Corey Posted January 14, 2008 Report Share Posted January 14, 2008 Conditions were pretty harsh at a local ski hill yesterday - rock hard grooming that quickly polished to man-made yellow ice in spots at around -22C (-8F). Quite hard to set an edge with any confidence. After trying a bunch of stuff I've read on here, I ended up going towards a low/compressed style with high edge pressure. Any sloppyness resulted in me losing the edge and sliding out or going down. The breakthrough came as pure chance: I drove the board into the snow. Not pushing down onto the top of the board, but rather pushing the sidewall into the snow, like using a knife to cut cheese or trying to scrape mud off the bottom of your shoe. Whoa! Now I know you can't actually push the sidewall into the snow with any reasonable force while making a turn, but the mere attempt to do this made a huge difference. I was laying out turns that I didn't think were possible just minutes before. :D It drew a lot of attention at this small hill - I got a LOT of comments! One time getting off the lift a group of boarders exclaimed "there he is!" and asked me a bunch of questions about alpine boarding and the setup I was using. They couldn't see my ear-to-ear smile through my facemask... :D --- Later in the afternoon one (of two) chair lifts stopped working. My wife and I were just 3 groups from getting on the chair. Lucky timing for us! We got to watch the process to get people off chairs, that looks a little sketchy! Maybe it was just the process at the small town Manitoba resort that was sketchy. ;) The line ups got ridiculous very quickly for the one remaining chair so we just left. I don't even want to think about how long the people were stuck on that chairlift... :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
queequeg Posted January 14, 2008 Report Share Posted January 14, 2008 I've had several breakthrough days on ice! I think it forces you to really think about your technique and really helps you understand what works for you and what doesn't. And yeah, people just STARE at you when you're railing turns on the ice. I definitely can't ride as aggressively on ice as I can on other conditions, but the harder I push it on the ice the better my hero days look. I think railing on ice is like practicing for a pool tournament on billiards tables ... after a few games with those tiny little pockets and long-ass tables, moving back to those those itty bitty bar tables with their giant balls and gaping pockets is a blind-mans game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corey Posted January 15, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2008 Is it beneficial to apply this same pressure even on a 'hero' snow day? I definitely had a lot of time to spend on technique, and the frequent slams helped to focus on what wasn't working. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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