• Women skiers, this is the place for you -- an online community without the male-orientation you'll find in conventional ski magazines and internet ski forums. At TheSkiDiva.com, you can connect with other women to talk about skiing in a way that you can relate to, about things that you find of interest. Be sure to join our community to participate (women only, please!). Registration is fast and simple. Just be sure to add [email protected] to your address book so your registration activation emails won't be routed as spam. And please give careful consideration to your user name -- it will not be changed once your registration is confirmed.

Controlling a slide

Gloria

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
hint

You are sliding head first on your back with your hands at your sides,
therefore, your poles would be uphill.;)
 

abc

Banned
Gloria said:
You are sliding head first on your back with your hands at your sides,
therefore, your poles would be uphill.;)

You mean uphill of your head/shoulder. But downhill of your legs, plus boots and ski. Tons of weight to start the cartwheeling.
 

Gloria

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I think that maybe you are envisioning the poles going in an the body comes to a dead stop. Which isn't the case, the only thing your pole tips will do is slow you down enough so you can navigate your feet
back under you. Essentially they will drag either through or on top
of ( boiler plate ice ) the snow. Most slides occur on either boiler plate ice which I honestly don't think I'd be able to get my pole tip into to save my life and snow that is rounding which your pole tip is going to slide through like butter with barely enough resistance to slow you down at all. If you are really good at sliding, you can even use one pole like you would an oar to drag one side of your body
around like you would a raft. Silly huh? They actually make you practice this in wilderness classes like survival, ice-climbing etc.
( most ice climbs require a method to get there ussually skiing )
Kind of wierd watching a bunch of adults do this but, if you know someone whom teaches any of these classes at your ski hill, ask
them to demonstrate, they love to do it for you. It will make much more sense to actually see it.
 

abc

Banned
In that sense, you're right. Basically, one need to focus on slowing down, not stopping from going 30mph on one's back to zero! That's a perfect recipe for getting send cartwheeling into oblivion.

Once you can manage to slow down to a more controlable sliding speed, there're a lot more options to actually come to a complete stop.
 

Gloria

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Voila

I am so glad that makes sense to you to somebody yeah.. Hopefully you will be able to pull it out of your tool box and use it if you need it. Hard to believe all the trouble I caused trying to help one person with a question I came across looking for information on a certain type of skiis. I'm sorry, I am not a blogger, I thought I could help.
 

ski diva

Administrator
Staff member
Gloria said:
I am so glad that makes sense to you to somebody yeah.. Hopefully you will be able to pull it out of your tool box and use it if you need it. Hard to believe all the trouble I caused trying to help one person with a question I came across looking for information on a certain type of skiis. I'm sorry, I am not a blogger, I thought I could help.

What trouble? We're all working to help one another here, so your input is greatly appreciated.
 

liquidfeet

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Gloria said:
Hard to believe all the trouble I caused trying to help one person with a question I came across looking for information on a certain type of skiis. I'm sorry, I am not a blogger, I thought I could help.

Gloria, I was one of the first to jump into this thread back on page one, because I am very interested in collecting all the advice that's out there. Your contributions are valuable. As I was reading your post about self-arrest for back country people, I was thinking yes that makes sense. I thought most self arrests for those people depended on using the ice axes that they carry, but it's good to know that they have other solutions for the problem. I'll park that information and ask someone the next time I have the opportunity. Thank you.

People here do discuss differences of opinion, and ask questions and so on, but we are all interested in what other people have to say because we are here to learn more and to share our experiences. A hundred minds are so much better than one. Don't stop posting. SkiDiva is a great place to collect all kinds of good information, as well as for meeting other women who ski. This forum has a very different feel when compared to some of the other ski forums - it maintains a much more positive, friendly atmosphere. The one-upmanship and tear-downmanship that pops up here and there in the other forums has so far been absent here.

It can be a real jungle out there. Us Divas are pretty mellow. Stay, and keep posting!
 

Gloria

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
ice axe poles

The reality of ice axe poles is they are great for people whom get out and do ice climbing or ski sickly steep chutes that may encounter really steep ice fields etc but for most of us they are probably just a little bit overkill for what we actually encounter in day to day skiing.
Slides are relatively uncommon but I tell you I skied at high elevation
early last summer where the snow had rounded but hadn't frozen for 16 nights prior to our arrival, and there was enough of a wind chill
to keep the snow perfectly round and if you fell, you slid period. It was really an eye opening experience, having 2 feet of corn snow
just stacked like ball bearings really kept you on your toes. I just wonder if this phenomenon will continue to get worse with global warming. Fortunately most of us who do slide probably won't have the possibility of sliding into a terrain trap with rocks and a lake but
I read SnowGliders post about her neck and realize you just can't take all risk out, you can only be more prepared.
 

Gloria

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
one more bit of advice

If you do happen to take a slide when approaching the parking lot and run out of snow. Be sure to roll onto the side that you are not
carrying your beer tube on. resizeslider.jpg
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
26,233
Messages
497,561
Members
8,503
Latest member
MermaidKelly
Top