(My notes here are listed most recent activities first).
I took my skis to visit the East Coast in April. I had a business
trip to New Hampshire, just an hour from
Killington (VT), and I
was really looking forward to skiing there again and getting in
some last runs for the season. But the only day that I had free,
the weather was really bad (foggy, rainy) and they even ended up
closing some lifts. So I bailed. At least I got my skis tuned so
they're good to store for the summer.
We skiied at
Whistler
over St. Patrick's weekend, and I really had
a great time. I had a cold and was planning to take it easy, but
I was having too good a time. Though, I have to admit the visibility
was pretty bad at the top - at one point I got so disoriented that
I wasn't sure which way was down! I got to practice techniques I
learned at Big Sky (see below) and worked on skiing some moguls.
In January, I took a 4-day trip to
Big Sky, near Bozeman, Montana.
|
Looking down towards the mountain village
and the Ramcharger chair at Big Sky |
I went with a group set up by a
former SHAI co-worker, and we stayed at the Stillwater Condos. The
skiing, I thought, was really good. There were a few rough patches or
rocks, but for the most part there was good snow. We got a few inches
of fresh powder the first day, then 6-8 inches more overnight before
our last day of skiing. Being a skier from "back East" (see below),
I don't really know what to do in powder, and I hate to say I wasn't
enjoying it too much, those first couple runs. But after a bit of
practice (and
a shoulder injury) I caught the hang of it and had a good day. Aside
from the weather being great while we were there (fresh snow, some
sun, not too cold), one of the best things about Big Sky is:
NO LIFT LINES!
Really, the longest wait we had was for the gondola, about 10
minutes
maybe, and there was a line for the tram to the very top, but other
than that, there were no lines at all.
I have learned that, in pushing myself to ski tougher terrain and to
keep up with friends, I skipped a few valuable steps in learning
to ski. I took a lesson at Big Sky and was really pleased with the
instructor and how he gave us details to work on (in a useful way, unlike
some other lessons I've taken). And it was only $33!
One interesting
bad habit the instructor pointed out was the "oh shit" turn that
I (and others in the class) had developed. It happens when you try to
carve but you're afraid of speed, so you tend to keep the downhill
leg too straight in order to turn and slow down. So the key to that
is to get "tall" between turns and "small" to make the turn, starting
the bending in the ankles and knees, and keeping the knees at roughly
the same level. I got better at it with practice (boy, are my legs
sore!), but found myself reverting to the "oh shit" move when it
got too steep or I was too tired. I'll keep working...
More
pictures from the trip, courtesy of Matt.
2/5/01
I started skiing about 7 years ago. The first time I went, I remember,
I was really losing my sense of humor for the first couple hours!
But then it started coming together and I was hooked! There have
only been a couple seasons in which I have really gotten to do enough
skiing to improve my skills, and I'm afraid I have lost some ground
over the past couple years. I'll have to remedy that...
East coast skiing:
I started off at Massanutten,
near Harrisonburg (VA). Then I tried
Whitetail in PA -- we went for 2 days and I took a lesson, and that's when I
really started liking it. Well, OK, I wasn't over the fear yet, but
then, I'm still not!
Let's see, after that, I started going anywhere within driving range:
Timberline, Snowshoe, Canaan Valley, and Winterplace in
West Virginia (see
Ski WV .com),
Wintergreen
, near Waynesboro, VA.
But it was the trips to Killington
with the Virginia Tech Ski Club
that were the most fun! Nothing like a week of skiing on a HUGE mountain,
well, a bunch of huge mountains. (And the parties weren't bad either ;o)
Some friends and I went to
Sunday River, Maine, for spring break one year.
Finally, I got out West for some skiing (and learned that powder is
very different from that New England ice!). My cousin in Salt Lake
City has some connections and hooked me up with lift tickets at
Alta and
Deer Valley. I've gotten a
little more experience with powder since I moved to Seattle. We've
been to Mt. Hood (east of Portland, OR);
Snoqualmie and
Stevens Pass, which are both
just over an hour outside of Seattle; and
Whistler-Blackcomb,
north of Vancouver BC (Whister can be as little as 4 hours and as
much as 8 hours away, depending on the traffic crossing the border!).
So, there's my laundry list of ski places. I hope to add on to it,
especially with some skiing in the Alps (I'll probably get to
Colorado first!). The main things I'm working on now are keeping
the skis pointed more downhill -- I tend to chicken out with any
speed and start criss-crossing the hillside instead. So I want to
convince myself that I can go faster and still maintain control. The
other thing I'm working on is moguls. I have to get MUCH faster in
my turns, but I got a lot of improvement on this last trip to
Whistler.
Here is a brief list of some tips that have really helped me along the
way. Maybe they can help you too:
- (beginner) Pick a point and ski to it.
This really helped
calm me down when I was just starting out, still learning to
"wedge" my way down gentle slopes but still feeling thoroughly
overwhelmed and out of control. It helped me to break the hill
up into pieces and focus on controlling one thing at a time.
- (beginner) Keep your knees bent and the weight
on the front
of the skis. Well, duh! Obvious, yes, but I had to keep reminding
myself of this when panic mode made me want to lean back instead.
- Keep looking down the hill. Concentrating on this helps with a
lot of other movements. Even as you made cuts across the face of the
hill, you should be looking down so that you can pick the best
paths and makes turns appropriately. Facing down the hill also helps
you maintain the proper posture to turn more using the whole body and
not just your legs (or worse, your feet!). It also seems to help me
keep the skis together, keep the knees bent, and keep my weight
forward.
- Finish one turn before starting the next. My cousin in Salt
Lake taught me this. Years of skiing on ice and a fear of pointing
my skis downhill had given me a bad habit of wanting to chop my
turns off early and enter the next turn. But I have been working
on sort-of coming back to a center before shifting my weight into
the next turn. When I get this down, it will help me relax, be
a lot smoother, and handle bumps (because my weight will be better
distributed).
- When starting a turn, as you transfer weight to the downhill leg,
slide your uphill ski to the front (almost as though you were lifting
your knee a bit). This helps lift weight off the uphill ski and helps
it glide through the turn better. That way, your skis don't work against
each other. My right leg is a lot stronger than my left, so if I don't
do this, I have a hard time putting my weight down on my left to turn
to the right. It also seems to help me keep my
knees bent. Tim Demirjian (sp?), whom I met skiing at Mt. Hood, taught
me this.
- Keep your body perpendicular to the slope. I don't know where I
would have gotten the idea that I should stand upright while skiing, but
I found as I worked on this: it was scary at first to lean that far
out on a steep slope; and, it will keep your weight on your tips so
you stay in control. This tip I actually paid for, in a lesson.
That's about it... Have fun skiing!
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Enjoy your stay!
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2/5/01