Hey, today we're going to look at how to ski powder.
The first thing you should have in mind
is, like, what kind of ski gear are you on?
Today
I'm skiing on a Scott scrapper 115. This is probably not what you're going to be skiing.
But let's say you're going on a ski holiday and you hope to ride some powder and you rent carving skis for example.
That is no fun as you'll have to lean back too much and it's not so cool.
So I'd recommend you maybe rent an all-mountain ski, that's about 100 millimeters in the waist. It has a bit of rocker like this.
When you have a bit of rocker,
it helps the ski to flow a bit easier so you can have, like, a normal skiing stance, you know,
you don't need to sit back in order to make the skis float.
The easiest way to get started skiing powder is
straight after snowfall, go skiing, if you're lucky you can find like a slope
where it's been snowing maybe 10, 15 centimeters and you can cruise around the powder here. And then you can feel how
this is different
compared to
your normal skiing on the slope because the skis can float, you know.
You can go up and down and when you do this, you know, start thinking about the stance.
And the stance, when you're skiing powder, it's pretty much the same as when you're skiing, you know, string yourself up
sink down into the ski boots, gentle bend by the waist and I feel some shin pressure.
Something like this. Hands in the front. It's super important for balance.
And then let's say you'd be skiing with your feat this wide on the slope,
bring them a little bit closer together and this is because, it's less risk once he's sinking down,
because once you sink down, it can set off rotation and result in a crash and always mind the safety.
Don't just head out there and, you know, do a long off piste run
it's like you're a few kilometers along and then you get back. Start small sections of powder and
then go back to the slope and catch your breath again because it can be really exhausting in the beginning.
As soon as it's a little bit deeper
it's a good idea that you find, like, a mellow pitch where there's like this much snow, you know,
so you have a little bit of snow,
you can move up and down it. The first thing you can start trying
Is that you like pump up, go down, like this, almost like jumping but not quite.
Making the skis sink down and pop up, sink down and pop up. Now we're going to combine this technique with a turn,
The up and down move, it's going to be a little bit slower.
So you bounce it up and down and then you slowly start doing some turns.
At the furthest, to decide on the turn you like, extend your legs a bit,
helping to rebound off the snow and then you twist the skis on top of the snow pack and down and repeat again.
It's going to make a big difference for you.
This can be done both
you know, turning with the skis, that the upper body and the skis are turning at the same time, and when you do this
you can think of it as a skidded parallel turn. Focus on keeping a strong core
so the upper body turns at the same speed as your skis, but it does feel much nicer to be done like a short turn,
where we keep the upper body rather straight down and then the legs are moving from side to side.
But this is a little bit tricky to get at the beginning. So what is important to think about here?
Just like before make sure that you turn on top of the snow pack
but the feet and skis are turning independently of the upper body.
The upper body is pointing more downhill than the skis are. My technique here is not quite perfect
but you get the point. Give it a good try, I think you're really going to enjoy it and it takes a bit of practice.
And the arms, you know, you keep them quite far forwards. If you had a pole plant, that's going to be even easier to do.
and, you know, a pole plant, you basically just do this with the arm,
because you don't really want to push it down there and then, like, push off, that's going to make you rotate like this,
and you could possibly
spin around and have a crash. And it's important to get the rhythm right when you should pole plant.
Here I'm just finished with this left hand turn, pole plant, and finish with a right turn, left hand pole plant, and then repeat.
It's not that tricky but it's going to help you a lot with the rhythm and the nice movements doing the powder turns.
You know so far I've showed you basically a flat pitch of pretty decent snow,
but the terrain is often going to go up and down, and if you turn on top of our little roller
then the tails come out of the snow more, it's easier to turn and it also creates a nice flow,
that you may return just before the roller, and then over the roller turn and then drop in on the other side.
It really feels good, and it makes your turns
yeah, it makes you turn much easier. So this is how you
can do
shortish turns in powder. It's fun and all, it's good to know for tree skiing or when it's really steep,
But when me and my friends are out skiing, or any rad skiers you see on TV they do
blasting big turns down big faces,
because it would be really boring to watch a couple of guys do pole plants in short turns in powder a whole ski movie.
So basically work on your carving technique, got a video on that.
What is different from carving is that when you're skiing in powder, is that you have to adapt your skiing much
quicker depending on how the conditions are.
And for them big swoopy turns
instead of, like, having a bit widish stance for the carve
you know feet a little bit closer together.
And the reason why is that the outside can sink down, if it's too wide and get pulled back, make you spin around and
possibly crash, as shown earlier in this video. And here I'm trying to carve down the steep face, and what's happening,
I'm a bit out of control, so I need to put in a speed check. The first thing
I do is have a bit of angulation like that. And then the skis have been turned with the upper body
still facing down the hill to be able to let the tail slide out, skid a bit so I can reduce the speed.
Thank you for watching.
Hey, honestly, I really hope you are going to try riding powder and that you're going to like it.
I'll have a playlist here with all our
freeride tutorials, you can check out the other ones. They'll be out soon.