AccidentalChef

In for Saturday and Monday here... anyone want to carpool up from Denver?

Ink, I didn't get your second message about heading to the 1 lift until I got home... I ended up leaving just after 1:00, and even then barely got to class on time. Snow wasn't so bad today, eh?

Heading out the door now... I'll be on the 1 or 6 lifts most likely... from the looks of things, on the Dupraz.

Only got a few days in December, unfortunately, but things are still improving. Yesterday, Jen told me to drive my rear knee into my heelside turns, and my chatter problems went away. My toesides are feeling pretty good, and I think I'm angulating well... Heelsides are still hard though, but I think it's more confidence than anything. I wouldn't say I'm getting good yet, but I'm getting a lot less bad :D. Hopefully I'll see you up there on Monday.

I may be at breck/keystone this Saturday, or I may stick with Lovey. I've got a friend who is interested in carving, but only has the 5 mountain pass. I'll talk to him. Ink: I don't have class til 4 on Mondays, so I can ride til 2 (or til 3, if I want to show up to class in my gear). We'll have to meet up.

I'm still planning on Loveland tomorrow... I'll probably be there from open til about noon. I think I've got class at 2:00 tomorrow (should probably find that out... along with what time I have class today). Steve

Friday is no good... gotta watch the niece all day, and I'm not sure she's ready for a ski day (she turns 4 in March). Sunday might work... I just hope it's less crowded than Monday and today were.

Loveland on Tuesday will probably be good for me, but I might need to leave by 1:00 or so... I'll have to check my schedule.

I had a pretty decent breakthrough at Loveland today... I'm starting to consistently be able to keep my hands in front, shoulders level, and feed the board through the turns at the same time. The snow was soft, so it was easy to hold an edge, but I could definitely feel the difference when I did it right... the turns just felt clean when I did everything at once. Doing it right also got rid of the feeling t hat I might fold the nose... I think I was keeping my weight too far forward in the last half of the turn. I could list half a dozen more issues that just went away today... I even made some clean turns on the steeper parts of Richard's. I'm still getting more edge on toeside than heelside, and I need to work on looking into the turn on my heelside, but I feel like I'm almost ready to get out the WCR after today. Thanks again for all the help guys... hopefully I can get up on a weekend soon.

Fun stuff. I managed to miss the entire month of November due to school and other issues, but it looks like I picked a great day to get back into it.

Glad to hear your season is off to a good start. Cycling really does keep the legs in good shape for carving. I had an amazing 3 days at Solitude last spring... A powder day on the Dupraz, and 2 groomer days on the WCR. If I absolutely had to leave Colorado, I think I could survive if I were close enough to the cottonwood canyons.

I thought the same things... I'm not the biggest fan of the red and yellow on the front page. It wouldn't be enough to keep me from getting the bindings, but I would rather have all the metal parts be the same color.

I had to take Monday and Wednesday off this week for school related stuff, so I'm going to try to make up a day this weekend. Not sure which yet.

So I took a friend from school up to Loveland last Friday... it turns out that he's been riding for 8 years and has spent a ton of time working on his carving. After two runs of watching him, I made him change his stance from duckfoot to something like 30/24, and started passing on all the advice you guys have given me. He picked up on all of that really quickly and was doing really well by the end of the day. He wants to try hard boots now, but my 24.5 mondo boots are never going to work for him. Does anyone have some boots he could try out? If they're intec, he can ride my Burton. If not, he'll need some bindings and a board to try too. I'm going to try to bring him up sometime on the weekend so he can start learning from someone much better than me.

My schedule is pretty open this weekend... I'm going up Friday for sure, so I might be a bit tired on Saturday. They were grooming between the 1 and 2 chair today (is that the 6?) so there's a chance the crowds might spread out this weekend. Cocoa Porter sounds intriguing...

Had an awesome day today... started out a bit shaky, but that's pretty normal for me at this point. I followed some of the ski racers a few runs trying to copy their drills, and that seemed to help a bit. Having an actual ski pole to hold in front of me might have worked even better, but just thinking about hand position helped. I had a small breakthrough after that, and started thinking of turns as right and left, rather than toe and heel. That helped me keep my shoulders facing forward more. I got the confidence up to make a few runs on Richard's, but the thing that really made me happy was my last run of the day. I went back to Mambo and got down without a single skidded turn. On that run, I never got going fast enough that I had to think about skidding to control speed... it might have been my slowest run of the day. Today seems like the day I finished catching up on last season and started moving forward for this season.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to brave weekend crowds yet, but even weekdays are getting packed... yesterday was, anyway. I wish I could get more consistent, but getting a good feel for what I should be doing will lead me there eventually. The biggest problem I have right now seems to be remembering everything I need to do to really nail the turn, since I really have to do everything you guys have taught me at the same time.

Today started out pretty rough... I'm not sure exactly what I did but I wrecked hard on a transition. It took me a few minutes to catch my breath, and a few runs to get my confidence back. After that, though, things started getting better. I looked through my turns, tried to keep from sitting on the toilet, and really worked on getting the board up on edge. I had a few sets of turns that I'd put among my best ever. I was much more in control of my speed than normal, and keeping my turns in a smaller area of the slope than usual. It's probably going to take a while before I can consistently do what I did a couple of times today, but I feel like it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Spillway opened up this morning, and Richard's looked just about ready to ride... it was being groomed today, and looked like it had solid coverage. Things look good for this weekend!

I'm going to try to get up there, but I'm not sure if it'll happen yet... I've got a lot of work to get done this weekend, and if I have to choose between Sunday and Monday, I'll dodge the crowds and go Monday. I might be persuaded to do a shorter day on Sunday if there are going to be a lot of hardbooters there, but after getting hit on Wednesday I'm a bit worried about crowds.

I rode the dupraz yesterday, and got some good practice feeding the board through the turn. I was having trouble rotating my upper body far enough on heelsides, since my binding angles are so shallow, but I think I can adapt what I figured out to my alpine boards. I also worked on controlling the energy of the board coming out of the turn, and had a couple of airborne transitions... nothing big, but definitely fun. If I can do it on the dupraz, I think I can do it on the old Burton on friday.

Should be open this weekend... between all the snow the last 2 days and the snowmaking going on, it looks like coverage will be good. I talked to a patroller up there today, and he said Spillway will probably be open tomorrow, with Richards not long after. Just thought some of you might like to know.

Any word on the cheapest pass? I heard rumours there was a 2 for 1 deal on winter park / copper passes for students last year, but I missed it. If that's going on again, it might be worth it for me to pick one up.

I worked on this a lot yesterday, and it did make a huge difference. It made my lines cleaner, but it also pulled the rest of my body into a better position on my heelsides, and kept me from sitting on the toilet through the turns. It also kept me from t-boning some straightlining jibber. I don't feel like I'm leaning back... on my transitions that feel really smooth, I feel like I'm pushing on my back foot before my front foot coming out of the turn. Could that be what you mean by pulling forward? When I do it correctly it is a small move and I have to time it really well. I'll have to focus on this part next time I'm on the hill. When do you think you can get up there? Hopefully soon, but I also hope I get a few more days to remember everything from last season so you don't have to yell at me quite as much. Steve

It seems like it is the tail washing out. I'll have to pay close attention to where my weight is... I'm trying to consistently do that down unweighting thing, and I think I'm pushing the board through the turns (I shift my weight to the rear throughout the turn). Maybe I'm initiating the turn with my weight too far forward. I'll try the drills Mario mentioned too and see if one of them makes it click. I really want to get this figured out on the Burton so when I get out the Prior and add 5m to my sidecut radius, I can do something other than skid or go mach 3.