Skiing Powder

A snowHead

I don't have a chalet to pimp here, but just wondering if someone can either link me or gimme a few hints into skiing powder? I've been toying around with cutting off runs here and there during this weeks snow - I keep finding that I try and turn and one ski almost turns, the other drags behind and I make a hash of it. Had a pretty nasty fall yesterday, pretty much due to my crappy technique.

Generally, I'm being cautious and not going so fast, mainly cos I'm slightly worried about all the rocks that were definitely were there last week, where the snow is now. I'm also pretty heavy (17st) and tall (6'4), so not really experienced "floating" (i dont think) - skiing 182cm salomon foils fwiw.

I did try searching but not quite got the hang of it, searching "skiing" and "powder" seems to hit every thread NehNeh

A snowHead

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

toiletduckuk, Well I can put both hands up and state that I am no expert and no good at it but have leaned to enjoy off piste stuff over the past 3 seasons.

Fitness helped me big time, I am much fitter these days than I used to be as I run a lot and my legs are strong.

The guys I ski with that live in the mountains in the Winter have a saying that 'speed is your friend' in off piste - too slow and you sink!!

Bounce!! hard to relate but I have been told to bounce through the turns, this seems to work and I feel quite comfortable and more stable, I guess you are setting yourself up dynamically balancewise and not being too stiff.

Skis - I moved to shorter and fatter, okay I use 176 B2's, and they are not the great off piste ski but certainly do the job for me on and off the piste.

Smile and relax - it's fun snowHead

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davidof, much appreciated Very Happy

I'll try and put that into practise.

I'd like to get lessons, but as with earlier in the season when I was struggling a little on-piste, I really can't afford them Sad

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

davidof, 'The alternative is to get fat skis and hoon it down surfing along the top of the powder at high speeds like they do on the freeride movies' aahh now your talking sense
Toofy Grin

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toiletduckuk, I think you just said it "my technique may make instructors cringe" If you have poor technique on piste you won't be able to ski off piste. At all! You must be basically correct in your most basic technique. You say you can't afford a lesson, but surely one private for 1.5 - 2 hours would make all the difference, and you don't have to pay extortionate prices. You may find, in a lesson that your instructor spends nearly all the time on piste if your technique is poor. S/he may give you exercises to practice, and you should do these religiously. When your basic technique problems are fixed, you'll be able to ski in deep snow. Very Happy

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

toiletduckuk, I know some of the purists here will tell you that you should be able to ski powder on 160cm slalom skis but I am almost exactly your height and weight and I ski 190cm Volkl Gotamas which are fatter and longer than what you are on at the minute and will give you more float in the deep stuff. Because we more substantial gents can't bounce and float like our lighter friends you will probably find it easier to carry a little more speed and make your turns closer to a GS shape initially and then when you are more comfortable you can tigthen your turn radius up into the sort of turns thatdavidof has posted above. Keep your weight central, skis together, tighten your mid section and go for it. One advantage we have is that we kick up more snow in each turn and so if you get someone to video you it always looks better on film!

After all it is free

said video that David refers to is here as divx:

http://gregh.co.uk/divx/gregski.divx

and here as WMV

http://gregh.co.uk/mpeg/gregski.wmv

What's good for you given your location is all of that was taken in Les Gets and Morzine!

Cheers,

Greg

I always gave myself an aim of learning to ski powder before I bought fat skis, so that I could actually appreciate the difference. I learnt by trying and trying again - many powder days lost on a snowboard because of that, but i was worth it!

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davidof,

I hope they aren't your tracks on the big face.... Laughing

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Floating on the surface with fat skis.............Is it just the same as piste skiing?

snow reports

Weak skiers need fat skis NehNeh

Real men ski slalom skis in powder NehNeh

You know it makes sense.

My personal early powder experience: the unknown makes you sit back and tense up.

So, certainly all of what is said above is correct, but a key point for me was: remember basic technique and relax.

Also, the recommendation to find a suitably pitched run is invaluable - if you suddenly decide to take your learning into heavy spring crud in a gully full of trees you will a) come a cropper and b) be put off the joy that is fresh tracks.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

A snowHead

toiletduckuk, "I'd be happy to ski with a group of snowHead's but an EpicSki group would probably scare me Neh Neh

" I think you've got that the wrong way round! There's talking the talk and then there's walking the walk! Shocked

OTOH getting half your group injured is not proving anything to anyone is it?

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

easiski,

I was thinking that... I know some snowHead

who can ski very well (seen them ski) but who on here is a good epic skier..?

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I'm confused.. I only meant that I think my skiing is to a reasonable standard, and I'd be happy skiing with good skiiers who aren't super critical, but would likely be critiqued in various smaller places by people who are interested in the super in-depth stuff.. Not really sure how people are getting hurt or talking/walking at all is involved... Puzzled

Arno - I *think* they're at the all-mountain mounting point, but I'm not actually 100%. They do seem quite close to center but I figured that's just cos they're twins and the added turned up tip on the tail made the back look longer. Will confirm tomorrow - they're in the ski store near the lifts at the mo!

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Thanks for this thread, I'm also someone who has a complete block about powder - but it's something in my head as I am a strong and experienced piste skier. I need someone to show me one little tip for powder - I have had 3 or 4 specific private lesson in recent years on powder, but none have "clicked". However for moguls an Instructor gave me the "imagine pushing the French kid into the snow" technique that instantly got me over my similar "head" problem - moguls now hold no fear for me.

I'm afraid all the posts above aren't going to help me when I get out there in a couple of weeks (if there is any powder of course). - this demonstrates that I am stongly on the kinesthetic end of the learning style spectrum.

Any good kinestheitc instructors in or around St Gervais?

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toiletduckuk, there's a thread about that - the Epic talk a lot .... Snowheads get on and do it, and there are some very, very good snowhead skiers. I've not yet seen an epic skier as good - not including Martin Bell of course) One class in the Epic ski academy managed to damage 50% of the participants... Shocked

However, if you were meaning less silly OTT citical stuff then yes. Very Happy

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

After all it is free

SuburbanSkier, Just an idea here. Myself and a boarding mate were just experimenting a little last week with some localised shallow powder (12 - 18 inches) we found. Start with steep little hillocks with about 20m of slope and shallowing out below that. Get used to picking up speed and then make one nice turn - slow and gentle. Find one a little higher and make a couple of turns. You fall over loads but it is great fun as long as all your zips are done up Twisted Evil

Practice bouncing a little as you lift your skis to start the turn. See what works and what throws you.

Then go get a lesson and practice some more. For my own case I would much rather have got used to at least being in the stuff (even with the risk of picking up the odd bad habit for a day or two) rather than going into a formal lesson with no idea of what powder even feels like. Then again - I have had a few hints along the way. As said above - speed keeps you going - almost all of my falls are when I try to slow down. Let the skis get a touch of speed down the fall line before trying to turn them.

toiletduckuk, SuburbanSkier, I'd agree pretty much with what davidof said at the top of this thread. But boiling it down to the most simple instructions I'd say
a) bounce and
b) keep your feet moving as one.

If you do that it'll work, but if you want a bit more of an explanation, this following is my take on this.

b) Keeping your feet moving as one reduces the likelihood of the skis turning at different radii, diverging and heading off in different directions. As you are skiing in deep snow, once they do head off in different directions it's very difficult to get them back together again, and you'll end up eating snow very quickly. There is a big difference here between piste skiing and deep snow skiing in that on a piste you need quite independent extension of each leg to get the appropriate pressure on each ski, as the piste is a hard flat surface, and your ski positions have to match what the piste surface is doing. Deep snow though is a soft and malleable surface, so you only get the pressure to make the turn from the strength with which you push against it (through the bouncing), so you need to be very careful to match the motions from each leg pretty precisely. I do this by concentrate pretty hard on where my knees and ankles are, getting them as evenly matched as possible - almost trying to pretend I'm on a (shock, horror) monoski (although as I've never monoskied, I could be way off what it really feels like). Davidof said to keep not too narrow a stance, but I'm not sure about this. Yes as you narrow your stance, you lateral stability is reduced, but it becomes way easier to ensure your feet are moving as one. The better you get the more subtle and stronger the control you'll get of each foot, and this becomes less important and you may wish to then widen your stance to improve lateral stability - but I found the narrower the stance the better was very helpful in the early stages (although I do have a fairly wide natural stance, so if you originally learned with a boots together style you're probably there already).

a) the reason for "bouncing" down the slope is that powder is (hopefully) soft so gives a lot under your skis. The point of the bounce is that the downward push from your legs compresses the snow a bit and firms it up, so gives you a platform on top of which the skis can turn, rather than just giving way under you. The best way to get into this is to find a very shallow slope and just head straight down the fall-line bouncing as you go. First go you'll probably get your torso goind quite up and down as well, but be fairly active in flexion and extension at the hips and knees to keep a quiet upper body (remember to allow the legs to shorten back up under you at the end of the bounce, or you'll have nowhere to push from for the next one). Get into a nice rhythm, and once this feels good start a gentle push out to the side on each bounce - but do not try to twist the skis at this stage or you'll probably trip yourself up. Look back at the end of your run and hey-presto you'll see a nice set of 'S'es behind you. And if the slope is too steep to straight-line it, start on a bit of a traverse that you can straight-line and put in a few bounces to get the motion going and to get the feel of the snow before turning down the fall-line to making your turns run.

As you get more comfortable with this and progress onto steeper slopes you can get a bit more energetic with the side pushes and add a bit more deliberate of a steer as you come out of each turn to keep the speed down.

SuburbanSkier, if you're a strong piste skier, my guess is that your main problem will be skiing too one-footed - i.e. you've been used to carving with the outside foot and adjusting the inside foot to match what's then going on. Soft snow skiing is very much two footed - treat both feet exactly the same. Just remember to re-establish independent foot movements when you get back onto piste - it normally takes me one stumble/fall before I get the appropriate tape running inside my head Embarassed

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GrahamN - You're spot on re being one-footed - and I've been told that so many times. I even practice two footed on the piste and it seems fine, until I get in the powder, then worry I'm losing control, and try and do something that's just not possible on powder. Until I know what it FEELS like, I don't think I'll crack it.

snow reports

My take

In a few inches of snow, the turn doesn't really matter as a decent enough turn will work ok, ditto corn snow
In deep stuff, things become a bit more critical and you don't want skis getting snagged so balance over the skis is the 1st thing because you need to be in a postion to stay upright; next momentum and rhythm are good and the bounce helps this. It releases the skis from contact and allow an easier turn.

I think there ar many ways that poeple ski it and on our recent trip to LG it was possible to see quite a few different approaches.

Some ski very tightly and use a banked turn to start things off, this checks your momentum and throws the skis up in the air ready for turning. The tips do not necessarily come out of the snow. Others sit very centrally and just edge the skis left and right with a bounce.
Some just get in a great position and just drive them through the snow...you don't see the skis working but they still need the skis to release and turn.
I try and get a platform to rise off of and the tips are almost out of the snow.

In all the cases I have mentioned, everyone is up and down on the skis, press and release and they all work and leave nice tight turns in deepish snow. For wider turns a more simple ride of the ski does ok.....but you need your tight turns sorted for narrow gullies and trees.....

Don't mention deep snow in tight trees.......!!!!!!!!!! Laughing

And finally, you can't get this by talking about it too much, you have to get in there and do your fair share of falling over... Laughing

I agree completely with GrahamN's analysis.

Too bad I can't seem to put it into practice as often/well as I would like!

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

abc, it's not so much the width of the stance I see as important here (although being narrower helps a huge amount) as the platform you form with the skis. As I see it, the bases of the two skis should lie on a single surface, so it's the relative up-down motion of the knees you need to minimise, as opposed to the exact opposite when carving on piste. Even in old-skool with boots bolted together laterally (AIUI) you had one foot lifted above the other when inclining into the turn so either both skis were on the piste, or just the outside one. Here we want to keep the skis as level as possible, so I don't see how it can work on a hard(ish) piste. As I said above, I think the closest equivalent condition you'll get for on-piste skiing is the two-footed push and absorb on the face of a mogul when trying to zipper-line the run. I'm no instructor though, just someone who's worked out how to do all this in the last few years, so maybe someone with a bit more authority can comment on suitable exercises?

A snowHead

GrahamN, "Fench kid" I thought you'd never ask. . . . As you come out of a turn and start the next one, immediately pretend to push your (new) inside hand down as if pushing a kid (french if the illusion works) straight down into the snow with your hand on the top of its head. Without trying, it taught me to relax/drop my inside knee early instead of tensing it. My piste turns improved, but more dramatically I instantly discovered I could do moguls (well until the thighs give out). That's what I mean by one of those "feely" teaching techniques that makes one part of the body do something, but is actually retraining another part. And despite yet more useful advice in recent posts on this thread, I am still looking for an equivalent for powder - if not on here then in or near St Gervais 7th-13th April.

Help!!

Skiing Powder

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