snip

S. Gione is right, take some skiing lessons to brush up your skiing skills.
One more thing: skis have become better in the past years. I replaced my
very old skis with carving skis - and it did make a great difference.

Rent a pair of new skis, do some training for a day or two - and enjoy the
rest of your stay.


I don't think you forget how to ski, but remembering may take time depending on the equipment you
are lumped with.

My second week took 4 days to get to where I was on the last day of my first time on skis. I've
always ended up with rented 185-190 non-carve planks, and the first day or so each time felt like a
nightmare trying to turn them. By the Wednesday, there were definitely muscles I never knew I had!!!

Last yr I got (newish) 175 carvers for the first time, and was back to normal by then end of the
first warmup run. I've never been able to turn so easily, handle the bumps, and link so many turns.

I don't know what it is, but in Lech I was advised I was not expert enough for carve skis for my
4th/5th week on snow, but in Les Gets they were dishing out carvers to newbies.

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It's not a puzzle. Carvers are designed to turn easily.

All skis turn by a combination of being bendy and having a sidecut (ie
narrower in the middle than at the ends. Your weight and
centrifugal force bend the skis, so they attempt to follow the curve
so created. The sidecut increases the bendyness and accentuates the
curve. QED.

However, all skis are a compromise. A carver ski will not be so
stable in the straight line, and if you ski very fast or are very
heavy for the length of ski the amount of turn created will be
excessive and the skis will feel unpleasant as they try to 'overturn'
inside the line you are setting.

At speed, too, it can be difficult to 'ride' the carve in a
long-radius turn if the ski is too soft.

There is an additional problem with some skis (especially with French
ones ?) that they lack torsional stiffness, and tend to twist out of
the correct curved shape. This is accentuated in carvers by the
sidecut. To test this, hold a ski upright in front of you with the
tail held firmly between your feet. Try and twist the tip
longitudinally. A good ski will twist very little, a bad ski will
twist a lot. This is nothing to do with bendiness, which is a choice
you make - more bendy for a slower skier, less bendy for a faster
skier. Excessive twist means that the ski doesn't adopt the correct
curved shape all along its length, but (usually the tip) twists out of
line.

In summary - the advice you were given in Lech was exactly wrong -
newbies should ALWAYS have soft, short carvers, experts may prefer
longer, stiffer, less sidecut skis depending on the sort of skiing
they are planning.

HTH.

Jim Hutton