How to Ski Better on Pistes

Ski Technique: How to Ski Better on Pistes

by  Welove2ski

There are few better places to boost your ski technique than on the groomed pistes of Morzine, France.

Welove2sk.comi give  some tips on how to ski these slopes more smoothly. We whittled the list down to four key points to think about while you’re carving:

1. Stay Centred Over Your Skis

Your weight needs to be evenly distributed right along the length of your feet, which means you’ll be able to maintain downward pressure right along the full length of your skis. Don’t lean back.

RIGHT

WRONG

2. Even Up the Weight Distribution Between Your Feet

Read on...

Insurance company insists on helmets

Insurance company insists on helmets 

Monday November 5, 2012 - Courtesy of PlanetSki

Essential Travel has made wearing helmets on the ski slopes a requirement within the terms of its winter sports Insurance policies. There is no accurate data on the exact benefits of wearing a helmet but use has risen sharply in recent years.

Research by the travel insurance specialist claims that 77% of skiers and snowboarders wear a helmet.
It is a 15% increase since 2010.
In a survey the company says 73% felt that they should be rewarded for their decision to protect themselves by paying lower travel insurance premiums.

It is now mandatory to wear a helmet in order to benefit from the protection offered on all Essential Travel's Winter Sports Insurance policies. Skiers who do not wear a helmet will risk invalidating their policy.
"Whilst it is true that a helmet does not reduce all sports injury, it seriously reduces the risk of potentially fatal injuries. That alone warrants making wearing helmets compulsory, and we choose to completely support safety conscious skiers by rewarding them with reduced premiums and bonus discounts," said Stuart Bensusan, from Essential Travel.

There is though conflicting evidence about the safety benefits of wearing a helmet. In the USA helmet use has gone up 20% and head injuries have risen over 50%.

Many people believe a helmet offers far more protection than it actually does.
We have reported on the findings in this earlier report on PlanetSKI.

What’s Next for Salomon?

Following the news of Greg Hill leaving Dynafit for Salomon, we asked ourselves, “Why would a mountaineer known for touring 2 million vertical feet in one year ditch his lightweight gear for an arsenal that’s, well, not as light?”

So Skiing Business caught up with Jesse Malman, Salomon’s sports and community marketing manager who is in charge of Salomon’s international athlete team and heavily involved in the brand’s future products, to find out what the company is up to in the backcountry realm.
While he wouldn’t divulge the brand’s budget or ultimate investment, he says the new push is backed by Salomon’s global headquarters and has full support of its North American office too.

So Greg Hill?
Yeah. We’re entering the backcountry market this year with the launch of the Guardian binding, and that’s only the beginning. Salomon’s invested in making a wave in the backcountry touring market, and that will include skis, boots and bindings. We know where the money is invested from an R&D standpoint, but we want athletes who can help push that and be a brand advocate.
So we sought an athlete who can help us figure out exactly what we should do, what works, what doesn’t, and help us develop products that are better than what is out there now. I think Greg Hill is a perfect fit, and he was ready for a change. I think he’s fired up to come to a brand that’s invested in entering the segment.

Greg Hill

What type of products do you have in the works?
I can’t say too much, but it includes skis, boots and bindings. We’re the top boot brand, and we want to take that expertise to the backcountry. It took us 40 years to get where we are now, but we feel like we can bring great product to the backcountry market and be innovative.
We’re talking things that aren’t in the market right now. We’re taking ideas from things that we do and like, and things that other brands do that we like. We’re sending Greg Hill and Chris Rubens to our global headquarters soon to get going on the first project: a new boot that will be between 1.2 kilograms and 1.5 kilograms per boot.
And with that, we’ll target the same consumer that Dynafit and Garmont and others like that target. Those customers are there, and that segment is growing. There are consumers that don’t even know they want lightweight gear right now, but they’ll eventually realize it.

Why do this now? It seems like you’re a little late to the party like with the Guardian.
We don’t feel like we entered the market late with the Guardian. We could have brought that to market earlier, but we wanted to do it right and make sure it was exactly what we wanted. And we’ll do the same this time. We’re going to make sure we have everything right if we want to come out with a new type of boot or binding.
We don’t feel like there’s a great lightweight backcountry boot that also performs really well downhill, so we’re going to develop our own. We have the ability to make products that aren’t out there right now, and we’re innovative.
We have the credibility to enter new markets, and we see the backcountry market as being a good place to put resources. More and more people want to earn their turns. It’s big in Europe, and it’s getting bigger in North America, so we’ve invested in the right people-like Greg Hill and Andreas Fransson-to help us get there.

Jesse Malman, Salomon's sports and community marketing manager

What’s the timeline for the new boots or even skis and bindings?
You won’t see this stuff at the next SIA show, so we’re at least two years out. First, we’ll expand on the Guardian family for the 2013-14 season and bring back the tech-compatible boot-which will be much better than the first time we did it.
You may potentially see new lightweight stuff for the 2014-15 season. My inclination is that the first lightweight backcountry-specific equipment is most likely going to be a boot and ski.

It sounds like you guys will develop a new lightweight binding instead of acquire a company that’s already doing it.
It’s hard to say, but I think acquisition is a last resort for us. We feel like we have the money, people machinery and other general assets to make a better product on our own without acquiring another company.

Will you guys be collaborating with Atomic on the lightweight gear?
We’re not working on the lightweight stuff with Atomic like we did with the Guardian and Tracker bindings. As far as I know, Atomic is focused on the freeride community, and hasn’t committed to the lightweight market. We’ll also go after that freeride market, but we’re going further into the backcountry market.

Defining Waterproof

Every outdoor adventurer owns waterproof gear, yet few people fully understand it.
Part of that’s because there are no standards, and companies often use tests that favor their technology.

“There (are) different methods which can allow the fabric providers to make their product look better than another one just based on the numbers,” says Chad Kelly, eVent Fabric‘s global product manager. “This doesn’t actually mean it will be the most comfortable product out there, or the highest performing.”


And Jeff Dorton, The North Face‘s materials commercialization director agrees.
“If something makes their product look not so good, they tend to shy away from that test method even though it might be the best way to test it,” he says.

Still the Mullen Burst Test, and the ISO 811 test are two of the most common methods. Both measure the amount of pressure it takes for water to penetrate the fabric, but the Mullen measures the pressure in pounds per square inch while the ISO measures it in millimeters. A highly waterproof fabric withstands 20,000mm of pressure; some people say 10,000mm is the ski industry standard.

“10,000mm is really just a minimum for most people to believe it’s actually waterproof. In actuality, that’s a heck of a lot of water. There aren’t a lot of situations you can find yourself in where your raincoat will be subjected to those kind of conditions,” says Karen Beattie, Polartec‘s product marketing manager.

But the various situations create the need for a variety of products built for specific purposes. Having a jacket that keeps water out is one thing, but also making it breathable is another.
“Before Gore-Tex products were introduced over 30 years ago, the paradigm of being both waterproof and breathable was not possible,” says Tom Boyle, Gore‘s strategic marketing associate.

“In many cases you want that textile to breathe more because of the aerobic activity you’re doing,” The North Face’s Dorton says.
In these aerobic situations, a 10,000mm garment that’s breathable will keep you dryer than a 20,000mm garment that’s not.

But as confusing as the lingo can be, it’s up to retail employees to be able to decipher it-if they need to at all.
Bill Miller, owner of Hamilton Sports in Aspen, Colo., says his customers generally aren’t confused on the waterproof/breathable jargon. But he says that may be because most of his softgoods customers are buying Kjus and expect the product to perform.
“I don’t know how important (technical details are) to a lot of people,” he says.

And Heather Stanton, a buyer at Sturtevants Mountain Outfitters in Idaho, agrees.
“They usually know the name Gore-Tex and that’s probably the only name they know,” Stanton says.
Most customers walk into the store knowing they want something waterproof but look for employee advice to direct them.
Ultimately, customers want to go skiing, and if they like the jacket or pants and a salesperson says its good, then that’s all that matters, Stanton says.

Face Time; Salomon's Mark Abma's

Canadian Mark Abma, who appears in the latest release from Matchstick Productions, "Superheroes of Stoke," is known as one of the most environmentally conscious pro freeskiers. In this video, he gives us a tour though his property in Pemberton, British Columbia, where he has harnessed the energy from a creek running near his property to power his home and his outdoor amenities.

Abma is hoping one day his property will supply all of his energy needs. "Essentially getting us that much closer to being off the grid," Abma says. 

The Environmental Impact of Making Snow

Coutesy of —Mary Catherine O'Connor @outsideonline.com

Pointing to the sacredness of the San Francisco Peaks north of Flagstaff, Arizona, a coalition of Native American tribes has been fighting the development and expansion of Arizona Snowbowl ski resort since 1979. It remains defiant, reports the New York Times, despite having suffered a key legal defeat this winter. A federal court ruled against the tribes in a nearly decade-old lawsuit that claims the ski resort's plans to use treated wastewater from Flagstaff's sewage system to make artificial snow for the resort would interfere with religious practices and mar the mountains. 
Wait. The resort will use sewage to make snow? Technically, yes. That's why the story has garnered lots of attention. But recycling treated wastewater for applications that do not require potable water is not nearly as icky, nor as uncommon, as it might sound. This type of water is commonly used for irrigating golf courses and soccer fields, for example.
While Arizona Snowbowl would be the first resort in the U.S. to use 100 percent treated wastewater to make snow, it's a common practice in Europe and in parts of Australia, says Hunter Sykes, an environmental sustainability consultant who closely tracks the outdoor recreation industry and produced a 2007 documentary about the environmental impacts of rampant ski resort development called Resorting to Madness. "Most people who work with wastewater don't see this an issue, because it's not going to make people sick and, as far as we know, it's not going to contaminate flora or fauna," he says.
Not everyone is quite so comfortable, though, with the idea of using treated wastewater for snowmaking. Among the groups that oppose it, on the grounds that the water may contain chemical inputs from pharmaceuticals and other potentially hazardous hard-to-trace sources, include the Center for Biological Diversity. Sykes agrees that there is still much we don't understand about the chemical agents that persist in treated wastewater and how they could impact the ecosystems into which they're released, but says if it was up to him, he would use the treated wastewater.
Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigns director for the Center for Biological Diversity points to a study that linked wastewater effluent released into a creek in Boulder, Colorado, with abnormal fish gender distributions. "There is an emerging and growing list of compounds [about which] we don't know the affects," he says, but we know that endocrine disruptors [in wastewater] will change fish sex ratios. This points to the need for additional research and more advanced water treatment."
But McKinnon and Sykes do agree on one thing: the real story here is the increase in snowmaking, industry wide, and the wider environmental impacts of making snow.
One can argue that for a ski resort in an arid landscape such as Arizona, reusing wastewater for snowmaking can be a much better alternative, environmentally speaking, than using increasingly scarce fresh water. In either case, other issues loom large. These include the energy required to pump the water, the quality of that water (even if it comes from "natural" sources), and the ways that artificial snowpacks change mountain landscapes.

ENERGY
In the Times story about Arizona Snowbowl, a forester with the U.S. Forest Service is quoted saying that climate change is making snowmaking increasingly necessary at ski resorts. That may be true, but the act of making snow where coal is used to generate the energy to make the snow is only exacerbating the situation.
"Burning coal to make snow is a self-destructive behavior for federal agencies and for outdoor recreation industry," says McKinnon.
The energy required to make snow will only increase if winters begin later and skew toward warmer or more erratic temperatures. "For a lot of [ski] areas, snowmaking is the biggest single expense, even before payroll," says Sykes.
Fortunately, many ski resorts are increasing the wind, solar and other types of renewable, clean-burning fuel they use for power generation. Plus, snowmaking equipment is increasingly energy efficient.

WATER
Ski resorts often make snow using nearby natural streams or lakes, but that doesn't mean the water is clean. Sykes points to how, in Colorado, water pulled for snowmaking from the Snake River is tainted with zinc, copper, lead and other metals that seep from old mining claims.
Even if water that is extracted for snowmaking is clean, the act of extracting it leads to other "externalities," he says. For one thing, pulling clean water upstream from sources of contamination, such as mining claims, removes the benefits of dilution that the water would have otherwise provided.
Reducing stream flow could have other consequences as well. "Another extraction issue is that you're removing sizable amounts of water from streams in the fall, which is a key time for aquatic life," says Sykes.

ALTERED LANDSCAPES
As snowpacks decrease in some parts of country, the demand for terrain parks is growing everywhere. To manufacture a sizable terrain park, ski resorts must manufacture snow. A lot of it.
That has led to more snowmaking, using more water and energy every year. In some areas, summer comes and goes but the massive piles of snow that were once halfpipes or tabletops remain. This prevents the natural cycle of melting and of plant growth and while these areas are small on each mountain, they add up in aggregate.
"You have a longer runoff period, so you have a lot of water running off smaller streams and they're carrying increased amounts of sediment. This is happening in parts of the mountain that have already been denuded, so topsoil is already depleted," says Sykes. "You're changing the profile of the mountain."

While sewage for snowmaking makes for good headlines, the real environmental issues seem to be hiding within the business of making snow.

The Avalanche Problem

The lives they lived

A tribute to the 34 people killed in U.S. avalanches in 2012

Originally Published: October 8, 2012

By Megan Michelson | ESPN.com

The day before their last day, Johnny Brenan, Chris Rudolph and Jim Jack all went skiing at Stevens Pass, Wash. It was Feb. 18, one of many stormy powder days during a high-snowfall year in the Northwest. More than 12 inches of new snow had fallen overnight. Around 4 p.m., Jim, the head judge of the Freeskiing World Tour, showed up at Stevens' Foggy Goggle bar with a smile so big, you couldn't help but smile back at him.

The Faces We Lost

Images of the 34 people killed in avalanches in the U.S. last winter. Gallery

Chris, the marketing director for Stevens Pass, was at the bar, too. He'd orchestrated a women's ski demo that opportune day -- an event I was a part of -- and led a dozen or so female skiers around the resort. We'd spent the entire day getting some of the deepest turns of the winter. At the bar, Chris was surrounded by all of the ladies, including his girlfriend, Anne.

"How'd you get so lucky?" Jim asked Chris, only half joking. They both just smirked at each other, as if to confirm that, yep, their lives really were this good.


Johnny, Jim and Chris -- all residents of nearby Leavenworth -- lived the kind of life that city dwellers sometimes fantasize about. They had real jobs in the mountains and had turned their passion for the outdoors into their lifestyles and careers. In the winter, all three of them skied most every day; in the summer, they mountain biked, climbed, boated, camped and spent time outside with friends and family. All three men were known for their warmth, openness and jovial spirits.

"The three of them were a lot alike -- always out for a good time. They were all ingrained in the weave of this community. They were big personalities -- people everyone wanted to be around." -Joel Martinez, director of operations at Stevens Pass ski area and a friend to Chris Rudolph, Johnny Brenan and Jim Jack.

Read on...

Ian CobleChris Rudolph in his happy place in Leavenworth, Wash.