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.

Looking down towards the mountain village and the Ramcharger chair at Big Sky

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.

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