Snow Skills

Skiing in fog and poor visibility conditions brings on a whole new set of rules for skiers and riders. The loss of visibility will basically reduce your confidence to the point where just navigating down a trail can be a challenge. You can maintain good rhythym in your skiing/riding and stay oriented on the slopes through the use of a tactic called corridor turns. Corridor turns require only limited vision through a combination of mental imagery and the use of what few physical features are available.

Corridor turns are similar to Dollar Sign Turns in that they rely on your perception of a line extending directly down gravity on which to orient your turns. Try corridor skiing/riding at first on groomed, easier trails with good visibility. Place yourself on the trail in a position where the gravity line (a.k.a. the fall line) extends straight down the hill for a couple hundred yards. Imagine that this line is the centerline of a road with a left and right lane on each side of the centerline. By picking a road width (say 20 feet), you can now make turns which initiate on the centerline and fill the left and right lanes (10 feet each in this case) with the arcing movement. As the turn size is set by the corridor, you’ll be able to make consistent-sized turns that are oriented in the direction of the gravity line you set. It’s this imagery that make corridor turns so effective in poor visibility; their direction relies more on gravity than vision to establish, so you can rely more on your senses than your eyes to find your way.

In practice, you can find many features on the slopes which can help you corridor ski regardless of how limited the visibility is. Chairlifts are excellent for establishing a corridor; you can set your centerline up under or alongside the lift and use your peripheral vision to help keep your corridor oriented. A corridor doesn’t have to be straight down gravity; try setting up a corridor set up against the treeline at the side of a trail. and the dark color of the trees contrasted against the white trail can help you oriented through the use of color. If the trail was groomed recently, you can use the lines of the corduroy marks in the snow to keep yourself oriented down gravity.

When the world seems like a small place do to limited sight distance, corridor turns are an excellent tactic to keep yourself oriented and moving down the slopes with confidence.