How Do I Turn?

[GrimSurfer]

@lowangle al how did you tear your meniscus?

Crashes. I always wore knee pads and highly recommend them. They protect your knee from the ski, and hidden stuff under the powder. They also kept my knees warm and neoprene ones were good for support.

Can't you manage to fall sideways or backwards when falling? Excuse my newbness--maybe when I start doing this on decent terrain my view will be different. Right now if I sense falling my natural instinct is to go to the side, instantly.

I’m not good at planning my falls. If I was, they’d be far more graceful.

Once got kicked off my surfboard. 10 feet in the air. As I was falling, legs spread, my leash snapped taut and the board rotated with a rail up.

Yup. That one hurt. Nobody hears you scream like a ten year old girl when the ocean is roaring and you’ve dropped ten feet squarely on the ‘nads. The cold water sure was a blessing.

Good advice from the guys on knee pads. I’m going to follow it asap. My nine lives have just about run out, so I need to save what’s left.

[mca80]

My freshman year of high school I watched a kid in warmups overextend a dismount on high bar and stick his arm back to break his fall. The bone shot trough his skin. Grueseome. I told coach I felt uncomfortable. He said don't be an idiot, you know how to fall, that kid didn't. Never had an injury due to falling from that point on. Even 20 years layer, I have crashed on skis. No injuries, knock on wood.

[lowangle al]

With a dbl camber ski that doesn't want to turn, the skis cross the fall line unweighted with either a jump or step turn. After they cross the fall line then I'll weight them. It is harder to get skis to carve when weighting them in the middle of the turn as apposed to the beginning.

I had never thought about this before:
At the beginning of the turn, gravity is working AGAINST you, the force being applied to the ski is being reduced by gravity pulling the skier downhill, away from the ski.
Once across the fall line, gravity is increasing the force a skier can apply to the ski.

I don't think that's it, I never figured gravity into it. I need to unweight DC skis to get them across the fall line fast enough to not pick up too much speed. When you unweight them, they skid across the fall line, so your skid starts there.

So the difference between how single and dbl camber skis cross the fall line is that a SC will carve across where as dbl will skid across. This isn't absolute, some variables would be the hardness of the snow and the stiffness and radius of the ski and slope angle.

I hope that made it more clear.

[Stephen]

@lowangle al i probably shouldn’t have quoted yours. It was more a random thought triggered by what you said that made me think about the force of gravity”s effect on ski pressure before and after crossing the fall line.
Subtractive before, additive after.
Might be minor or even irrelevant, IDK.

[lowangle al]

Maybe a better way to say it is that you have to unweight a dc ski to initiate the turn. this unweighting starts the skid.
With dc the transition, unweighting and turning happen at the same time.(While they change directions)

With sc you can unweight for the transition then put weight on to start the turn.(before the direction change takes place)

When I say weight your skis that is the same time you need to edge them too.

[Lo-Fi]

@TallGrass ’s reference to this is excellent. This is a fantastic exercise. Do it as shown in parallel stance and, far more of a challenge, in the dropped tele position.

“Flat…edge… flat… edge…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOGg8faQRdk

[TallGrass]

Screwed up my thumbs when my skis would slide out on me and I'd put my hand down. The cure for this is to open up your stance to hip or shoulder width apart for side to side stability.

From: https://telemarktalk.com/viewtopic.php? ... 120#p54962

You can see the stance open up here (Alpine downhill, an extreme example), frame by frame, as the turn forces go from straight to tight, but since lean is involved the knees scissor.


The other reason to use a wider stance, I've found, is varied angle and or snow.
The proper lean angle for ice will flip you DOWNhill (hard) when your edges bite powder.
The proper lean angle for powder will let your edges slip out from under you slamming you UPhill (hard) when your edges hit ice.
Chopped up snow is yet another fun.
So in mixed (on alpine) my "stance" spans enough to accommodate both angles.
And that's with FIXED heels...

Maybe someone can dig up a slo-mo vid or frame-by-frame of similar on tele's.

Hope that lessens "sudden decelerations" for someone or -two.

Don't watch.

[tkarhu]

I also weight the inner rear edge of my front ski in deepish (10-40 cm) snow, too, with my Gammes. I am just wondering, what is the mechanics why and how that works? I can repeat the trick, but understanding the mechanics could let me use my skis in more creative ways.

I have a few initial assumptions, what could be the reason.

1) Could the trick work because that weighting helps carving? I think pressuring is not that important in deep snow because skis really do not carve there I guess. So if that would be a hard surface trick, it would sound more like a carving thing I guess. Well Gamme nordic rocker for sure might do something there, but is that enough to carve?

2) Could it work through weight placement against an external force? Many sea kayaking techniques use such tricks. For example, you lean your body weight towards the front of a kayak, if you want to turn your kayak towards a wave. Similarly, when you put weight on the back of your ski, the rear part of your ski starts to press towards the external force (ie. downhill snow), and its front end will move away from the force. You could think of this also as two rows of men pushing against each other, like in some sports. At places of the row where your own team pushes hard, it will move towards or through the opposing team’s row. At places where you push less, the opposing team will push through your team’s row. Likewise, the less weighted end of a kayak will move away from a wave, and the less weighted end of a ski will move uphill, away from the friction that you are facing. (This idea feels somewhat counter intuitive to me, but it really works at least for the sea kayaking part of it because I use it in practice.)

3) Could it be related to skidding, ie. sliding on a surface? With stiff double camber skis, a carved turn would have a loooong arc. Pressuring the back of a front ski makes the front ski skid (ie. side slide), which helps to make tighter turns. Yet you do not want the tail of the front ski to cut into the snow, but rather to slide across the snow.

To summarize, item #4

4) Pressuring the rear of a ski lifts its tip up. This leads the ski tip towards the surface of snow, where it has less weight on top of it, and moves lighter.

Idea #4 got clearer, when I re-read @DropKneeDiehard's following post in another thread:

A Swedish Telemark Legend from the 90s taught me to ski with most of the weight on the rear ski (In certain conditions) using the front ski as a hover craft pushing on the heel of the front ski to raise the tip.

I have yet another short list — understanding trivial things can be helpful, when doing things.

-------
What to do, when turning:

* Sliding sideways, ie. skidding
* Sliding forwards (+ pressuring —> carving)

What not to to, when turning:

* Sticking (to snow, skis or poles)

--------

Point 4) is actually part of why the double camber powder trick works, I guess. When you have less snow on top of a leading ski, it leads you to a more helpful place that pointing its tip towards the bottom of a snowpack. Similarly, if kayaking down a wave your kayak's front part sticks under water at wave bottom, you will soon be doing a cartwheel. Better not make your ski gear stick Cartwheels can be fun when kayaking, but maybe not, when skiing.

By the way, @TallGrass, @lowangle al, @Stephen and you others have shared great insights in this thread lately. Thanks.

[mca80]

@Lo-Fi makes great gifs of great exercises. Thanks for them.

[Stephen]

A Swedish Telemark Legend from the 90s taught me to ski with most of the weight on the rear ski (In certain conditions) using the front ski as a hover craft pushing on the heel of the front ski to raise the tip.

Point 4) is actually part of why the double camber powder trick works, I guess. When you have less snow on top of a leading ski, it leads you to a more helpful place that pointing its tip towards the bottom of a snowpack.

I can’t speak authoritatively on this, but I think there are a few key points here:

In certain conditions

The trick is, not ALL conditions, and figuring out where this is helpful.
I think it might be in variable snow or conditions.
I think doing this can have a few benefits:
- It helps to keep the skier from getting pitched forward if there is any deceleration. The skier has not committed a critical amount of weight to the front ski and so there is reserve support available if one is thrown forward.
- Also, any steering done by the front ski is more like a trim tab, like a small adjustment to the main steering of the back ski.
- And, it allows the skier to test the snow with a lighter touch, so he knows if the snow gets slower or faster, deeper or thinner, firmer or softer.