realskiers

At my home mountain, Supershapes are my daily driver and my focus is on developing PMTS movements. I also have an 88 waist ski that is used when skiing in groups or going on trips ? my fun ski so to speak. This week at Killington, had the good luck to ski mostly loose powder on slightly bumped up expert trails using the Kastle 88?s. As the week progressed, it was clear that I was using stemming moves much more frequently, even on moderate blue runs. Even when consciously thinking about making better movements, the stem continued ? very frustrating. The only fix would be to stop and just go back to some very basics, but, it was hard to revert back to movements that are automatic on Supershapes.

While I attribute the deterioration to just freeskiing harder trails and doing whatever needs to be done to make a turn, I wonder if wider skis are just technique robbers. I?m not complaining, freesking in tougher conditions is a good thing and loosens up the lunatic that lives in my brain. It?s a very nice problem to have.

I did get to ski a day with a level 3 instructor at Stowe, some of you know him as Epic who posts on Epic. He offered the advice to move my feet apart just a few more inches and it had a significant positive impact in the higher speed cruising runs we were doing. Getting feedback from a good set of eyes is a good thing, regardless of the school of skiing you believe in.

So to those who ski mostly on narrow waisted skis, do you have similar issues going wider.

your Stemming was mostly being caused by failure to tip/move down the hill effectively and without fear. Which your Mx88 are not doing you any favors on. Not because of the waist size but the stiffness and long sidecut. Tipping and pressuring movements alone on that ski are going to produce large turns even at speed. You need to add some steering in most instances to get that ski to turn quick enough without a stem. At least this is what I saw when I skied with you.

Some solutions are

learning to lead with you new inside knee.
patience releases into a turn
learn to do ground 360s both ways



I never have an issue stemming anywhere unless I want to stem. IE stem steps in tight trees, and edge wedge hop turns. No matter how wide the ski is. I do have issues with tipping on skis wider than 100mm on hardpack snow mostly because it feel as if my knees are being laterally loaded to the point of destruction.