Once a Snowplow always a Snowplow. I don't care that PSIA renamed it about 20 years ago !
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Stuck in the wedge
- Thread starter François Pugh
- Start date
This pretty much a dupe of all others but here goes anyway.
Our school called it "Power Wedge"
I never taught it and got penalized by the system for that. It is an easy way to protect your students and make the parents feel good as most of us oldsters were shown the "Snowplow turn" early in our career. Problem is the little darlings knees have no pain receptors yet and find they can follow their older siblings by locking the plow into a straight down hill "PowerWedge".
Best way out of it is force them into a Traverse while lifting the uphill ski up and down. Plow into a turn then tap the new uphill. Forces them to be "French Fries" Ugh...
Just say No-PIZZA.
Both my grand brats went straight to parallel. Learned the wedge for liftline stops later. They aren't pretty and their turns are a skidded mess of backseat and stem combos, but they are shortswinging them and learned to hockey stop-spray their Daddo with snow this year.
The best part of teaching grandkids is they are not paying customers kids. They can be laughed at, threatened, and called Babies...
Yeh I know.. Meanie...
Speaking of meanie.
Thread drift Alert...
Out of control skiing needs to be enforced by ticket pull. When mommy and daddy get involved, mandatory lessons for junior or beat it. New ticket purchases now involve names so blacklist should be enforceable. Now that the "Big Brothers" are buying up all the ski hills, I would think they could worry a little more about how they could be letting (play on words here) "drunk" skiers get in their "car" and "drive" into a crowd. It's what it amounts to. I hate to give them that power, but my brats were warned day one to always look uphill cause their biggest risk of injury is getting creamed by some high-school linebacker on the mountain for the first time.
Before V$$$ bought us we had a first timer discount ticket that kept them off the big hill.
All hints of discounts gone now...
Apologize for the rant, but positive we have all had at least a close call...
Our school called it "Power Wedge"
I never taught it and got penalized by the system for that. It is an easy way to protect your students and make the parents feel good as most of us oldsters were shown the "Snowplow turn" early in our career. Problem is the little darlings knees have no pain receptors yet and find they can follow their older siblings by locking the plow into a straight down hill "PowerWedge".
Best way out of it is force them into a Traverse while lifting the uphill ski up and down. Plow into a turn then tap the new uphill. Forces them to be "French Fries" Ugh...
Just say No-PIZZA.
Both my grand brats went straight to parallel. Learned the wedge for liftline stops later. They aren't pretty and their turns are a skidded mess of backseat and stem combos, but they are shortswinging them and learned to hockey stop-spray their Daddo with snow this year.
The best part of teaching grandkids is they are not paying customers kids. They can be laughed at, threatened, and called Babies...
Yeh I know.. Meanie...
Speaking of meanie.
Thread drift Alert...
Out of control skiing needs to be enforced by ticket pull. When mommy and daddy get involved, mandatory lessons for junior or beat it. New ticket purchases now involve names so blacklist should be enforceable. Now that the "Big Brothers" are buying up all the ski hills, I would think they could worry a little more about how they could be letting (play on words here) "drunk" skiers get in their "car" and "drive" into a crowd. It's what it amounts to. I hate to give them that power, but my brats were warned day one to always look uphill cause their biggest risk of injury is getting creamed by some high-school linebacker on the mountain for the first time.
Before V$$$ bought us we had a first timer discount ticket that kept them off the big hill.
All hints of discounts gone now...
Apologize for the rant, but positive we have all had at least a close call...
Agree.
By the time most kids get to the second lesson, i will have introduced most of them to side slipping, stork turns, and 1,000 steps.
I do NOT "drill" them, but throw the concepts in at the beginning of a run. Then here and there briefly during pauses where the terrain is less interesting for anything else. In steeper sections work on J-turns, linked J-turns, and then various forms of follow the leader, including follow me, and alternately one of the kids, in rotation. I don't demo the wedge after they can ski in control, either. When they follow me, i make parallel turns when the whole group is synchronized and flowing nicely. I may come back to a slow wedge if there is a section of challenging terrain & the capability levels in the group are too diverse. All the while coaching shaping their turns, and turning up hill for speed control. By the time they can follow lane changes or funnels and such, many are skiing mostly parallel. If a park-'n-rider sails past and people turn to look, I'll ask the group to analyze what they see & think.
