You have seen the real experts charging down the slopes at two or three times your speed. They look relaxed and confident, and the worst of it is, they don't even look like they are exerting much effort as they clock up their skiing miles! How do they do it?
The secret is that they are carving their turns. Letting their skis work for them, they are putting in much less effort to turn than you are. But since the carving ski revolution, you should be able to ski like that too!
Learning how to carve your turns represents perhaps the greatest technical challenge on the slopes. The key lies in letting your skis do the work for you, using their design to carve your turns.
Modern carving skis make this much, much easier. Whereas before, it took a lot of power to bend the skis into the reverse camber required to achieve a carved turn, and hours of practice to develop the steering feel, a good pair of shaped skis makes the process manageable for any reasonably athletic skier who sets his or her mind to it.
You have to learn to take your time with every turn. Rush things, and you'll oversteer you skis into a skid. Learn to move your body down the fall-line across your skis and wait: your skis, set on an edge, will start to come round. Slowly. Powerfully. Smoothly. What a buzz.
Each stage of the turn is involved: at the initiation, you must avoid over-steering your skis into a skid; in the middle of the turn, you must match the turning radius to the forces on your skis; and at the end of the turn you must control the tendency of the backs of your skis to break into a skid.
Just buying or renting a pair of carving skis will not suddenly make you carve your turns. You have to work at it, experimenting with the techniques described in this section. But you'll feel it when it suddenly starts to come together.
What Ski Length Is Best?
As you begin to experiment with turns at higher speeds,
you may want to use a longer pair of skis. A longer ski provides greater stability
and holds its edge more easily. The ideal ski for high speed cruising is a giant
slalom ski. These used to be taken around 30-40 cm longer than your height,
but with the advent of shaped ski technology, skis just 10-15 cm taller than
you are used.
For slightly slower speed cruising, and a easy introduction to carving, try
a shaped ski around the same height as yourself.
But take care when choosing a cruising ski: you must be able to bend it in order
to carve your turns, so it mustn't be too stiff for your weight or athletic
ability. Remember that most ski shops let you test skis, so take advantage of
this to try a few pairs of skis and find one that suits your cruising style
best.
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If you are looking for new thrills in your high speed cruising, try initiating your turns in the air! As you finish each turn, project yourself off any small bump, project your body down the fall line and land on the inside edge of your uphill ski. Add extra excitement to high-speed cruising with the aerial turn |
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Starting with a long radius turn...(left)...tighten the radius by pushing your outside knee forward and towards the inside of the turn (right).
Part of the key to the relaxed charge of the expert skier lies in reading and responding to the slope. The next time you watch an expert skier in action, look for the tell-tale signs: expert skiers tighten their turns as the slope steepens, lengthen them as it flattens out, adjusting their position on the slope constantly and subtly to give themselves the most flowing line.
It is this ability to use the slope, as much as the quality of the turns themselves, that sets aside the truly expert from the simply advanced skier. Achieving this symphony of resistance and flow requires experience. But it also requires the ability to control your speed without reverting to skidding your turns.
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The design of their skis allows racers to carve their turns to conserve speed or even accelerate through the gates (left). The same design enables recreational skiers to cruise with speed and confidence (right).
Most intermediate skiers are not comfortable when their skis point down the fall line because of the rapid acceleration that results. They turn their skis as quickly as possible across the fall line, usually so quickly that they break into a skidded turn. There is nothing wrong with this: it is an entirely appropriate, straightforward way to lose excessive speed, and the one which has a lot to recommend it for intermediate skiers.
Balancing against a skidding edge like this, however, requires concentration and effort, limiting the speed at which you can react to the terrain. In a carved turn, on the other hand, this skidding is eliminated. Your outside ski is bent into reverse camber. This, together with the ski's sidecut, defines the exact radius of the turn being performed. You do not have to produce any rotational force on your skis: balancing against the forces of the turn is sufficient to keep the ski running as though on rails. Particularly when skiing on the new generation of shaped skis, you should quickly learn the thrill of a carved turn.
No turn is ever 100% carved, despite the best efforts of skiers and ski manufacturers. The shorter the radius of the turn, the harder it is to achieve the extreme bend of the ski which would be required to match the radius, and hence the more skidding creeps into the turn.
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| In a carved turn, the skis slide cleanly, throwing up little or no snow. A carved turn results in a narrow track, showing how the edge has been set against the snow. | If you skid a turn, you throw up a plume of snow. A skidded turn results in a wide track as the ski moves sideways across the snow. |
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You will occasionally spot racers take a step uphill as they transfer their weight on to their uphill ski. They are adjusting their line to allow themselves a longer turning radius between the gates and thus to carry more speed. You may even spot a so-called scissor step turn, in which the racer's skis diverge at the moment of the weight transfer. This acts like a skating step, allowing the racer to push out onto the new ski and accelerate between turns. |
 The step turn is a useful way to improve your technique. |
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| Start in the basic traverse stance, flexed slightly as you finish your last turn. | Plant your pole and lift your downhill ski, applying pressure to your uphill ski. |
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| Extend powerfully off your uphill ski, projecting your body forward and down the fall line. | Keep your weight firmly on your outside ski, as it turns into the fall line. |
Most intermediate skiers initiate their turns on the flat by steering their skis strongly. Most also become used to relying on unweighting to facilitate this strong steering action. But once your skis break into a skid, it is almost impossible to arrest them. For a strong, carved turn, you need a different type of initiation, to reduce the amount of torque you put on your skis at the start of the turn.
Don't use any up- or down-motion at this point: stay flexed throughout the initiation of the turn so that you don't interfere with the ski's natural tendency to turn. It is very important to try this on a shallow slope, one you can normally ski without any difficulty. It requires a lot of faith to believe that your skis will respond and turn under you. If you are worried by the steepness of the slope, most likely you will retreat into your normal unweight-and-swivel initiation.
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If your weight is too far back at the initiation of the turn, you may find your ski unwilling to cooperate. |
Now instead of staying flexed throughout the turn initiation, try extending your uphill leg as your weight comes onto it. At the same time, project your body forward and down the fall line. This achieves two things. Firstly, you speed up the crossover of your body from above to below your skis, rolling them quickly onto their new edges. Secondly, by pushing down powerfully on your uphill ski you add to its reverse camber (the opposite of unweighting). The combination of these two effects results in a quicker initiation to your turn.
If you want to master fast, effortless cruising, you have to get used to putting all your weight on your outside ski. |
Once you feel that you have mastered a carved initiation to your turns, it is time to add power to the middle of your turns.
In order to maintain your carve throughout the turn, you must be skiing with all your weight on the outside ski throughout the turn. You may have heard this advice before; now you need to be 100% strict with yourself. Every turn must be performed with your weight on one ski.
The reason for this is that unless you ski at exceptionally high speeds, you only have enough force at your disposal to bend one ski into reverse camber. Distributing your weight over both skis dissipates this force, leaving your skis too straight and forcing you to retreat into a skid. Although new softer, shaped skis are more forgiving than the old straight boards, the principle remains - pressure on one ski enables you to use it properly in a carved turn.
You don't need to lift your inside ski high off the snow; most expert skiers actually allow it to brush across the surface. This way they concentrate the maximum force on their outside ski without performing any excess movements. It also provides an added bonus: a brief, welcome moment of relaxation for the unweighted inside leg. This prevents you from getting tired and contributes significantly to the fluidity of your skiing.
You are familiar with the fact that your ski is narrower at the middle than at the tip or tail, particularly a modern shaped ski. Imagine placing your ski on a flat surface; now tilt it slightly onto its edge and push down over the bindings. It bends until its waist touches the surface; the ski describes a gentle arc. Tilt the ski more aggressively on its side and the arc described becomes more pronounced. So the more you set your skis on edge, the sharper the radius of turn your skis want to produce.
But this is only part of the story. Even more important in determining the radius described by your outside ski is the amount of force you use to put it into reverse camber. On a yielding surface, such as snow, for any given angle of edge set, the harder you push down, the more your ski bends and the tighter the radius of turn it will produce.
So now you have two adjustments to help you match your ski radius to that of your turn: more or less edge, and more or less pressure. If you can coordinate their action, you skis will carve and you will tap into an incredible surge of power in the middle of your turn. The key to this is the amount of hip angulation that you use.
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| As you finish each turn look ahead and anticipate the next. | Initiate the turn using early weight transfer. |
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| Project your body forwards and down the fall line. | Allow your skis to cross under your body to the outside of the turn, angulating from the hips. |
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| Maintain your hip angulation throughout the turn. |
The tendency for your skis to break into a skid is at its greatest at the end of the turn. At this point, centrifugal force and gravity act together to pull you directly down the fall line. That is why so many turns which start by carving end up in a frustrating skid. There are several techniques which can help prevent this.
A second and related technique is a powerful and versatile one called foot drive. It can solve even a very ingrained problem at the end of your turns, and can be used to gain extra purchase on hard, icy surfaces. The trick lies in pushing your outside foot forwards as you complete your turn. This slices your edge into the snow and shifts the pressure onto the tail. The trick lies in then projecting your body forwards sufficiently during the following initiation so that you regain your balance over your skis.
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| Take your normal high speed cruising turn... | ...and use foot drive to make your skis stick like glue at the end of the turn. |
