MegèveSki

My turn for a bad technique day

The views were amazing today; I should have taken some pictures but it was so damn cold that I didn't fancy taking my camera out. We skied down Pylones on Mont d'Arbois, a nice red down from La Mandarines to the bottom. We realised on the way up in the bubble that we'd never skied it as it had always been covered in brown patches before. The snow was great, the run was good (some nice steep sections and some nice wide sections) and it was quiet but my skiing sucked.

For some reason my right turn was playing up; the ski was juddering during the later part of the turn; catching the edge, releasing, over and over. The left turn was fine, nice and smooth and fast, but the right was awful. Strangely Miche's left turn was doing the same thing; her left turn is her stronger turn and my right turn used to be my stronger turn (at least until my knee problem). We decided to keep skiing the same run and try and work out what was going on. A quick examination of the edges didn't show any damage so I ruled out equipment failure...

The first run down things were fine as long as I was doing very long carved turns, the edges held nicely and I flew down. On smaller turns, or when I was putting on the pressure to slow down the right ski did its juddering thing. This is probably the hardest snow (most compacted) I've skied recently; we've had a week of fresh snow and today we were skiing a nicely bashed run, not ego snow, but nice enough. The snow was good but perhaps I hadn't adjusted the blend of my technique to account for the change in conditions; wrong blend of edge application, thigh steering and weight distribution resulting in the edge hold breaking away and then catching again... Possibly due to me rushing through the right leg turn rather than letting it take the time it was going to take.

I took the second run slowly, concentrating on the feedback from my feet and promptly fell over on the third turn. It was an interesting fall because it was on the steepest section of Pylones at the top and I slid for a fair way. I twanged my knee a little during the fall but it was fine - which, in itself, is reassuring. Unfortunately I appear to have also bruised my left thumb a bit - nothing serious but it hurts a bit :( After the fall I continued down the run slowly, listening to my feet and thinking about where my legs were and what they were doing - this is surprisingly difficult to do... After a while I realised that my right leg was forward of where I'd like it to be during the turn; getting it back under me took another couple of runs.

The last couple of runs down Pylones felt much better and my leg felt like it stayed in the right place the whole time rather than wandering forward; this may have led to me feeling more comfortable on the turn and not feeling the need to rush it with too much steering... Miche also improved in a similar way, she'd been slightly back and if she worked hard to keep forward the skis behaved better; though not quite a well as mine. She's been having problems with her left ski for the entire trip, some days worse than others.

Once we got back to the flat we flicked through some of the ski books we have and found the following possible causes for our problem; though I'm not one to blame my tools as it's usually me that's to blame for crap performance... One book suggested that we apply a small amount of base edge bevel to the edges; this is supposed to reduce the 'grabbiness' of skis that keep catching... Another suggested that base edge bevel was evil and that instead the problem may be with over canting at the boot level that caused the edge to over engage... Miche's problem has been happening with all of the many skis that she's skied and she has had canting problems before so it may be worth looking into that... But for me, at present I think it was just a combination of a broken technique, nice sharp edges and snow that held an edge easily... I wonder how things will be tomorrow...