nzdollar

Hey guys

I'm a student from NZ and have been doing a bit of skiing up at the club fields over the years.
I started skiing 3 years ago and have had about 60 days (only 10 in last year) and am a pretty confident skier. I have not had a lesson before - since I cant afford one. So I read books to get me into parallel turning and then got tips from friends on hip, knee angulation/ inside leg turning/ wait forward/ unweighting/ body facing down fall line/ pole planning... ect.
I can ski all parts of the mountain in the right condition
I've only been up 5 days so far this season and yesterday they were saying 30cm new snow, it had been skied on from the day before and had a little afternoon sun. I have been using twin tip karma volkl skis at 169cm for the past 3 days and switched to my new 180cm (my height) volkl bandit 2 skis. It was still a good texture snow but was a bit heavy and chopped up.
When I went to ski it, I wasn't used to the extra length. So it was hard to initiate your turn with your weight forward so I found that my turns where taking longer to complete. I was picking up a heap of speed and losing come control since it was a bit cut up, my skis were banging together.
So I was leaning back a bit and trying to exaggerated a solid platform and my un weighting. But I found having weight back your tails turn out after turns.
Looking at other people that where skiing this snow, they made it look much easier. They looked like they were skiing moguls with short radius turns but in powdery snow. I don’t know if it has some thing to do with my skis being longer and not having as much control – or my bad habit of sometimes having my skis too close together.
I hate days that you go skiing and your confidence gets shot after falling a few times, but I really want to nail these kind of snow conditions!
Could someone please give me some advice/ exercises that I can practice to improve my technique for this kind of snow? Or is it about time I invested in some descent lessons

Cheers

Sparky

I suppose skiing lessons wouldn't do any harm, but there are many tutorial sites around the internet.


I could get you some links if you like.

nzdollar

Yeah sparky! That would be awesome!
Had another day today with 80cm freshies! Lots of face shots!
Hope your summers going well

wbsr

Heavy , wet powder is hard.... and we get a lot of it here in Whistler. I find the best approach is too maintain as much speed as possible, and be aggressive, don't lean back. keep bobbing up and down, even when going in a straight line, it helps to keep the skis from sinking too low and getting sucked under.