 Poster: A snowHead
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| Megamum wrote: |
| A sideslip is one of the best things I've learned. If I hit a bit of boilerplate on a scraped red at least I now have a solution. |
Once you've mastered your side-slipping, try to learn to do it during a high-speed schuss without actually stopping: a bit like a hockey stop but sloppier and without actually coming to a halt. The trick is to turn your skis across your path but to adjust the the fore/aft balance so that you don't start traversing but simply keep going in a straight line and scrub off a huge amount of speed.
It's a massively confidence-boosting trick, as it means you know you can always keep your speed under control no matter how narrow or polished the run is, and it helps avoid the nervous can-I-manage-this pause at the top of a narrow or awkard run. It's also a huge confidence boost in the flat light conditions that terrify you: being able to scrub off speed without changing course means you're less frightened of the invisible stuff hidden in the mist, and it means that you don't have to go near the precipice just to put a turn in.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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slushy, that story sends shivers down my spine. It was extremely inconsiderate of you to post it!
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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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Being really, really lost and running out of time.
This happened in Austria - we went of through the trees with a friend who assured us that he knew where he was going. He did not. After gullies involving falling trees, deserted powder bowls and other off-piste goodness, we were so lost that I was seriously wondering if we would somehow be sleeping out on the mountain that night. In the end, we forded a small river and found a road, and walked through the dark, for acouple of miles, before finding a village (and thus our location) and phoning a taxi.
All the way through this run, our fearless leader had completely lost his confidence, and man number 3 (who should never have been with us) was actually panicking - a couloir that required jump turns and slowness due to a huge fallen tree at the end of it was the final straw. I had to take him down in, skis off, boots dug in, thinking he was going to fall and die (as did he). At one place, there was a ledge with nowhere to go except a cornice and big drop-off, no way of telling what the landing would be like, at 5.00pm with the light going. That's not anywhere I ever want to be again.
Getting lost in the backcountry. It's not big, it's not clever, and it's potentially horribly dangerous (there were some very large drops which, had the light been worse and we less careful/scared, could have caught us).
Next time I want a GPS, map, and guide. Not some half mad Swissman who thinks he's invincible.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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slushy, Harry Flashman
Oops.....loving these, 'we so very nearly c-o-cked it up' stories - it puts off piste in a completely different light!
Last edited by You need to Login to know who's really who. on Tue 3-04-12 15:39; edited 1 time 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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slushy, your story made my palms sweat. I think at that point I would have called the ski patrol and paid however many thousands it would have cost to winch me off the mountain! (Then worried about re-mortgaging the house later). Horrible.
Did you find the photo?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Jonny Jones, that's an interesting sounding trick - I can visualise that and its certainly something I can practise doing 
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Petrify? Probably some super steep bootpacks or ridges where one slip would send you down hundreds of feet. Dropping into something steep and realising it is breakable crust liable to trip you at any second.
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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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| mr black wrote: |
Elston, hear that.
Gapers that cut in on the kickers and then drop, well fall, off the kicker thus nicely ruining the lip. |
I seriously read that as "Knickers"
Puts a whole different slant on that post
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I was skiing alone in tignes one year, at 4 pm time to start returning home, I came around the mountain and complete dense fog! I could see NOTHING. And seemed to be getting darker by the minute (it was january). I nearly panicked, but skiied a bit, and then thought I heard voices, I approached and there was a group of people. French people with an instructor / guide.
As I approached the instructor seemed to look in my direction, and I heard him say "deux, quartre, six, huit.. Alors- on y va!"
I did not ask questions but stayed so close on the tail of the skiier in front of me...
I hope the 8th French person got down alright...
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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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patricksh, That sounds a lucky break. I'm not sure how it would be responded to if the instructor/guide caught anyone tagging along, but I think I'd have done the same thing. There just seems greater safety in numbers in some situations and a group of people is certainly easier to follow. I would hope that, if conditions were getting dire, any group on the mountain would have a bit of leniency to anyone that was obviously struggling and had decided to tag onto the end of their 'train' of skiers, providing that they weren't interfering with what was going on lesson wise.
With the experience of a good few weeks now I am certainly of the opinion that the mountain can 'bite' even at the level I ski at (let alone the off-piste enthusiasts). The wrong weather in particular (and sometimes the wrong surface) can turn even the most innocuous slope in to something demanding a good deal of 'respect' - the easiest blue path on a bluebird day can become a nightmare scenario when you can't tell if you are moving or standing still. Not to take the mountain for granted is something I try to instill in the kids at every opportunity.
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Seeing other people in trouble does my head in.
I saw the results of an accident on the Sella Ronda earlier this year with a small group tending to one of their number by appying a tourniquet to his leg. There seemed to be a fair bit of claret around. It wasn't a difficult slope, it wasn't difficult conditions. I don't know what had happened and I hope that help got to them quickly (one of the group was on a phone, my group notified both a nearby instructor and the next liftie we saw). I skiied with a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach for the rest of the day.
Also seeing other skiiers struggling to cope. Particularly when I think/know that they are better than I am.
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You know it makes sense.
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In flat light or white out conditions, I commonly get steamed up goggles. These factors tend to make my skiing very erratic, and will often result in balance problems where I thought the ground was beneath my skis, but in fact it was somewhere else.
Accidents happen in such conditions, and I generally stop skiing then and have a cup of coffee.
The only other conditions which really scare me, are steep narrow icy routes. The ones where you cannot stop on the ice. Add in rocks, and too many skiers, and you have a recipie for a multiple pile up with several ACL sprains.
I have not yet found anything that really helps in white out conditions to see. I have considered getting night vision goggles, or some other thermal related goggles instead of any other goggles, as none of them help.
Anyone ever tried night vision goggles in white out conditions?
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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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| Quote: |
I'm not sure how it would be responded to if the instructor/guide caught anyone tagging along,
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Megamum, a little bit of a different scenario - but in Val T with UCPA our group was spending thew week off piste. We came to the end of a long traverse and stopped to let everyone gather, and some random french guy on his own had seen us leave the piste and tagged along! Cue lots of shouting in French at the guy with our instructor telling him how irresponsible he was being on his own, without a guide, without avi kit etc etc and that he couldn't tag along. Instructor told him how to get back to the piste (you couldn't see it), warned him not to follow us and we sat still until the guy was well on his way back to the piste.
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Poster: A snowHead
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I'm prepared to be wrong on this but I doubt night vision goggles or IR gear would help in whiteout conditions or flat light. Both work the same way as your eyes just either at a more sensitive level or in a different wavelength. An absence of light isn't the problem so night vision would be no help, and infra red would be scattered just as badly as visible light, so IR gear wouldn't help either. Add in the relatively low resolution of these devices, and that most of them don't present a 3D image and you're probably better off with your own eyes after all...
Nice idea though.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Badly shop serviced ski's on a piste day.
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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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Proper hard, big sastrugi.
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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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meh,
I bet that bought on an outbreak of googling!
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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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musher, haha, it's dirty, dirty stuff.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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sastruga, sastrugi ..............
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moffatross, I always compare any challenging situation when skiing to Scotland. I commented to a lifty in Tahoe after negotiating a few stream sinkholes, teetering on a rock mid stream and skiing through a few low bushes that it was a good job I'd grown up skiing in Scotland.
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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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Richard_Sideways, I've often wondered about a goggle system which projected a few red laser lines foward onto the piste - a bit like a 'line' version of a laser dot used for presenting powerpoint slides. I have a laser spirit level which projects a similar shape.
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Simply make a variety of clicking sounds as you ski along, and use echolocation.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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moffatross, you should write the copy for the Scottish Tourism Board "Ski Scotland! It's a frozen hellscape!"
Megamum, for something about the size of a big biro, you can have just that. Projects hundreds of green dots out several hundred feet in a grid. $50 to 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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Forums full of experts.
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Richard_Sideways, I bet it would work too - where can I get one to try?  I wonder if it would penetrate precipitation or get hung up on fog and draw lines 'in the air' as they hit the ground.
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You know it makes sense.
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| homers double wrote: |
| Forums full of experts. |
Not EVERYONE on TGR is an aggressive ex-racer...
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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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Crap (most) Brit Snowboarders. 
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Poster: A snowHead
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| sev112 wrote: |
| mr black wrote: |
Elston, hear that.
Gapers that cut in on the kickers and then drop, well fall, off the kicker thus nicely ruining the lip. |
I seriously read that as "Knickers"
Puts a whole different slant on that post |
ha ha, well you don't want to fall off knickers or ruin any lips. The best approach for black knickers is to tuck hard, enter with speed, pop, add a grab and then land smoothly and ride away the hero. If you are feeling especially hardcore, enter backwards and throw in a rotation.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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a couple of years ago skiing in les duex alpes we were coming down a wide blue run, nice and easy when suddenly a bank of fog came in, could only see about six foot ahead of each other, had to call out to find each other and then gingerly ski over and as a group try to find the way down (yes its obviously down, but we couldn't see any piste markers or anything - anyway, about halfway down some idots came flying down laughing and screaming and going way too fast for the conditions, lucky they missed me and me missus but one bounced off me mate, who was a rugby prop and built like a brick outhouse, and lay winded and shiocked on the piste - it could have been a lot worse - after telling him in no uncertain terms how stupid and uncaring he was we made sure he was ok and then carried on down the slope until we were out of the mist - so its idiots that scare me more than anything else
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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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Traversing along at the end of the day in totally flat light when I had a funny floating feeling for a second before I slammed against the far wall of a steep gully. Result, two bent skis, broken goggles, concussion and headache for three days, bruised chest (lovely rectangular shape where radio impacted) and total disorientation. No idea which way was up or down. After a while I realized I could hear a lift running and made my shaky way down. Lucky no cliffs were involved. Funny thing is I don't like skiing in poor visibility these days. 
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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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| Megamum wrote: |
| Richard_Sideways, I bet it would work too - where can I get one to try? I wonder if it would penetrate precipitation or get hung up on fog and draw lines 'in the air' as they hit the ground. |
Would without a doubt would get diffused - but would provide one helluva light show! Everyone behind you on the mountain would think Jean Michel Jarre was out on the mountain that day.
Available from interwebs...
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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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Richard_Sideways, 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Sarge McSarge, ouch!
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Attempted to ski inlow cloud or fog or whatever it was. I couldn't work out if I was going forwards, backwards, uphill, downhill or even moving at all. Horrible. Felt sick. Partially from worry but mainly a physical disorientation. Does that count as 'doing your head in'?
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Sometimes, if I've had a few pints the night before, I get a really weird attack of vertigo on the top of ridges. It's freaked me out a couple of times before now.
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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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Chechnyans
SKGB
But maybe not in that partiiicular order
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What freaks me out? Little kids - I mean little, maybe 3 or 4, who you don't know, don't even know what language they understand, but are expected to look after on the ski lift when it seems they might submarine out and fall off at any moment. The ones who fidget are the worst. It makes me go all queasy just thinking about it.
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