Snow Advice
Freeride Skiing
The cultural revolution within skiing and the birth of 'Freeride'
owes much to snowboarding as well as to an evolved state of mind.
Fortunately the ski has found a way of quickly adapting to this new
skier identity and the gulf that once separated the boarder cult from
the alpine skier, has gone the way of the monoski. All thanks to freeride.
A combination of attitude, technique and new ski technology has meant
that there are no longer bounds to the skiers capabilities, nor to
his spirit.
Lessons to free movement and mind…
Reach out and touch the Corduroy. For a decade or so we have witnessed
boarders linking exquisite semicircular troughs in the matted corduroy,
hand brushing the snow as the body reaches that critical angle of
attack before the edge looses its grip. The arrival of 'parabolic'
or carving skis has similarly opened up the limits of the turn and
stretched the parameters of technique. The balance of power has been
handed back to the ski. Building up speed on a well-groomed piste,
your momentum allows you bank in to the slope and allow your planks,
more evenly weighted than before, to carve tight and fast arcs in
the snow. Open your stance, reach out for the snow and feel the rush.
Lengthen the turn once in the powder The influence of snowboarding
upon skiing has also seen the stretching out of the traditionally
tight powder turn. Powder skiing has long been a refined art of do-or-die,
characterized by rhythmic S's down the fall-line, occupying a limited
part of the mountain. For years now snowboarders have demonstrated
a different use of the mountainside - improvised arcs which exploit
all that the terrain has to offer. Now the Freeride skier has adopted
this tactic, permitted to do so by the wider cut of all-terrain skis
that enable him/her to float closer to the surface of the snow. For
the Freerider, a descent in powder has become a lot less tiring, much
faster and a lot more fluid than before. For the first time we can
see boarders and skiers cutting the same shapes and playing with the
terrain in a similar way. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
By adopting a stable stance, weight slightly towards the heel (not
thrown back) and evenly distributed over both skis, you can make your
own mark in the virgin snow. The increased speeds experienced will
of course increased the centrifugal throw in the turns so keep legs
strong and the upper body steady and responsive.
Improvisation:
On and Off-piste
Another characteristic of the freeride is the skiers use of terrain
- piste or no piste. To go beyond the bounds set out by the piste
markers and make the most of what the mountain has to offer. Groomed
carve turns one moment and drifts, cornices, bumps and gullies the
next - allow your skis to take you beyond the crowds to places where
the only boundaries are those to your imagination.
If skis had not suddenly taken that much needed leap into the 21st
Century, then these free spirits would today be expressing themselves
in the same way, but with a single board strapped to their feet. The
threat from snowboarding developed into the healthiest of competition
for the ski industry and, today, freerider and boarder occupy the
same spaces as well as the same slot on the halfpipe. This is not
to pretend that the two rival camps have suddenly united - rather
that the skiing fraternity has splintered in two: skiers and freeriders.
A good friend of mine recently traded in his board for a pair of all-terrain
skis - a pretty small step in itself but symbolic of a giant leap
in the fortunes of skiing, which has caught up with and applied the
breaks to the all-conquering snowboard.
The
moves
Out goes the Daffy, back-scratcher and 360 and in comes stylish and
creative tricks, another concession to our boarding brethren. The
tip cross or 'iron cross' is the defining signature of the freerider
- a simple crossing of the ski tips while in the air yet an image
which now graces the covers of ski magazines the world over.
To pull off an iron cross, approach the jump as you would any other
- at the summit of the jump, reach for the sky to give yourself
maximum air time. Once air born, keep your arms in front and your
legs bunched up beneath you (see picture), then it is simply a case
of crossing your tips and adopting the pose for the imaginary cameraman.
Once the basics are tried and tested, then you could graduate to
an 'Iron Cross Grab' or an 'Iron Cross Heli'. We can all dream…
The stunts
Gone are the days of long hesitations before attempting a 4 metre
drop or before negotiating steeps and trees - freeride is all about
a fluidity of movement and improvisation. Freeride competitions
value variety and the individual interpretation or the mountain
above one-off feats of madness.
The Gear
The Iglu.com ski test review review has just been launched so click
here for the complete overview of what's hot and what's
not in the world of carving, freeride and freestyle.
For more on all-terrain skiing, click
here. Or, for more equipment news, here
