Tips for dense snow

[LiquidFeet]

....
@LiquidFeet I've had a lot of success with the new inside foot pull back in more forgiving conditions. That, a narrower stance and keeping my hands where I can see them has really improved all aspects of my game. I've struggled mightily to get where I'm at and I'm stoked to be finally improving. A bit of a thread drift: but tell me about pulling both feet back vs just the new inside foot. Earlier I was playing around on some low angle baby moguls and tried tucking both feet under my hips to keep constant pressure on my boot cuffs. It helped keep my skis together and gave me a quicker edge to edge ability. It was fun too, I liked it so much that I've probably misapplied it. Every tool has a purpose (but you can still drive a nail with a pair of vise grips).

You say you were "tucking both feet under your hips to keep constant pressure on your boot cuffs." That is wonderful. Do that. Keep your feet under you. There are exceptions, but now, go for "constantly." This is a matter of balancing CoM over BoS. "Keep your feet under you" sounds so much better, don't you think?

The foot pull-back is a shifting movement, inside-foot to inside-foot with each new turn. It's different from what one does to stay balanced. When combined with tipping the new inside foot to the LTE and rolling the new inside knee into the turn, it's part of the turning mechanism.

 

[Rod9301]

Bounce, like Deb.




There is always a lot of diverse advice given, which some like to portray as good/bad, right/wrong depending on their perspective. It’s a shame that you can’t see the virtue in advice from someone as highly credentialed and successful as like Deb Armstrong. If you are going to challenge an Icon, I think it’s fair to back it up.

Instead of just criticizing, why don’t you explain why you feel this way about the technique and describe a valid alternative. I’ve seen you give good advice before. Bear in mind that this was most likely an intermediate level inquiry.

Bouncing is like unweighing, you lose ski pressure in the first half of the turn, and it takes more energy.

I ski powder, light or heavy, the way I do everything else, flex to release, and tip the inside ski.

 

[François Pugh]

The bouncing lets you bring your short radius turn to the powder. For carving arc-2-arc it's not required, though it still can be fun with the right timing. Add up unweighting (lift your feet up as you go into transition) and it's even more fun. It's all in the timing. You are re-applying downwards pressure right after transition and maximizing it at the apex. Remember, just because you're unweighted, doesn't mean you have to pivot or smear.

More than one way to skin a cat. It's all good.

 

[MarkP]

Oops, wrong camera. That was the other direction. Here is the direction I should have used. An hour and a half later. It's clearing! I see people.
View attachment 38745

The snow ghosts are the most memorable things from my one time (so far) at Whitefish.

 

[Rod9301]

The bouncing lets you bring your short radius turn to the powder. For carving arc-2-arc it's not required, though it still can be fun with the right timing. Add up unweighting (lift your feet up as you go into transition) and it's even more fun. It's all in the timing. You are re-applying downwards pressure right after transition and maximizing it at the apex. Remember, just because you're unweighted, doesn't mean you have to pivot or smear.

More than one way to skin a cat. It's all good.

You can make really short turns in powder if you really pull the feet back to pressure the ski tips And really too the skis to get high edge angle. No need to bounce up and down.

 

[Fuller]

Lets keep in mind we are talking about heavy snow here so "powder" technique may not apply. I guess that's a relative term, PNW skiers may scoff at what other people would characterize as "heavy" I've watched the Deb Armstrong video (and just about everything on the internet it seems) and applied the bouncing to genuine powder (we do get some) with some early success. I very much get what she's talking about.

Very light snow allows some tail smearing which is easy for me to do so I tend to rely on it too much. Very light, very deep snow makes the tails follow the tips, no smearing allowed. The denser the snow the less volume you can displace by smearing and the more you need to rely on setting an edge and following through.

So to take what I've learned from y'all as well as my own experience:

1) Choose the right equipment.
2) Initiate turns by pulling and tipping inside foot back.
3) Keep a flexed, narrow stance.
4) Regular pole plant techniques are important.
5) Keep your "landing gear" flexible and with lots of travel.
6) Minimal shopping for turns. (skiing with intention)
7) keep yer smokes dry...

Did I miss anything? How about relative weight distribution? If real powder is closer to 50/50 and carving hardpack in 90/10 where does mashed potatoes fall in the spectrum?

 

[Scruffy]

.... I did try the arc to arc, no skid turns and had some success with that until the speed would accumulate and I would bail out. The poor visibility kept drawing me back to the tree line and the left overs which took me back to short radius skidded turns. That's my comfort level at this point so I guess I have to have more faith in a different approach. I can see the advantage to having both skis on edge cutting through the glop with the turn radius dictating the speed. Good advice.
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I think the keys are in your post here ^ .

1) The visibility issue aside, if your arc-2-arcs are gaining you too much speed, your not controlling your speed with line, your turns are too shallow and not round enough.

2) If you're short turns are skidded, you're going to be a hot mess in crud or chopped up powder ( chowder ).

3) Make it your mission to learn linked carved, rounded, short turns. Work on them as if your skiing life depended on it. Practice all the time, everywhere and anywhere.
@LiquidFeet gave you some good advice to using the inside foot to help initiate those short turns.

4) To ski crud stay balanced fore and aft on your skis throughout the turn. That doesn't mean static, you need a dynamic turn. If you're COM is too far fore or aft in any part of the turn you'll be bucked.

5) When skiing your typical everyday conditions that you feel comfortable in, take yourself out of your are comfort zone for a turn or two. For example: if your're most comfortable on groomed snow, there's always some chopped up chunk just of the edge of the groomed. At first, Strategically head into that chopped up crud for a turn. What I mean by strategically, is: see if you can dip in and then out again so that you finish your turn back on the groomed. This allows you to feel the bucking sensation for a bit but then use your comfort zone goto turn to finish and slow your speed. The more you do this then more comfortable you'll become with staying balanced in rough crud conditions. As you become more skilled, stay in the chopped up rough snow for several turns. The more you play in it the better you'll become. This advice helped me a lot, years ago, when I was first leaning to ski. I was telemark skiing back then and was skiing on piste to learn how to tele ski, so that I could ski off piste, backcountry. Once I had gotten to be proficient on tele skis on groomed snow, I then ventured off piste only to flail around and crash and burn if the snow was anything but silky powder. I picked up a book from Paul Paker, titled: Free Heel Skiing. Somewhere within the book, Paul mentions the problem of transitioning from a groomed run skier to an off piste skier and he advised playing in those rough spots just off the groomed while skiing on piste.

Hope this helps.

 

[Posaune]

I ski a lot of the type of snow under discussion. My main tool is to charge it hard. Don't wait for it to come to you, go out and get it!

 

[Dave Marshak]

All advice about specific movements and body parts is only useful if it’s from a coach who knows how you ski and is addressing a particular issue. What if you are in perfect balance and you pull your feet back? That will only put you out of balance.

This is the best advice I ever got for wet and heavy snow: keep your feet turning all the time. I think it works because you have to be in balance to turn your feet, and because it distracts you from bad advice that might put you out of balance. You really can’t be more special than that unless you’ve seen the person ski.

dm

 

[Sibhusky]

@Fuller if we ever see the sun again, we'll need to set aside a video day. Looking ahead, that's a big IF. (I wish that lake would freeze!)

 

[slowrider]

Typical powder turns. Round turns, light transitions, pole plants.

 

[Fuller]

I ski a lot of the type of snow under discussion. My main tool is to charge it hard. Don't wait for it to come to you, go out and get it!

I like this advice, I generally like to operate at the peak of my skill level - sometimes at the expense of actually "owning" a particular skill. In other words, flailing down the mountain I can live with. But I am learning to go back to the lower mountain and practice, it's therapeutic in a way, just like tuning. Truth is, you need to do both, push your limit and then back off to reassess.

When I mentioned PNW skiers above I was thinking of you. You guys must have these conditions wired!

 

[Doby Man]

Crud is one specific terrain type that does not need much of that specific terrain for developing a tactical skill for it such as, perhaps, powder and moguls. All the best recommendations there are for skiing high viscosity crud are going to be pretty much the same recommendations for a well carved turn: Clean skis - equal tipping, high tipping, constant tipping (always turning), always parallel, no tip lead, shovel pressure in turn entry (early bend) and hooking up the inside ski while maintain outside ski dominance. If you can make your skis do that, whatever your body is doing to produce these super fine results will look beautiful! More importantly, you will be the one in control and calling the shots. Usually, when it is too steep to rail turns like that, we have more downward gravity with which to push the heavy slop around and better complimented by a more conventional technique using more vertical motion and twisting of the subsequently unweighted skis in transition. When the ski is not discussed in the development process, it is an equivalent to teaching someone everything they would need to know in order to operate a car except for what to do with the steering wheel.

 

[Fuller]

All advice about specific movements and body parts is only useful if it’s from a coach who knows how you ski and is addressing a particular issue. What if you are in perfect balance and you pull your feet back? That will only put you out of balance.

This is the best advice I ever got for wet and heavy snow: keep your feet turning all the time. I think it works because you have to be in balance to turn your feet, and because it distracts you from bad advice that might put you out of balance. You really can’t be more special than that unless you’ve seen the person ski.

dm

Agreed with all points - but it's safe to say that LiquidFeet has me pegged, it doesn't take much to put an intermediate skier in the back seat. I find myself stopping quite often, not because I'm tired but I need to reset my brain to get back in rhythm. I'll remember 3 things and forget the 4th and 5th. Sometimes it all comes together for a bit and the rush keeps me going. Late learners are a hard case...

 

[Fishbowl]

Bouncing is like unweighing, you lose ski pressure in the first half of the turn, and it takes more energy.

I ski powder, light or heavy, the way I do everything else, flex to release, and tip the inside ski.

Yes, but that is not the perspective the OP has. He is basically stuck in less than a foot of heavy powder, sitting back on his heels, going no where for fear of nose diving. I presume he is also feeling the weight of the snow pulling the tips of his skis and feels any speed will leave him out of control. You are describing an advanced technique that works for you with your experience in differing weights and depths of snow.. The advice is redundant for someone who can't even get moving.

From the perspective of an intermediate, bouncing in powder can achieve the following benefits. Please note that we are NOT talking about some huge unweighting move, but a small, rhythmic motion:

• It gets your skis unstuck and allows then to start moving forwards
• It centers your balance
• It allows you to feel how your skis compress powder
• It allows you to feel how your skis can rise out of powder
• It relaxes your body and allows for a good posrure
• It makes it easier to start to turn

Once someone is moving through powder, turning, relaxed and enjoying the experience, then we cab start to advance the techniques.

 

[Fuller]

Thanks for all the replies, I will try out the unweighting as well as the power carving and report back. I had to laugh at Doby Man's comment - I knew it was going to come back to basics, it always does. I was hoping for a magic bullet but now I'll just have to work harder at the fundamentals - it's all good though. More snow on the way tomorrow, colder temps and dryer snow to bolster my confidence. Couln't ask for more.

 

[CalG]

Crud is one specific terrain type that does not need much of that specific terrain for developing a tactical skill for it such as, perhaps, powder and moguls. All the best recommendations there are for skiing high viscosity crud are going to be pretty much the same recommendations for a well carved turn: Clean skis - equal tipping, high tipping, constant tipping (always turning), always parallel, no tip lead, shovel pressure in turn entry (early bend) and hooking up the inside ski while maintain outside ski dominance. If you can make your skis do that, whatever your body is doing to produce these super fine results will look beautiful! More importantly, you will be the one in control and calling the shots. Usually, when it is too steep to rail turns like that, we have more downward gravity with which to push the heavy slop around and better complimented by a more conventional technique using more vertical motion and twisting of the subsequently unweighted skis in transition. When the ski is not discussed in the development process, it is an equivalent to teaching someone everything they would need to know in order to operate a car except for what to do with the steering wheel.

word salad.

 

[epicentre]

I skied the glop they like to call powder today and it was difficult. I embarrassed myself on East Rim when I hit some pockets of deep snow and got backseat. But redeemed myself under 11 where the snow was a bit friendlier. In the end you're correct it all comes down to fundamentals and heavy dense wet snow exposes your flaws but on the other hand its also a great opportunity to improve.

 

[LiquidFeet]

....I find myself stopping quite often, not because I'm tired but I need to reset my brain to get back in rhythm. I'll remember 3 things and forget the 4th and 5th. Sometimes it all comes together for a bit and the rush keeps me going. Late learners are a hard case...

This dilemma is quite familiar to me. Do you have short memorable labels in your head for each of those things you try to do? Wouldn't it be nice if your body and mind were so familiar with those 5 "things," in isolation, that you could clump them together into say two clumps, "Thing X" and "Thing Y"? Then you'd be able to do a run focusing on doing Thing X. And another run focusing on Thing Y. Eventually you could clump these two together into Thing Z and do runs with just that focus.

I am an adult learner too. I can't focus on more than one un-embedded thing at a time. What I do in a case like this is do a bunch of runs focusing on each those original things, one at a time, with a word in my head for the one that I'm doing. I repeat that word like a mantra, to keep myself doing it the whole run (distractions always throw my focus off).

Then I start clumping them together and practicing the clumps, again with a label or mantra that I can repeat. The goal, of course, is to have one big clump for the whole shebang.

Dobyman has another approach. He says focus on what the skis are doing and forget all these body movements. The body, if it's done those movements often enough, will choose unconsciously which ones to do and how to do them while you're focusing your conscious mind on what the skis are doing. I think this ski first approach is more advanced than what I'm suggesting. DobyMan might disagree, not sure.

Then there are the people who say go out there and do it mindlessly. Use speed and aggressive intent and you'll be fine. This does not work for me, but evidently it works for some here and I trust that's real.

Best of luck in conquering the chowder!

 

[Mike King]

Arc to arc skiing is great in theory but may not be appropriate give terrain and snow conditions. I've just been skiing a bit of dense and at time cut up snow here at Whistler Blackcomb, most of it in quite steep and consequential terrain. What really helped were two things: a ski suited for the conditions (in my case, a Rossi S7 HD), and sufficient vertical movement. Bouncing is one tactic -- the "pressure" or down phase of the turn (with ankle flexing or dorsiflexion) deflects the ski deeper in the snowpack and bends the ski, while the "release" phase of the turn, with opening the ankle (plantar flexion) allows the ski to come up in the snow pack, lightening resistance, and allowing you to change edges. But even if you down't bounce, moving down to the ski to start the turn (change edges) and then extending, allows you to be in a position to stay with the ski and cause it to bend and turn.

Mike