Learning to turn with Gammes

[tkarhu]

After some problems the day before yesterday, I got things going today! Strava says elevation gain was 3500 m. Well, this was riding lifts and skiing 196 cm Falketind Explores with NNN-BC and Alfa Guards.

I had two challenges the day before yesterday, with angulation and edging.

Well, maybe I just have not got my angulation right yet. I guess you could incline more, if you would compensate the leaning with your upper body.
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f I tried to weight my valley side ski, it would cut into snow, and then I would get into real trouble with crossed skis soon. I even fell once on my butt there. So to get across fall line, I just first carved my mountain side ski, and intentionally took weight off my valley side ski. Then the valley side ski rotated freely, followed the direction of the mountain side ski, and I avoided the "ski cross issue".

So, following is how I skied today. I often write instructions to myself. Maybe this can be useful to someone else, too.

Start in a neutral position, with skis 30-45' away from fall line.

Step on your valley side ski ball-of-foot, like you step a little backwards (video). Press the inner edge of your mountain side ski against snow, shorten the mountain side of your trunk, and keep your eyes and chest facing fall line. This way you will get a turn safely started, so that the outer edge of your valley side ski does not cut into snow.

When your skis are pointing towards fall line, activate and expand the new mountain side of your trunk. This side is opposite to the one you contracted a moment ago. When expanding the side, press the outer edge of your same side ball of foot against snow, while keeping your eyes and chest still facing fall line. Keep the knee of that leg in front of your body, so it feels that your ball of foot is below you and not behind you. When you start to activate the other side of your body, your body posture does not change at all. Yet the center of gravity moves to the other side of your body naturally, it follows your attention and muscle activation.

When your skis have moved 30-45' away from fall line, and you have skidded enough speed off, start to contract your expanded side. While starting to contract it, press the inner edge of that side ski and footsole against snow.

So activations always take place on the same side of your body, where you are weighting a foot. At the end of each turn you are expanding your mountain side of trunk, and then you start a new turn by contracting the same side of trunk. When you are contracting the side, press the inner edge of your same side ski and foot. And when you are lengthening a side, correspondingly press the outer edge of that side ski and foot.

When a piste got steeper to 15-22 degrees, having your weight slightly back seemed to help. When skiing any steeper, the edging of a mountain side ski also lasted fo a very short moment only. Whenever I felt that an inner ski may cut into snow, I fixed the pivot of that ski with a step. Unweighting the inner ski did the same trick, when doable. Basically you could probably just pivot the ski, if you got your timing and unweighting right.

With this technique, I was now able to ski tele or step-to-tele down the 20 degrees spots, which felt impossible still the day before yesterday. In between, I had played around with the ideas above, and experimented with the movements indoors. So you can practice the above movements also as indoor drills, and I guess I will do that also later on. Kitchens have been good places for such edging drills because there you often have something to lean against for your both hands.

I guess the above technique works on Gammes, too, because it makes use of one ski weightings. Only you may not be able to pivot stiff double cambers that fluently.

Spending two more days on practicing b-tele, I ended up with as slightly improved version of the above technique. The new version omits some intermediate steps of the earlier version (above).

I posted the new version in the b-tele thread, which we now have. See citation (below).

Short b-turn

Start with your knees pointing 45° away from heading direction, but keep looking ahead and your chest facing heading. Place weight on the outer edge of your approach side leg ball-of-foot, with the ankle bent and heel down. Extend your approach side of body, and your approach side knee. *) Before you initiate a turn, straighten your legs for a moment.

Push forward the approach side of your pelvis, sweep that side ski in a round motion, with the inner edge of the ski pushing ground, while tilting your elongated body side to the other. **) Continue the same sweep until your knees are pointing 45° away from heading direction, while still looking ahead and your chest facing forward. End the sweep in the initial posture with contracted ankles.

Repeat the same on your other side.

*) “Side of body” means the area between your hip and ribs here.

**) For a passing moment, you will be in a b-tele neutral stance. In the neutral stance, your ankles and knees are bent, you have even weight on both your feet, and your chest is facing heading direction. This “returning to zero” stance helps you to float over fall line because your skis are flat against snow. The symmetrical movement of tilting sides helps to time the neutral stance to fall line, when you are heading that direction.

When sweeping, if your inner ski is cutting into snow, you can get your edges right by contracting your outer ski side of body momentarily, when initiating a sweep, by pressing the inner edge of your outer foot against snow, and by pressing that leg knee inwards, during the sweep. It also helps to have a tall initial pose, and well bent ankles in your low stance, because the pressure on your foot soles gets less, when you have more space to fall. Also keep your knees parallel to each other in order to have parallel skis. Focusing on your pelvis (instead of legs) helps to align the knees and skis because a pelvis rotation pivots as much your inner and outer skis.

I am not sure if a b-tele pivot is practical on Gammes, though. At least you need some speed to get one going. If you would need more than 10 km/h to get a turn started, I think such a technique may not be very pragmatic.

Even on the subtle secondary cambers of Falketind Xplores, I needed to gain some speed first before I could pivot. I will try out that on Gammes later on.

[tkarhu]

B-tele works on double cambers, too! After learning b-tele on other skis, already first turns on Gammes were of short radius. See photos below.

Especially contracting your legs (by down-unweighting) helped to turn the stiff and straight skis. No matter how high cambers you have, I guess you create a much higher free-fall by contracting your ankles and legs, compared to the height of a ski camber. See video below.




That means in a b-turn, also double camber skis are "in air", like telehiro puts it. Cambers do not really make much difference, when your skis are fully unweighted.

However, I could not really feel a b-tele outer leg sweep on Gammes. Turns were still tight, so probably I had dialed in a b-tele pelvis rotation well enough. I just could not feel the sweeps.

At the beginning of the session, I skied in a longer stance and with my rear heel higher than I had skied b-tele earlier. In the longer stance, extending my braking leg (cross-laterally) made my knee feel a bit uncomfortable. Then I moved to a shorter stance, and kept my rear foot under my body. That made skiing calmer and simpler, and stopped the knee issues.

Braking by leaning back felt good. The lean-back motion cut speed effectively.

[tkarhu]

Another day on Gammes after transitioning to b-tele! Snow was somewhat challenging today.

We had 40-45 cm of powder, which was great. However, temps were rising, and the snow felt heavy. Further, wind had started to create crust. Also, there were many tracks already, mostly of snowboarders.

In today's snow, it was necessary for me to distribute weight as evenly on my skis as possible: on both skis, and both their tips and tails. I was running near the border of what my skis could float.

I guess I was using about 80 % of the float of the Gammes. When trying to brake by "burying" a rear part of my inner ski, it did not work.

Pressuring only a part of a ski, gave the part maybe 160 % of the weight it could carry. Probably the numbers are wrong, but may give an idea.

I guess when average depth of soft snow is 40-45 cm, at points there is ~60 cm. At such deeper spots, you may fall, when a ski suddenly sinks. For example, today I fell on my butt, when I skied too close to a small bush.

The burying caused problems, when I crossed some snowboard tracks, too. When a ski tail sank into such a track, I fell again.

I guess you should not do b-tele burying, when you ski snow depths close to what your skis can carry, or when you ski unpredictable snow.

Another issue was that my skis wanted to track straight under the heavy snow. For this reason, I was not able to inititiate fast turns. It was easier to get long turns going.

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EDIT: Today's 45 cm of soft snow seems to be about a limit, where you can still ski tele with Gammes. Skiing straight towards fall line, the skis have floated me in even 50-60 cm. However, you need some room for manoeuvre, practically, because snow conditions vary.