TPS Archives

Reprints From The Professional Skier

Fall 1999 - "Bring New Tools To School: An Instructor's Guide to the New Skis and Their Uses" by Victor Gerdin

This article is reprinted from The Professional Skier. All copyrights apply. Please see our copyright and disclaimer notice page.

Wise is the instructor who is quick to grasp the ins and outs of emerging technologies in the snowsports industry; if you maintain a polite distance from the latest equipment, you may find yourself struggling to keep up with students who know more about it than you do. This brief overview provides basic details about some of the gear you'll see under your students' feet this season, including skiboards, twintips, extreme carving skis, and midfats. Regardless of your perceptions of these skis ("I'm already teaching students on this stuff," "I can't wait to try these out," "I've heard about them but they're unlikely to affect me, so I'm not going to waste my time with them," etc.), realize that each merits your attention by virtue of its increasing popularity on the slopes.

With the season quickly approaching, now is the time to learn all you can about the design and performance characteristics of the new gear. In your quest for information, be sure to seek other resources on these tools, discuss them with others who have used them and, above all, get some mileage on them as soon as you can.

Once, Twice, Thrice Removed...

Interestingly, most of the equipment discussed here has traces of skateboarding and inline skating in its DNA. From skateboard parks came halfpipes, and people on skateboards, inline skates, and even BMX bikes all found the new digs to their liking. Featuring many of the cultural influences and movement patterns of these sports, snowboarding emerged and established its own playground, the snow halfpipe. Recently, skiboards and twin-tip skis have continued to blur the distinction between the movements of skateboarding, inline skating, snowboarding, and skiing. And what about extreme carving skis? With the promise of easy carving, this tool puts equipment performance on equal footing with the user's skill, creating an even more homogenous mix on the slopes.

All told, there's more gear and gadgetry than ever before, and that's the beauty of what's happening with snowsports. The bottom line is, more people are finding ways to use the mountain environment, and in the long run that's what will fuel participation and growth within our industry.

Skiboards: 90+/- centimeters, 3- to 6-meter turning radius

In the simplest of terms, skiboards are inline skates for the snow. They spin, they slide, they jump, they're easy, they're cheap (compared to regular skis and bindings), and they turn like crazy. Anyone who has watched the Winter X-Games last winter knows that once you get the hang of them, you can fly--and it doesn't really matter which way you land. Describing the endless possibilities of the skiboard, Allen St. John in his article "Short and Sweet" (The Professional Skier, fall 1998) pondered, "Is it a teaching tool? Is it just a very short ski? Is it a sport unto itself? All of the above ... ?" In most cases, the latter holds: Skiboards can have a specific application-or just be something different and fun to do.

You have to decide for yourself though, and the only way is to put on some skiboards; and get in the halfpipe. What kind of turns can you make with your body laid out horizontally? Try to forego the turn entirely and come back down into the bottom of the pipe backwards-these tools allow you to do that! Can you catch some air? Now, how about some tricks? Snowboards help you be a kid again and play in the snow. And for most people, that's reason enough to use them.

Once you're comfortable on skiboards, try the teaching suggestions on pages 11-12. Then get to work creating your own lesson plan for skiboards and the other tools mentioned here. As you know, personal experience is the best teaching reference of all.

Twin-Tips: 120 to 140 centimeters, 6- to 9-meter turn radius

Twin-tips are simply another version of skiboards. Or maybe skiboards are just a variation on twin-tips. Whatever the case may be, twin-tips are longer--available from 120 to 140 cm--and therefore offer more stability for the enthusiast who wants to perform sophisticated tricks and reach higher speeds. Twin-tips evoke the movement patterns of their predecessors: skateboarding, inline skating, BMX riding ... even gymnastics.

Interestingly, twin-tips were introduced more than 20 years ago as a product of the freestyle skiing era of the 70s. Freestylers favored these skis because they enabled them to ski backward in their ballet routines.

Extreme Carve: 120 to 180 centimeters, 9- to 18-meter turn radius

Some people say these skis evolved from carving on snowboards because even the most basic snowboard seemed to carve better than any ski of the time. Some say that extreme carve skis may have been where the whole shaped ski revolution began. Whatever the first pair of super-sidecut or parabolic ski you remember--Kniessl Ergo, or Elan SCX, or the "S" ski (and I'm sure there were others)-we all looked at those 160 or 180 cm skis skeptically and jokingly as duck feet or clown skis. But we soon discovered that they lay down an arc like nobody's business ... and it took minimal effort to do so.

Many instructors said it was too easy-that extreme carving skis were "cheater" skis. Challenging a deep-seated belief that carving is something that takes time to learn, the new design made it possible for all levels of skiers to perform this maneuver-even if they hadn't put in the mileage to acquire those hallowed skills. Only the best skiers in the world had devoted that kind of time, many argued, and using shorter, funny-looking skis to do the same thing was, well, cheating. Carving was the measuring stick of our sport (maybe it still is). If you carved, you were fast. If you carved, you were better on ice. If you carved, you could ski anywhere on any snow. If you carved, you were just a better skier.

But as more and more people began to experience the thrilling sensation of carving, the issue of whether or not they 11 cheated" to obtain it seemed irrelevant. Now, carving is a discipline itself, just like mogul skiing (think of Olympic gold medalist Jonny Moseley). Some people find extreme carving so enjoyable that they prefer it exclusively to any other type of alpine skiing. For some, the sensation of carving incredibly sharp arcs provides the same thrill that jumping and doing tricks provides for others. And people like me may find it one of the most satisfying aspects of skiing, because the carving feeling was the ultimate goal on skis for such a long time. Now that carving feeling is easier to sense than ever and is only limited by how far the skier wants to move to the inside to lay the ski on its edge.

Technique and equipment have a key role in providing carving sensations, and lifters, in particular, enhance the ability to carve on these skis. Lifters increase leverage and thereby make it easier to "lift" a ski onto its edge, and keep it there. Think about the most effective carving tool--a hockey skate. Its carving base is very narrow and is located several inches below the bottom of the boot. At the risk of oversimplifying, the narrower a ski is underfoot, the further it is "lifted" away from the boot and the easier it is to achieve a higher edge angle. Higher edge angles result in more reverse camber (especially from skis with big sidecuts), and extreme reverse camber results in an extreme carve.

Extreme carving skis have found their way into demonstration skiing events too. Competitors in the World Synchro Skiing Championships use extreme carving skis with huge lift almost exclusively. The sight of eight skiers synchronizing carved arcs instead of just body movements is inspiring--to skiers of all ability levels. Almost all of the demonstrators at the 16th Interski Congress (the international gathering of ski instructors held in Norway last spring) were also on extreme carving skis. It was as if Interski's statement to the world was that carving is still the ultimate measure of our sport and profession.

Midfats: 160 to 200 centimeters, 18- to 24-meter turn radius

If extreme carving skis make carving easier, than midfats make everything else easier. But let's back up a generation. Before midfats there were fat skis, a wide ski designed for powder skiing. Fat skis allow the skier to ski on the snow instead of in the snow, which makes skiing deep snow inherently easier because the skier has to push less snow around in order to turn. (Anyone lucky enough to have gone heli-skiing in Canada or Alaska knows you don't even bring your own skis but use the powder boards provided by the heli-ski operation--the fattest skis available, 75+ mm underfoot.)

These skis allow you to "plane" on top of the snow much like a boardsailer planes on top of the water once the board is moving fast enough to play off the water's surface pressure. For some people, these skis make the difference from not being able to make a turn at all, to linking powder turn after powder turn almost effortlessly and skiing all day.

But it wasn't until manufacturers experimented with putting bigger sidecuts on fat skis that they recognized they were onto something big. While fat skis allow powder hounds to romp, midfats (skis that are 65 to 74 mm underfoot) help skiers cruise the groomed, as well as the crud--and even moguls--that much easier. Ski manufacturers have even built these skis to handle hard snow and ice. They're easy to edge, they float a little, and they turn with the greatest of ease. Midfats are designed to be skied in shorter lengths and therefore also have less swing weight. That's because the longer the ski, the more weight there is far away from your foot, causing the quick pivoting action to feel sluggish. Consequently, if you have to twist midfats in the bumps or on the steeps, well that's easier too.

Among the intermediate skiers who have tried them, midfats have helped inspire new levels of confidence and enjoyment. They allow skiers to ski more of the mountain, with less effort. Midfats are the ultimate "cheaters," but who cares? Like the other products mentioned here, they are helping revitalize interest in our sport--and that's far more important than debating about whether this equipment offers any shortcuts to fun.

Golf, tennis, hockey, baseball--nearly all sports have experienced new technologies that take performance to the next level, and it's happening to skiing like it's never happened before. Numerous new tools and options are available to our students, and they need our help to figure out how to translate these innovations into enjoyable snowsports experiences.

The new tools are here to stay, and they will more than likely keep changing for the better. So experiment on as much new stuff as you can. Not only will you be serving your students in the manner they deserve but you'll be pushing your own performance to the next level ... and don't be surprised if you have a ton of fun while you're at it.

A member of PSIA's Alpine Demonstration Team, Victor Gerdin is also the chairperson of PSIA's Steering Committee. He teaches skiing at Aspen, Colorado.