Message #21423

[Johnny2R]

Geoff, thanks for your contributions - lucid and well articulated as always.

Hop turns are not the best choice for skiing steeps or crud--though occasionally you do need to retract aggressively enough to pop your skis free so you can change edges when the mank is extra gooey.  Moreover, the OP was asking about steep refrozen crud--and icy conditions are the last place where a hop turn would be helpful. 

Well, I was actually thinking of any kind of bad, problem snow. That's why I take issue with the injunction to always keep your skis in the snow - I'm sure even HH, in one of the books, advocates retracting your skis out of the heavy crud to turn.

Developing the skills to carve the high C takes time, effort, and persistence (not to mention a basis in understanding how technical actually skiing works).  If you don't ski that way, the arguments for doing so aren't going to make much sense.  If you do  ski that way, you won't consider anything else because anything less than high C engagement feels sketchy.

Nothing that either Liam or I have written suggests anything else. I suspect that Liam is a pretty skilled PMTS skier and will carve the high C in all conditions which allow it (and I will try to do so, in my own floundering way). The question is rather whether it is sufficient for all situations.

Yes, full hop turns may sometimes be necessary, but nobody who skis the high C would ever treat them as anything other than an emergency maneuver, or an option of last resort..SNIP...All of which tends to support the argument that if you have the skills to be where hop turns might actually be warranted, you will instinctively know how to do them should you need to.  Really, I don't consider hop turns to even be a turn, and as such, the only time I consider using them is when I'm somewhere that is so steep and narrow that there is simply not enough room for the skis to work.

Exactly! And what is wrong with that? The mountain throws all kind of things at you which you have to deal with. Sometime I have to take my skis off - but I'm not advocating taking skis off as a model of skiing, instead of PMTS turns.

That said, the crux of the argument really boils down to what kind of skier you want to be.  The DesLauriers teach skiers to ski the whole mountain while PMTS teaches expert skiing.  There is a difference.  Most all mountain skiers are not experts.  If you want to be an expert skier, perfect your ability to release, transfer, and engage until you can do it in any conditions and on (almost) any terrain. 

I want to be an expert skier, but I want to be able to ski the whole mountain, too (or at least most of it) and I don't want to have to achieve full expert skier status before having a go. If I find myself in a situation where I don't have the perfect technique for dealing with it (which may be the A Grade PMTS bullet-proof short turn), I want to have at least a stand-by imperfect technique for dealing with it, something which allows me to get to more manageable terrain safely and in control, even if it's not especially elegant. This is an area where I routinely transgress by PMTS standards, according to which I shouldn't be venturing off-piste, or even onto steeper slopes, without having completely mastered the BPST on gentle slopes. I'm afraid I don't have the luxury for that - I ski at most 15-20 days a year, and above all I want to have fun while doing so, which can often involve playing around off-piste. I am 100% self-taught by the PMTS method, and my aim is to be able to take my PMTS skills to a higher and higher level - but I still want to have fun in the meantime.