How to ski CHOPPED-UP powder on HARD-PACK 

Thanks for watching and leaving a comment. Exactly, speed and momentum is your friend. This is also how I ski powder. Have fun and enjoy winter :)

Wow, that was a great insight. Thanks for sharing. To be honest, most skiers out on the slope cannot ski because they do not know where to turn or what line to ski. Cheers, Tom

Thank you for watching and for sharing your thoughts. I can fully understand your concern regarding keeping your speed under control and not getting too tired. It is total BS that you should/can carve all the time and that it is not taxing on your legs. Carving is like driving a sports car without brakes and we just measured the pulse rating for 19y old racer on a racing track and it was 180. And high speed and tired legs are a bad combination. So instead of carving all the time I adapt my skiing to whatever slope pitch, type and snow conditions lies ahead. And also very importantly, how I feel. Since I have very solid basic skills and I instruct, coach and race, its not a problem for me to ski slowly and in control. I actually always ski in control, even if I race on a GS or SG track or slam bumps in the zipper line. Not faster for my skill level at any time. I always start slow and then increase speed. Sometimes I don't increase speed at all. Sometimes I ski very slowly but top to bottom. Believe it or not but Im always the first person down the mountain if the elevation is high. People overtake me all the time but they need to stop all the time. The wedge is very useful. I use it all the time. Check out my 3 Levels videos. First one you should be looking at would be 3 Levels of WEDGING. Because it teaches you outside ski pressure and angulation. I always start all my carving lessons with wedging. Next video would be the 3 Levels of PARALLEL SKIING since it teaches you how to go from WEDGING to PARALLEL SKIING. Just for curiosity check my BOOTY BAND video for true parallel skiing. Hope this all helps and please let me know how your skiing was this year. reg Tom

Oh no!!! Sorry to hear. Quick recovery :)

Exactly!!! I usually try to adapt my skiing to the terrain I'm skiing on. That means that my rhythm is not consistent through out even though there are segments where I'm linking turns straight in the fall line. I liked when you used the word "intelligent", I'm gonna use that in the future :) And yes, Kippis my friend and have a good weekend :)

Thank YOU for watching. T

The accident was in November 2000 so you must have been there in 1999. Or maybe in the winter of 2000. Terrible accident. I remember that the ones that survived had managed to run downhill past the train. Impossible of course in such a situation like that but smoke trawls up and that is good to know. Since that accident I try to always look for escape routes on lifts. Yes, the pow gets chopped out really quickly. However, on a dump day there is plenty to be skied under the chair lifts between the slopes as all the pros go to the ski routs and off-pist.

That's interesting, my son was born in 1979 and I've always told people he was 17 yrs old. He was going out every night partying. I remember because he got served alcohol everywhere he went and was underage. Maybe the age limit was 21? We both loved Kaprun except the lift lines were horrible. The Austrian snow boarders who made friends with my son (professional snowboarder at the time) said it was because of Germans. I guess everyone needs someone to blame.

Common problem. But this is exactly what you should be doing, shopping for turns and soft snow to turn on. All the best to you and have a great weekend :)

@@Triggerboy62 thanks, but e.g. Last time i was skiing there were hard packed moguls of 50 cm height in one slope where everybody had to go through. With soft patches its usually not that much of a problem, but hard pack, lots of people and rented gear that didn't fit made me ski like a total nood.

@@WaechterDerNacht sorry to hear of your bad experience. However, I have an easy fix. Dont link your turns. Make a turn and then go across the slope before you make your next turn. This way you will keep your speed under controll and you can shop for the perfect bump to turn over. I did this in Kaprun at the end of the day and it worked great. Just have to look out for "less skilled" skiers trying ski more in the fall line.

Great to hear! Trying my best to bring my audience real skiing tips and instruction. Hopefully you will soon ski in Taho :)

I also love how you check for uphill traffic before merging . Old school good manners and awareness …Long gone : / 😂

Good one, can I steal it?

@@Triggerboy62 I'm happy to share it with you. Please keep posting these insightful and entertaining videos!

Thanks for watching and for taking time and leaving a comment. Yes, its quite common to ski someones else's line in hopes it would be better that way but I really encourage my students to do the opposite. Like skiing powder :)

You can manage pressure by flexion and extension yes, but also edging will affect pressure. Especially if you are carving. Or did I misunderstand you?

We all do.....

Thanks for watching... typos.... need to hire someone proofreading... rats.... but thanks anyway :)

another thing...to mark snow areas please use line and circle or elipses insteads filled areas becouse below dont see snow. Whether...fantastic lesson about skiing strategy...

Hahaa.... I was just thinking today that many other ski channels have soooooo nice terrain to ski in.... Alps... Rockies... Japan... with clear blue skies, sun and huge mountains... and we are stuck on a small local hill in the middle of eternal dark polar winter.... with resorts cutting lighting because of the energy prices... But thanks for watching and luckily I have lots of memories and a few videos with those awesome conditions to look back at.... and forward to. Many of them :) Cheers, Tom

@@Triggerboy62 I don't really have the time or means to make a good video, but there's a video I would love to make - if you want to learn to ski, don't start with carving. So many videos are about carving, which only works on perfect slopes and leaves you ill-equipped for, anything else. Even on perfect runs, by 13:00, they have usually turned into credit that keeps you from carving. I think my approach would be to learn on crud. Get on a gentle slope, in crud, and maybe keep jumping up and down - just to get your balance down. It just seems a lot easier to me to learn on crud, and then learn how to carve, and then the other way around. I say this as someone who skis on the east coast of the United States, and got pretty good on groomers. And then, when I went out west to Colorado, and Whistler in Canada, almost none of those skills translated.

@@Triggerboy62 BTW - where do you film? I'm assuming somewhere in Eastern Europe?

Lucky you :)

Great question. Absolutely, you cannot carve in powder, skid your turns. In some cases when you ski a groomer with a hard flat base and powder on top you can carve but normally no. Up unweight the turn initiations. Make sure you watch my How to ski crud video. Cheers Tom

Simon A ski with some rocker in the tip and tail will help in variable snow conditions. It also depends on what you mean by fat. 88mm underfoot with rocker- camber- rocker profile like a Nordica Enforcer 88 or Volkl Kendo would be excellent example of skis that would work well in these conditions.

Wider skis are supposed to be better in terrain with lots of snow. I have skied some but I'm no expert on those kind of skis.

I know people who are going back to narrower skis when not in deep (12" plus) pow. I have a pair of 122 mm under foot skis and would say if you are a resort skier they are almost useless. Three times in last two years

Thank you for watching. Cheers, Tom

Good question. But you will still go through them. Just you will also go over them at the same time. If there is a bump underneath then your skis will sink into the soft snow but as soon as they run into the bump they will also go over the bump deep down in the soft snow. One of my favorite conditions are powder on bumps. Makes any sense? Cheers, Tom

@@Triggerboy62 What you say is absolutely correct, but this is also the problem for me. If the bumps aren't too high, I'll try to get a nice high edge angle on my skis and ski fast over them. That way my edges will slice through. However, if the bumps get bigger, you can't really ski fast because you will go over the bumps, which makes me lose my balance. In such conditions, I prefer skiing the icy parts. I tried skiing faster down the fall line in conditions where there was fresh snow on the bumps and I fell three times in 15 minutes and this never happens to me. So, this works above 1300 meters if there was only powder on the slopes at the beginning of the day. However, if the bumps are made of hard artificial snow, there is no way they'll be soft. I would be very happy if you could give me some tips.

Thanks for watching. I do have a narrow stance, yes. It's mainly because the way I ski I feel much more solid and my balance is better using both of my skis and boots and legs to cut through the snow piles closer together. Less terrain and snow variations impacting my legs separately both horizontally and vertically.

@@Triggerboy62 Thank you. Is the moment you start turning when you just crossed a pile, just to avoid danger of turning in the middle of a pile?

@@WSCOMPUTER I myself like to turn in the soft stuff when it's relatively flat like it is here. It's forgiving because it's not really deep. Just almost carve the turn, the ski will go. Won't get stuck because you follow your ski. When the bumps are higher and harder, you can ski right through them, and then you initiate the turn right on the top, riding off the back/side of the bump. But that's more like mogul skiing which is an entirely different topic than this video :) See how he also more carves than slides the turns: it'll never get your ski's stuck even if you turn in the middle of the pile. The amount of sliding you do is minimal and in my opinion always with the tail of the ski. You overload the backside of the ski which will brush away. This is the second way of speed control, on top of turn shape.

@@davesmulders3931 Thank you so much for such detailed answer and tips. Keep the series coming. Great job.

At 2:18 I am carving my turns because it is quite flat and there is a perfectly hard flat base under the chopped up powder. But other than that, its normal up-uweighted brushed basic parallel turns.

@@Triggerboy62 Thank you for your reply, I would normally ski the ice, its a great tutorial and lesson learned.

I do that too. I use a couple of different turn initiations. Flexing through the transition is one of them, but mainly when carving. In conditions like this its usually off a bump or a pile of snow.

It will depend on the weight and depth of the snow in the traverse.

That's not ALWAYS the best approach, conditions change, so should technique.

Thanks for watching and for the request but I am afraid there is not going to be any Turkish voice over as I have no contacts to anybody involved in skiing speaking your language. Sorry. Cheers, Tom

What is then?

Exactly, T