infront (and on my 'blind side').

After all it is free

I've had lessons on every trip I've been on; in Austria, France and Italy and never in any lesson has any instructor referred to the code explicitly. Some of the rules were conveyed by implicit, common-sense type instructions but only for I love reading TO brochures cover-to-cover, I wouldn't have known that there was a formal set of rules until I saw the first sign possibly on the second or third trip. I learned the downhill priorty rule the hard way when a lunatic took me out as I stood in a neat ski-school line at the side of a piste.

I really think the 'Overtaking' rule goes out the window on narrow tracks/roads. Even now that I'm pretty "competent", I still don't like them because of the reckless way some skiers treat them. It's way harder for a learner skier to keep control on these as you haven't been taught to do the shorter turns that are needed and snow-ploughing can be tricky if it gets steep or there's a tight-corner coming up. Concentrating on seeing yourself through the thigh-burn of a snowplough gets even trickier when others speed past you in the tiniest space. So many people seem to forget that everyone has to learn sometime.

I was also never taught to take up only half the piste and as all my co-skiers were total beginners for a long time, it never dawned on me how annoying this was might be. I thought I was being safe by staying in better control; basically the wider the better. rolling eyes

I know I know!

So it would be great if more instructors explicitly referred to the rules. But obviously there are so many people who don't bother with lessons, that trying to increase awareness and compliance among this group of skiers is more urgent. I've never seen piste patrol taking someone to task on a slope. Maybe that's just the luck of the draw but if the rules are to be taken seriously by the skiers, they need to be taken seriously by the 'enforcers'. To make them really work, a carrot and stick approach would probably be the best bet. Should everyone buying a lift pass have to answer a quiz? Smile

Or get 10 rules right and save 5% or get an extra day or some kind of incentive?

At the moment the code is like an optional extra that only keen or conscientious skiers take to heart (kinda like the bankers really) but let's be honest, this is not the group of skiers that are the greatest threat to everyone's safety.

PS For "skier" above, read "skier/boarder"! I really don't know why boarders get the hard time they do. Apart from being scary to be sandwiched between on a chairlift, they don't come up on my radar any more than skiers.

Help!!

Ski-Way Code

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