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I levelled up my off piste skiing skills! :)

fgor

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
TL;DR: with practice and lessons i am improving at skiing, video at bottom

Off piste skiing at Mt Hutt in New Zealand is only just starting to open up. We started the season with a big dumping of very wet snow which immediately got heavily rained on and then frozen, so going off the groomers has been perilous up until now. Luckily we're starting to see some more occasional snowfall, to freshen up that base of solid ice :smile:

There's an ungroomed black "run" (it's an entire face really) at Hutt which is a bit of a project for me. I've skied it a ton but typically only one turn at a time (turn, traverse, stop, start, turn, traverse, stop....). One of my goals this season is to be able to get down it and link turns the whole way. I had a short lesson on the weekend and I'd told my instructor that I really wanted to give this run a go if it opened and we had time. We did one run on the groomers, where we kept working on weight transfer, tipping, and staying over the outside/downhill ski - all important for off piste skiing too - then the off piste run opened up so I switched skis and we did our second run almost 100% off piste.

(I switched from my 70mm fully cambered skis to my 88mm all mountain skis with some tip/tail rocker and taper. There's not a ton of snow and I know that I could have done it with the narrower skis - my instructor was killing it on GS skis - but I feel more confident having some rocker and a slightly wider base in these choppy bumpy sort of conditions!)

It turns out that because I am a bit apprehensive facing choppy snow, I have an unconscious tendency to lean way back up the hill, which unweights my outside/downhill ski and makes it harder to control the end of my turn. Which of course doesn't help with the confidence! My instructor was quick to point this out and after a very messy top section, with some stops and starts, I was able to focus more on keeping my weight more on the downhill ski. This made it easier to link turns together as well. We also discussed planning where to turn on slightly choppy runs like this, and thinking a couple of turns ahead - surprisingly hard, in practice I only think about the next turn!

Anyway, I was able to totally nail the rest of the run!! I know it might not be the best technique, and my instructor immediately put me to shame with much shorter, faster and more dynamic looking turns down the same run, but it was a real step up for my skiing :smile: :D I'm so happy that I linked turns, without traversing across the whole run haha. There were a couple moments in there where I had to fight for my balance a bit but I got through and it looks quite smooth to me!


Any further tips and comments always appreciated, but either way I'm stoked about my skiing here!
 

scandium

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Looking good!
 

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