Message #21466

[ToddW]

Here are 4 skiers who are dedicated to self-improvement trying to hop after a fashion.  [they are local instructors in a clinic at a respectable resort in the PNW]

Now imagine them trying to hop ... and turn farther across the fall line ... on 45 degree refrozen crud, the conditions the OP initially mentioned.  Conditions where a single bungled hop could be the prelude to injury or to an adrenaline junkie's plunge spinning down the mountain.  How good a safety net is the hop turn for them?

I mean no disrespect to these 4 instructors.  I post this instead to suggest that skiers who expect to rely on some flavor of hop turns in dangerous terrain might do well to crank up their self-preservation instinct a couple notches and consider skiing elsewhere.  Not all of us have the skills (or desire) to safely ski extreme terrain.  Me for one.  Call me a coward, but I wouldn't knowingly start down a 45 degree piste with nasty crud.  We humans should be wary of illusory competence's siren call. 

I chose their video to post because a member of the clinic group posted other clinic video shot in the same month on the Vail forum today asking explicitly for MA.  [If you feel the urge to do MA, please do it on the other forum.]