It’s the chicken or the egg question of skiing: do the hands time your turns or do your turns time the hands? In terrain and conditions such as moguls, steeps, trees, powder, and Spring snow, it really doesn’t matter which answer is right. Either way, a series of relatively short linked turns are best made by keeping the hands and legs working in concert. Key to those movements is the commitment to the turn that a good pole swing adds to your skiing.
Archive for the ‘Moguls’ Category
Skiing moguls in spring conditions is one of skiing’s great pleasures. The more forgiving snow, the warmer temps, and the softer feel underfoot combine to let skiing moguls be more successful and fun!
The heaviness of the wetter snow can be a challenge in the narrower confines of a mogul field, however. You can adjust your skiing to match soft mogul terrain by changing your line to avoid the troughs and stay higher on the moguls. You can maintain balance better by focusing on where your feet would go if you were running down the hill.
Moguls are a terrain feature that few folks can just conquer with little effort. It takes skill, mental toughness, athleticism, and experience to ski moguls with confidence. Great mogul skiing is built, not found, and there are some very effective exercises you can use to practice for moguls on groomed snow. One of those exercises focuses on making short turns that rely on quick and precise edging to get you in and out of a turn promptly: Hockey Stops.
Ski the moguls slowly? “Better said than done!” is probably a fair guess at the next thought through your mind. It’s a big jump in expectations to ski from groomed trails into a mogul run where space is limited and expect to make terrific turns with speed and style. The image of professional mogul skiers like those that will compete at Torino 2006 could give you an unrealistic expectation of how to ski moguls. You’ve got to crawl before you can run, Young Jedi, and developing skills that let you ski moguls flowly is part of the first steps.