 Poster: A snowHead
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Wear The Fox Hat, now we get down to it. A turn is to change direction. Once you are pointing in the direction you want to go you have completed the turn - end of. Anything beyond this is window dressing.
If you now want to slow down then you want to brake. You may be able to achieve this by turning up hill, if you have the width available - but this is not the principal point of a turn. You will however always be able to brake by sliding (assuming you're not in a couloir < 2m wide, and given pretty much any steepness of slope the majority of us will be skiing) and applying enough edge to achieve the desired braking effect.
(I'm sure I remember a thread on epic where some intructor type was making just this point)
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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: |
| Wear The Fox Hat, now we get down to it. A turn is to change direction. Once you are pointing in the direction you want to go you have completed the turn - end of. |
Totally true, but it is NOT just a turn "end of" if you come out of it at a different speed than you went in. Then an element of acceleration or deceleration has been added in, it is no longer just a change in direction, but one of speed too!
So, if you want to change direction, but maintain speed, then the turn isn't complete until both things have been achieved.
What I mean is, if someone says to me they don't like turning in a particular style, because they end up going too fast, then that means that they want to control their speed as well as their direction in a turn, but with their current method of turning, they are not controlling their speed.
Does this make sense?
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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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Wear The Fox Hat, perfect sense, except for the disconnect between your diagnosis and solution. The whole point of a carving turn is that it's in essence a racing turn - developed precisely to achieve a change of direction with the minimum loss of speed. If this is not what you want, then you shouldn't be doing a carved turn. You should be doing a braking turn instead.
PS If the carved turn is the only one in your repertoire, you're restricting yourself massively. Even in a race scenario there are times when you may need to scrub off speed just to get around the course.
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| GrahamN wrote: |
| The whole point of a carving turn is ... to achieve a change of direction with the minimum loss of speed. |
Yes! But the problems you read are from people saying they are picking up too much speed, so they are no longer in control of their speed. When a racer carves a turn, he may want more speed, but will also be in control of it.
| GrahamN wrote: |
| If the carved turn is the only one in your repertoire, you're restricting yourself massively. Even in a race scenario there are times when you may need to scrub off speed just to get around the course. |
Again, I agree, it should be one of the many turns in your bag of tricks, and people should know how to use it, and others properly. People are taught how to skid and brake, and combine those with a turn in a controlled way, so why should they not also be taught how to control speed while carving?
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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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Let me put another thought on it:
When snowploughing, or skidding a turn, you can be facing diagonally down the fall line (or in a wedge: straight down it) and come to a complete halt, or at least slow down, so if someone is used to starting a new turn from a position of still partly pointing down the fall line from the previous turn, and then they try that when carving, they will find they go a lot faster.
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....which gets us back to my original point, which is that you are then getting away from the whole purpose of the carving turn, which is to come out of it as fast as you can!
If you want to put all that effort into destroying what you've just worked so hard to achieve then fine, but I prefer to take the easier route!
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GrahamN, there's also a heck of a lot of fun in carving turns!
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spyderjon, "To complete the turn/take off speed often means going back uphill when your really hooning it".
Not sure of your, or indeed my, idea of a completed turn. My view (before I thought twice) was that you're complete once your skis are parallel to the hill. Open to discussion!
But, I must admit that I don't think I've ever gone, or needed to go uphill to lose speed. Either I'm hooning it in control or some hill frog has swerved right in front of me in which case I am still in control but flaps out, airbrakes on, sliding sideways and following FIS responsibility rules to avoid any unnecessary use of babywipes.
Never knowingly uphilled, me.
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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, shouldn't a properly turned ski should put you in control - and shouldn't skill should allow you to properly carve a turn that loses speed, maintains speed or kicks you right out at warp factor FO into the next turn?? Turn radius and traverse length doing all the work?
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GrahamN,
I agree that the whole point of a carved turn is to maintain speed. If you use the whole hill to control the speed then that might amuse you for 5 mins..!! I prefer fall line mostly and I don't want loads there so I will clip the turn to scrub speed in all probabilty. But all these things aside I still don't see many people doing it. It is a very rare thing to see a skier really laying down great tracks carving IMO
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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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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| Wear The Fox Hat wrote: |
So, if you want to change direction, but maintain speed, then the turn isn't complete until both things have been achieved.
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I think this is the crucial thing. When skiers pick up too much speed they are often told that it is because they have failed to complete the turn, so that if they continue to turn so across the hill they lose enough speed to once again feel in control. When carving on a steep slope it is not at all uncommon to pick up enough speed to find oneself across the hill, having ostensibly 'completed the turn' but still with more speed on than comfortable. This is where carving uphill, if you prefer 'over-completing the turn' comes into it. But why bother, why not just skid and scrub it off a bit? Just 'cos carving is fun and in this situation actually involves less energy expended than skidding off the speed. I do think most of the reason I like to carve is exactly that it is relatively effortless - you're just riding your skis using gravity to propel and weight to steer.
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You know it makes sense.
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| slikedges wrote: |
| ......I do think most of the reason I like to carve is exactly that it is relatively effortless - you're just riding your skis using gravity to propel and weight to steer. |
Ditto 
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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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| spyderjon wrote: |
| slikedges wrote: |
| ......I do think most of the reason I like to carve is exactly that it is relatively effortless - you're just riding your skis using gravity to propel and weight to steer. |
Ditto |
Totally! It's so quiet, effortless and fun.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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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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| slikedges wrote: |
| ...When carving on a steep slope it is not at all uncommon to pick up enough speed to find oneself across the hill, having ostensibly 'completed the turn' but still with more speed on than comfortable. This is where carving uphill, if you prefer 'over-completing the turn' comes into it. But why bother, why not just skid and scrub it off a bit?... |
IMHO, one of the main reasons to have strong carving skills is that when the snow is anything other than a ballroom-smooth groomed surface, skis work MUCH better when they are pointed in the direction they are traveling (ie, carving) compared to when they are making even a small angle with the direction of travel. For example, even skiing something as nice as beautiful new untracked powder can be difficult unless you carve your turns. Skiing tracked-up, deep, heavy, wet crud or frozen coral reef at any reasonable speed is essentially impossible (IMHO) unless you carve your turns. If you don't believe this, just try doing a hockey stop the next time you find yourself in 12 inches of new wet snow. It can be done, but I want to be there with a camera when you try. 
In addition, if you don't have good carving skills well honed and immediately at hand when you encounter such conditions, your enjoyment factor goes way down and your tiredness factor goes way up.
Just my $0.02,
Tom / PM
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So in summary 1) Carved turns are a good thing, some of the time. 2) Finished turns, are a good thing, all of the time 
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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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I now snowboard, and would say that I am able (I think) to carve basically the entire turn, but I rarely do, since as stated this causes you to pick up lots of speed, and is only really practical on wide, smooth blues. I very rarely carve uphill to scrub off speed. With that being said, I think every turn I make involves at least some carving.
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| GrahamN wrote: |
The point of a ski edge is to be pretty low friction, so there won't be much of that. Hence, if you are trying to control speed just by turning uphill, and you've carved the turn properly you may well end up pretty much back where you started!
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 er... what about gravity?
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| Quote: |
Skiing tracked-up, deep, heavy, wet crud or frozen coral reef at any reasonable speed is essentially impossible (IMHO) unless you carve your turns.
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I am a weak skier, but last Easter we came accross soft conditions as above. I was advised to let the skis run and just carve my turns and avoid skidding wherever possible. This transformed the holiday into a hugely enjoyable experience and kept falls to an absolute minimum. it was one of the single most important bits of advice I have ever received. The only downside that i could see was that if everyone did this then the piste would be full of skiers doing big, arcing, speedy turns. it does require great awareness of what is going on around you. On the days where conditions were good I did lapse back into a more skidding technique, but the variation again added to the experience.
In answer to the thread question - Yes I do, but only when its cruddy.
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Talk about obsessing....!!!
I am as bored reading all this as I would be cruising, sorry, carving blues!
If you are having fun then who cares, but I've said it once, twice or whatever and I'll say it again, I don't see too many people doing it. I see a lot of people think they are doing it. But it's just a means of getting down the hill and if the turn you use is the turn you meant to use then thats good enough..!!
I think we have established the fact that we all think we can ski...!!
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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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JT, the thread was about carving, I think that's why a few of us were talking about it!
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| Quote: |
I am as bored reading all this as I would be cruising, sorry, carving blues!
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JT, You need some boredom therapy I think I can safely say that everyone on SnowHeads, bar you, would far rather be skiing a green run than reading this.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Frosty the Snowman,
All joking aside, I sometimes feel I am quite jaded about skiing...!! I really do get bored sometimes..!!
Quite worrying...!!
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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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stone him he said jehovah
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JT, carving isn't compulsory and in my book isn't desirable all the time. If you enjoy it, you try to do it. But how well can you really do it? That's all that's really being discussed here. I think that any other merits aside, it's just fun, it appeals to my minimalist side and feels almost like flying (not claiming I can actually do that ).
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You know it makes sense.
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| JT wrote: |
| I'll say it again, I don't see too many people doing it. I see a lot of people think they are doing it. |
I agree with this. It sort of reinforces a point I made earlier about what I thought I was doing with my skiing 5 or 10 years ago. And possibly what I think now 
The revolution in ski design is often credited with heralding a new era where everyone is carving much more easily. I'm not convinced it's happened yet. Possibly it's taken ski schools a little while to evolve their methods. Or more likely most people on the slopes haven't even had lessons in recent years.
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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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Its ok, I'm just working on my post count..!!
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Poster: A snowHead
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alan empty, as mentioned in another thread somewhere, IMHO all that's really happened is that your average skier has now gone from having trouble initiating turns then finishing them to just having trouble finishing them. A shift in emphasis not a complete cure.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| alan empty wrote: |
| Or more likely most people on the slopes haven't even had lessons in recent years. |
Since the mid 90s, when I was starting to sell modern shaped skis to people who had been used to straight skis, I would always try to emphasise that they should have at least a couple of days group lessons or a half day private to start to learn how to use the new skis more efficiently.
I know a few listened to me, and would come back to the shop to thank me.
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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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| slikedges wrote: |
Some seem to have been made in considering a pure carved turn. In absolute physical turns I don't think they happen very often, even for pro-skiers. For most, if your tracks look like you've carved, you've carved, but you can bet there was a measurable element of skid too.  |
But the question at the beginning of this thread is "Do you carve? Truly?". So what I said was answering the question, and applies to true, pure carving. If there is any plume of the tail of your ski at any point in the turn then at that point you are not carving it, even if your tracks are reasonably clear.
I don't dislike carving, but just treat it as one technique in the quiver to be used when, and only when, appropriate. When going down a slope I may make a few carved turns, although I'm pretty sure I scrub off speed at the end of most of those turns. After 1-200m of this I'll normally get bored and look for something more interesting to ski, either head for some bumpy bits on the piste, start shooting the crud at the edge, or put together series of swings as short as I can. I certainly wouldn't want to try carving more than a couple of pitches of Pic Janvier - a) too dangerous, b) more interesting ways to do it.
Arno, gravity....yes gives you the energy to gain speed up by height loss, and lose it in equal measure by height gain. Not sure of your point here.
In the absence of running friction, if you're truly carving you'd be going just as fast at the bottom of a carved pitch as if you'd straight-lined it, whether you'd been "completing" turns back to traverse the fall line or not. Now of course that's an unrealistic "if", and to cover it properly we'd get into an Epic-style nerd-thread, but it gets a better approximation the stteper and smoother the piste. The effort you put in to making a carved turn is force perpendicular to the direction of travel, so will have no effect on your speed (only your direction) if you are carving (i.e. your skis are not moving sideways).
Physicsman, FTS agreed about carving the crud at speed, although judicial heel-jumps work fairly well too. Here of course the process of deforming the snow as you cut through it causes hugely greater fricitional energy losses and speed control is much easier.
JT, alan empty agreed.
The main thrust of my argument in this thread is to try and counterbalance the apparrent obsession here with carving to the near exclusion of all else.
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Sorry - that reference to Pic Janvier seems to have crept in from another thread 
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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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GrahamN, "apparrent obsession here with carving to the near exclusion of all else" - I think that's just an appearance. I certainly didn't initiate the thread to suggest that that should be the case, although I have a slight old skool bias from the days when being able to ski a carved turn was on zenith out of many skills... whereas now it's just a question of tipping (apparently).
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GrahamN,
Makes perfect sense to me, look forward to meeting you at the PSB
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| GrahamN wrote: |
| The main thrust of my argument in this thread is to try and counterbalance the apparrent obsession here with carving to the near exclusion of all else. |
What? Have the moderators closed down the jump turns thread?
Perhaps you should start threads on other turn types!
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JT, likewise. We clearly have a very similar approach to skiing (although you should be a lot better than me). I think we'll find significantly less agreement on matters political - so maybe it'd be best to steer clear of those (for at least some of the time )!
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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, you are right of course (now I've screwed my head on). however, try carving through 360 degrees and you will see that friction is a considerable factor
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GrahamN,
And Rugby..??
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FAQ
