Snow storm skiing

[tball]

Lessons are great if you can afford them and can book one on a storm day. If you can't, get out there and ski the crud repeatedly, lap after lap.

I believe that 3D snow will tell you when you are doing it wrong, while 2D snow will let you unwittingly ski poorly with little consequence. You'll get there faster with good lessons, but you can still get there without.

 

[tball]

Since I made a case for mileage, I should show my kid skiing better than the previous video I posted, where the sun-baked crud kicked his butt. This is more typical of his skiing and the chopped-up but not yet bumped-up conditions we try to ski repeatably when available, requiring similar technique to tracked powder:



@GA49, you mentioned in your OP how exhausting it is skiing conditions you described. I think fitness is a key element in improving off-piste skiing. Many can't get the laps in because they are too worn out. If you begin with a higher fitness level, you'll be able to get more repetitions in tiring conditions. As your technique improves, there's a virtuous cycle where skiing in those conditions will eventually become much easier.

 

[Crank]

Untracked is a lot smoother and easier than tracked.

For tracked I like to keep speed up. Although you have to be solid to do that without getting too rocked around and you will get rocked around. A strong core is, I think, important when skiing these conditions with speed. In both untracked and the cut up storm skiing OP describes I am likely to ski a straighter line. On groomers my skis are often at 90 degrees or even more to fall line as I like to carve long wide turns and scrub speed by traveling across and up before eventually shifting with to uphill ski and carving around.

IMO bump skills don't come into play until stuff is more tracked up and starting to form into little piles. At that point you can ski around and bounce off the piles employing some bump techniques.

 

[severou]

If you have skis that are heavy and stiff enough, start by imagining every pile as an enemy. It MUST be destroyed, attack it. Full commit on downhill leg and go. Rip through them, turn through them, make them not so fluffy anymore.

If you want to have more of playful approach learn to pivot. This works a lot easier with rocketed soft tip and tail skis, try to skid/slarve through every pile. To practice you can ski any spine like snow(side of the groomer) and try to make a spray of snow flying off the spine on every turn, turn release edge, turn release etc

As practice goes ski as much trees and irregular snow as you can. Afternoon destroyed refrozen groomers are great. The more it hurts the better, ski snow you hate.

Lastly fitness. Or maybe this is the first thing? many people can ski many hours on groomers(because it is easy once you are an intermediate) but are done after few runs of bad chop. How to get more fit? Doing stairs, both up AND down, you have to go down this is the absorption you need. If you live next to ski resort see if they have trails there, do loops on those, first walk down then run down, trail running is an amazing training for skiing, you learn to absorb shock, your knees and ankles get ridiculously strong and you get fast and more balanced. It is also very fun, running downhill on technical trails is similar to skiing tree lines, mental state and flow are almost same for me at least.