Mogul Mayhem
In the span of two years, I’ve moved from the bunny hill to moguls–albeit, inadvertently.
I was riding the Grandview Express at Sierra-at-Tahoe on Monday when my boyfriend suggested going down Castle, a black diamond that I’d tried before and liked. This time as we crested the hill, we saw a run covered in moguls that looked like large marshmallows fenced in by trees on both sides. Sierra-at-Tahoe calls it an unending mogul field for truly hardcore skiers! I took off my skis and walked down the hill, passing the worst of it, while my boyfriend carried my skis and repeatedly apologized. Surprisingly, I wasn’t mad at him; instead, I felt disappointed in myself for not dipping my skis into the marshmallow mess.
Halfway down, I clicked back into my skis and tackled the smaller moguls with my boyfriend’s guidance, traversing through the worst of it and turning with the help of pole plants. At the bottom, I exclaimed “I love pole plants.” Suddenly, skills such as pole plants and side slips had a purpose, and I was bubbling with new questions to ask my ski instructor during the lesson I’d scheduled in the afternoon.
Paired with Kimmie, I skied over jumps in the terrain park (something I’d never before dared to do) and then learned skills, such as:
1. Side slipping forward and backward with a transition
2. Edging or carving by leaning my knees toward the hill
3. Pressuring the front of my boot and flexing the heel; she said to learn forward and pretend like I am trying to spread peanut butter evenly across the top of the boot
4. Facing down the mountain; she had me hold my ski poles shoulder width apart and keep them facing down the mountain
5. Stepping into the turn with the inside ski
6. On moguls, turning on the top of the mogul with a pole plant and a hop
7. Leaning forward on jumps and moguls (on jumps, she said to go into it with knees bent, straighten up at the top, pull my legs up and keep my arms in front of me)
Kimmie led me to the sides of the groomed trails over small jumps and up walls. At the end of the lesson, she took me to Lower Dynamite, a bumpy black run underneath the Grandview lift. This time, I felt much more equipped to tackle the moguls that awaited.
I'd love any other suggestions for how to ski moguls better, and visit
my blog to see more of my skiing adventures.