liquidfeet
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Here's what it might look like.
YIKES! I think the important part was that you kept trying and it eventually worked, but after a long distance.@Susan L : Glad you're okay!
Picture from where I stopped. Slide started about where my ski buddy, in blue jacket, is standing.
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This reminds me I did have to grab a beginner student once to stop him from ramming into a lift station. That crash might have killed him. This was an adult, a big guy, whose brain went totally blank on the bunny hill after his first turn. He headed straight down the trail towards a lift station, gaining speed. He was frozen in panic. I sped down to catch up with him, grabbed his arm near the bottom, and blocked his travel with my skis. We both went down all tangled up, but no injuries thankfully. That was luck.I tried using my pole tip once with pretty decent leverage and it barely slowed me down.
I have had to crash into a sliding student once. While I would generally agree with @nopoleskier that it is a bad idea, one of my local group's ladies in her late sixties took a spill on a blue on her second turn, and even though we had discussed self arresting ad nauseam and the others had used what we had preached, she did not make a single move to arrest herself and was sliding ever faster head first towards a steep black with a tree island in the middle at the end. I matched her speed side slipping and literally skied into her shoulder and while we both fell, we both stopped about 20 feet from the roll over. She was fine and told me she was too stunned to react. Many ski resort fatalities are from people impacting a tree. Some ski into them, but at our area, many fall and then slide into them. I will take mutual injuries if I trust that my skiing into a slide for lifer might save that person from likely death.
I have also once been saved my my dear husband on his snowboard, on a much steeper icier run in CA, when my tele binding pulled off the ski on the first turn and I was also so stunned that I did not react. This was also long before I had ever heard of self arresting. Not sure how he was able to keep good edge hold on his board, but he did.
Watching the scary video of the slide through the bumps reminds me of how many students I have had that think the moguls will stop them. They won't! Had a young woman student cross her tips after the crux, almost at the bottom of a double black diamond. Again, a man came in and stopped her.
The most memorable intervention, wish I had the video, was a snowboard instructor who happened to to be almost directly in the path of a young woman sliding in another double black. He literally reached out and grabbed her as she was heading for a fairly big cliff band. Good thing she was tiny. The video was unbelievable, so was her luck.
That reminds me of my first ski experience at Stowe. It was the 8th grade 3-day ski trip so I'd been skiing for two seasons (straight skis) and was an adventurous intermediate. The only other place I'd skied with chairlifts was Whiteface. It was frigid that day. I was skiing with my classmate who grew up skiing out west. We were taking a lap, then going inside to warm up, then riding up the gondola for another run. We were skiing the wide groomer under the gondola. She fell and started sliding. She wasn't moving that fast so I could keep up with her and even get ahead of her, but I had no idea what to do. I was surprised she wasn't slowing down but was instead picking up speed. The worry was that she seemed to be heading towards one of the gondola towers. She got her feet below her (skis were on) and came to a stop not too far from a tower. I think we didn't bother to do another run.Haven't read the whole thread-
I'll add DO NOT TRY TO STOP SOMEONE IN A SLIDE!
While your instinct may say- Go help- try and block them. Don't do it.
I watched people trying to stop a slider on Wilderness at Whiteface (Steep black)
The people trying to help all got taken out and got hurt!!
Shout helpful tips- Yes, dig in with your poles, hands feet anything.
My niece burned a hole in her gloves after a slide at Gore- Rumor and Lies are open at Gore and already some harrowing slides..
Do they keep their poles?@marzNC at our ski area we practice self arrest with steep and deep camp students on the bottom quarter of a steep black run with a gentle rollout to flat with zero obstacles. We take their skis and and have them slide down on the side of the run after coaching them on the steps to take. Varying degrees of success. This is usually done the first morning of the four day camp.
Just uploaded a short clip about self-arrest. Let me know if you have any questions,
Ursula
And if you want to see some spectacular crashes, some with arresting, see Bob Barnes video on "Ragdoll"Yes, the first one is me. It took me about four tries to finally come to a stop! Things happen fast when you go over on an over 40 degree slope. ;o)
Ursula