 Poster: A snowHead
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I remember the Pengelstein run 20 years ago and it was groomed then (and took just 5 minutes top to bottom, 2.5km at about 30 km/h for a good intermediate skier). The run was quite empty at the end of January though.
Konrad is obviously talking about some time before that, but it is my perception that new unpisted itineraries have replaced the original ones as resorts have grown and in recent years some have been reinstated (I would call it Americanisation or creation of in-bounds, ungroomed, runs). I regard this as a good thing as for a while it was difficult to find unpisted runs to practice off-piste.
As to piste skiing creating technically bad skiers, that is rubbish. IMV, it is hardly possible to develop good technique off-piste. Off-piste skiing gives practice and eventually confidence in off-piste skiing. You need adequate technique to tackle it.
Pistes alow the less technically-developed skier (and the technically able who enjoy them more than off-piste) to enjoy skiing more - is that really a problem?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Jerry, 
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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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A skier can get away with skiing badly on piste without really discovering his limitations. A turn on difficult snow will probably just need to be a good carved turn, but there you can't get away with skiing it badly.
However Konrad was not talking about off piste, where you really need to hire a guide and the difficulty is often of a quite different degree. He was talking about pistes, which are much more accessible to the average skier. I think the idea of certain pistes always being groomed regularly and others only rarely sounds a good one. We then get some choice and variety and a natural transition to the off-piste.
At the upper end of piste difficulty, the changing of all difficult blacks into itineraries in some resorts is, to some extent, already doing this, but at the expense of taking away from skiers the possibility of skiing a groomed steep or difficult slope, or even a steep slope where some effort has been made to get rid of or isolate dangerous ice and stones etc which would not be allowed on a normal black piste. This is, again, reducing choice.
However what I object to is not so much overgrooming (the condition of pistes doesn't much affect me since I hardly ever ski on them) but the actual bulldozing of slopes to give them a more average profile, taking away the character of runs and the changes of difficulty or types of challenge they offer. This is tending to make all runs much the same, which is a big loss to skiing. It is also bad for the mountain environment.
Last edited by Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see? on Thu 4-12-08 13:10; edited 4 times in total
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| Quote: |
Ordhan wrote:
Quote:
Piste skiing creates technically bad skiers who can generally only cope with one type of snow surface/condition.
That is the biggist load of bull, some people do not enjoy powder and are technically the most perfect skiers I have ever seen!!!! Yes they only ski one one type of terrain but they do it perfectly
I really don't get this - how can you not enjoy powder "it's like explaining sex to a virgin" as horizon's sig has it? Railing on a crisp fresh groomer is not unpleasant but that addictive "just give me one more hit" feeling?
Obviously you can not enjoy in the hike for ages,fall over, lose all my kit, can't dig myself out, get knackered sense quite easily (or at least I can). ..hmm maybe I need to stick to the brutal groomers.
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I love powder but I always spend a day blasting hte piste. Just because. But Powder is my mecca!!! There are however some poeple who dont see the attraction but there Carving,short radius turns etc are technically perfect
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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.
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| DB wrote: |
| Is it true the Welsh stick to the pistes becuase they already get enough chance to ride the white fluffy stuff back home? |
Redeemed yourself with that one
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Going back 16 years or so, in Vail then, they'd piste certain runs on certain days and leave the other au naturel and broadcast the fact. There was something for everybody then. There are certain classic runs which are famous for bumps, which can be left as Konrad would like, but skiing has to accommodate all its fans, after all they are a business and losing customers due to not preparing slopes is financial suicide.
So unless you are a specialist place like La Grave or Alagna, you'll have to accept that resorts provide for all their customers not just the elite few.
I'm concerned that a lot of people have never learned the mogul skiing technique and just hammer down a piste as fast as they can, with no thought for themselves or others.
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I do understand where Konrad is coming from, but whether we like it or not skiing has changed drastically since he, I and David Goldsmith learned. Different types of people go skiing these days compared to when I was young, and I think that's a good thing. It is true that the perfect grooming of so many pistes does tend to mean that most modern skiers don't actually learn to ski - they learn to slide around on the pistes. It's not the same thing, but it's also not necessarily a bad thing.
The earthworks that resorts do in summer can be an eyesore in places where there are normally trees/grass, but it doesn't make much difference here where the upper reaches look like a quarry anyway. It may be undesirable in principal to dumb it all down, but like it or not, many people's livings depend on getting enough tourists into resort, and this is one of the main ways to do it. La Grave exists in part because it isn't a ski resort, only has 3,500 beds and is determined to stay like that. 
Look at it this way: here we have a huge area of black unpisted skiing, some of it marked, much not but clearly visible etc. and what do we hear all the time .... 'LDA hardly has any black runs', 'you can't ski down to resort' etc. You can't win em all. 
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brian
brian
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easiski, taking your points re livelihoods etc. but sometimes punter deterrence is no bad thing. 
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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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So, to be a good skier do you have to go off-piste/through lumpy crud?
Who decided this? Just a guess, but people who ski off-piste or through lumpy crud perhaps?
Still sounds like snobbery.
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| Sideshow_Bob wrote: |
| stanton wrote: |
| Piste skiing creates technically bad skiers who can generally only cope with one type of snow surface/condition. |
I can imagine stanton at a WC race: "Hey, Bode, Herman, Didier, Lyndsay, you're technically bad skiers!" |
These guys were born on skis, they live skiing. They are expert on & off piste & all conditions.
To compare them with recreational (2-3-4 weeks a year) skiers is a non-starter.
Also with recreational skiers. If they were to try a pair of race tuned skis, they would not even be able to control them on a groomed piste because of the edge angles there skis are tuned too.
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You know it makes sense.
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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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| chrisdavis wrote: |
So, to be a good skier do you have to go off-piste/through lumpy crud?
Who decided this? Just a guess, but people who ski off-piste or through lumpy crud perhaps?
Still sounds like snobbery. |
Yep - to be a great skier you probably need to be able to throw down big airs with grabs, ride rails, stomp cliffs given the wider spectrum of what is skiing.
To be a good skier in a particular area - no
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Poster: A snowHead
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| fatbob wrote: |
| Yep - to be a great skier you probably need to be able to throw down big airs with grabs, ride rails, stomp cliffs given the wider spectrum of what is skiing. |
I threw a tray of food and two cups of coffee over a sleeping sunbather and an Alsatian at a lunch stop once - does that count....it was icy?
I guess I'll just keep skiing to please myself then.....
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brian
brian
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| chrisdavis wrote: |
So, to be a good skier do you have to go off-piste/through lumpy crud?
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No, but you have to be able to.
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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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| brian wrote: |
| chrisdavis wrote: |
So, to be a good skier do you have to go off-piste/through lumpy crud?
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No, but you have to be able to. |
I'm able to.....I just don't enjoy it.
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resorts could leave all their runs unbashed and then get all the business from those that love the bumps.. or go bust..
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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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| chrisdavis wrote: |
So, to be a good skier do you have to go off-piste/through lumpy crud?
Who decided this? Just a guess, but people who ski off-piste or through lumpy crud perhaps?
Still sounds like snobbery. |
No, of course not, but the basic technique off piste is the same as good carved turns on piste. Anyone who skis well on piste is capable of skiing off piste, but you can get away with bad technique on piste because the snow usually allows you to skid around. You often don't know you are doing this till you try other snow.
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| CANV CANVINGTON wrote: |
| resorts could leave all their runs unbashed and then get all the business from those that love the bumps.. or go bust.. |
Well if they did tat and then got the hospitals to pay commission, they wouldn't go bust 
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Jerry, And shouldn't that be the Welch?
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So someone who learnt to drive a car by driving round in a circle is a good driver cos he can drive round round abouts really well.
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Yes, that's a poor analogy. The most technical, rig-twitching, dinghy racing sailors are often those who sail on reservoirs, inland in flukey winds. Hammering round in strong tides, waves and more consistent, often stronger, winds needs a different set of skills. Playing tennis on grass is different from playing on clay.
However, it is true that flat, smooth, pistes enable many skiers to travel at speeds which they lack the skill to control.
I haven't met any good skiers who don't like powder though. Even I like it, though I'm pretty rubbish at it. But powder is not the same thing as yesterday's left over mushy crud frozen hard overnight.
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| snowball wrote: |
| but you can get away with bad technique on piste because the snow usually allows you to skid around. |
That will cover quite a high percentage of piste skiing then
There's a thread running at the mo on Axeheads, where Hank Marvin is quoted as criticising modern guitar strummers as "Muppets, the lot of them....couldn't pick a tune to save their lives".
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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True, but old settled powder, crud or slush or even breakable crust can all be skied with a good carved turn with feet evenly weighted.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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There is also a big difference bteween then and now:
Then most skiers were locals/well -off people that spent a lot of time on the mountains and as such could spend a few tough/boring/painful days learning new things and improving their techniqus.
Nowadays there is a much larger proportion of one-week-a-year (or less) skiers, who see skiing as a once a year activity/bit of fun and understandably don't plan on getting too technical and "waste" a good portion of their holiday suffering physically and mentally trying to progress their technique..
For them groomed piste are better and since they now form the bulk of the income, resorts logically try and cater for them.
This has benefits for the more involved skier too: bigger areas, more hardware development etc...
The real draw back IMV is indeed people now skiing faster than their skills allow...
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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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| stanton wrote: |
| Sideshow_Bob wrote: |
| stanton wrote: |
| Piste skiing creates technically bad skiers who can generally only cope with one type of snow surface/condition. |
I can imagine stanton at a WC race: "Hey, Bode, Herman, Didier, Lyndsay, you're technically bad skiers!" |
These guys were born on skis, they live skiing. They are expert on & off piste & all conditions.
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They ski on pistes. They do the vast majority of their training on pistes. Your statement is that piste skiing creates technically bad skiers. That's demonstrably false, and as per you're talking horsedung. You didn't qualify your statement with "Four or five weekers" or anything else. Try harder next time to actually write what you mean.
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| Sideshow_Bob wrote: |
They ski on pistes. They do the vast majority of their training on pistes. Your statement is that piste skiing creates technically bad skiers. That's demonstrably false, and as per you're talking horsedung. You didn't qualify your statement with "Four or five weekers" or anything else. Try harder next time to actually write what you mean. |
You clearly have no idea.
There is a HUGE difference between professional "Race" Training & Recreational Skiing. Skiing uncompacted snow, crud, bumps, require subtle often critical changes in technique that you cannot learn on groomed slopes.
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You know it makes sense.
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My point is that a combination of piste skiing and off-piste skiing is needed to make one technically superb, and even the best skiers in the world can improve by targeted piste skiing. I don't believe in throwing people off-piste permanently after their fourth or fifth week as a way of seriously developing their skiing. I also see (and often hear about) numerous skiers who think themselves 'above' piste skiing and consider themselves great skiers as they can get down some cruddy crapped out off-piste slope without falling but their technique is fundamentally flawed and they'd do far better doing more work on-piste on their posture, carving etc. You need to develop good technical abilities on-piste first before concentrating on off-piste skiing otherwise you develop bad habits as coping mechanisms (ie sitting back in powder/soft stuff). Learn and perfect the fundamentals on-piste and then adapt to off-piste conditions.
You clearly have no idea yourself if you believe properly focused piste skiing cannot develop technically superb skiers. It does and demonstrably has done. Go crawl back under your rock.
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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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I have seen the race stars at Kitzbuhel after the race, skiing the off-piste for fun - wow what style (though much of it they just took straight).
But yes, you need to learn the moves first on piste.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Sideshow_Bob, I agree, and well said.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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My wintersports insurance doesn't cover off-piste.
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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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| chrisdavis wrote: |
| My wintersports insurance doesn't cover off-piste. |
I think this has quite a bit to do with things. UK skiers are repeatedly warned by their insurance companies/piste maps/signs in resort/instructors that if they go even a metre outside the piste markers they're guaranteed to fall over and horribly maim themselves and no-one will come rescue them or cover the medical expenses so they'll be stuck on the mountainside until the marmots come and strip the flesh from their bones.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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I should have said that a stop-watch will also demonstrate your deficiencies, in a different way.
Clearly nobody is morally required to ski off piste but as an old, 80-week skier, rather than the 4 or 5 week skier mentioned above, I find off piste just much more fun.
Personally I'm for the most choice possible.
Last edited by You need to Login to know who's really who. on Fri 5-12-08 19:49; edited 2 times in total
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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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| chrisdavis wrote: |
| My wintersports insurance doesn't cover off-piste. |
That is unusual.
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| sonny bono wrote: |
| I find off piste just much more fun. |
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alex_heney, hmm, my recollection is that when I was still buying wintersports insurance it only covered off-piste if at all while one had a suitably qualified guide.
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| under a new name wrote: |
| alex_heney, hmm, my recollection is that when I was still buying wintersports insurance it only covered off-piste if at all while one had a suitably qualified guide. |
That is still quite common, yes.
But you don't find many policies nowadays that don't cover it at all.
And quite a lot don't have any requirement for a guide.
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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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Personally, as a very average skier, I thought the piste grooming in Kitz was excellent. Somehow they even managed to keep a couple of the runs to resort open even though there was no snow at that level, admittedly it was that mushy artificial stuff...
I've never been off-piste. Lack of insurance and skill puts me right off. For people like me, piste groomers definitely earn the cost of the lift pass...
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