realskiers

I didn't want to post up in this thread again, and I am probably about to take this in a direction I don't want to go...but,

Bushwhacker is on target, on both counts 1. It's not pretty skiing and 2. He is skiing a line few others on this forum can ski (and that's just the 'snowy' portions, throw in the rock-spine aerials and I question whether anyone on this forum could ski the same lines: With pretty or ugly technique).   I have to entertain at least the idea that there is connection between point 1 and point 2:

Again, it's not aspiring to ski like anyone in these videos, but merely noting what style they bring into the mountains and how it works.   Now, as for 'not having the skills to negotiate that terrain'...I say, that is patently false, he does negotiate this terrain, and, frankly, if he removed the 'pursuit for the most challenging aerial lines' and sought merely to ski down these same slopes on the more planted snowy lines, this wouldn't be scary looking at all (though, I admit, too many eyes on this forum it would still be ugly skiing)...but, he'd have (and has) no trouble negotiating his way down these steep and often narrow big mountain slopes with his heavy rotary, hopping, wide-stanced style.  I'd love to see (and I mean this sincerely and not as a challenge!) other styles applied to the exact same terrain-particularly the very narrow, steep, rocky entrances.   

When he breaks from his skiing and bee-lines for a rocky, aerial line trying to maximize speed in order to clear said line (which in one case he fails to do) is where he moves from negotiating a steep line to pushing his luck.

Check this video-it's him again, starting at minute 4:21...it's a bunch of these guys at some big mountain competition in NZ.   He actually wins the competition with some pretty hair-raising line choices, but his style does allow him to get into these big mountain spaces in the first place.



It's not how I want to ski, and it's not the sort of terrain I seek out (actually, steep and narrow is fine, the high speed boulder hopping is just something that I will never do...I'm just too chicken).

Alright, I'm straying from my mission here (and finding myself in the curious position of defending things I don't practice or preach ).  So this time, I mean it, I'm moving on to another style-thread.