Dec 5, 20242 min read

Season Diary - Day 3

Updated: Dec 19, 2024

Thursday December 5, 2024

A short one today, as after our first full ski day this season I am perhaps slightly tired. I also promised not to do any work today, so whilst I do this for the love of the thing I should still honour that promise ... somehow.

But what a day we had. Another day spent working on our technique in all kinds of terrain, from powder to chopped crud to perfect pistes to ice.

We started with a bit of carving. Rocking the skis onto their edges and pushing the middle out the back of the camber allows the skis to ride their radii and come pulling round up the hill, creating an amazing high speed turn. A couple of feedback points from the instructor had me focusing on slowing down the beginning of my turn and squeezing gently through the front of the boot into the ski, not flipping them over as quickly as I could.

We then moved off piste, working on turning slowly and steadily in off piste terrain. Another note from the instructor, preceded by the very worthwhile note that skiing on-piste and skiing off-piste are so different they should almost be considered different sports.

This time, I was to spread my legs, particularly my thighs. By doing so, my legs could act independently but importantly working to do the same thing rather than the uphill leg getting in the of the downhill leg. This was a miracle cure. Suddenly I could ski in a controlled manner across a wide variety of mixed off piste terrain, staying low, forward and in the middle of the ski at all times.

Finally, back to on-piste, using slippery, icy, hardpacked pistes to practice what was essentially side slipping. The kicker was to work on upper body angle, pointing it down the hill at the same angle matched by your ski tips, knees, and hips as your uphill ski is naturally pushed slightly further ahead of your downhill ski.

This was tricky. I had struggled with hardpack pistes all week to date, so I wasn't best pleased to be forced onto them. Slowly slowly, however, I came round to the idea and worked hard to achieve this. Upper body separation was one of the key things taught when I did my instructors course, but a decade later and it needed some polishing up. And polishing up we did. By the end of the day I wasn't perfect but I had definitely made progress.

Piece-by-piece, my skiing is being pushed harder and harder this week. And with eight more days to go, there promises to be a lot more to come.