Are you free to ski? Free from common faults or mistakes that might be holding back your success in skiing, that is? This blog is for friends, family, and others who enjoy the sport of alpine skiing, would like to improve and share experiences. Whether or not you're just beginning to learn basic alpine skills, improving turns on different terrain, or chasing a medal in your next ski race, hopefully you'll find something.
In early February, 2013, I attended my sixth BRSC Western Carnival along with my friends in the Columbia Ski Club. This year, the council clubs gathered at Steamboat, Colorado. Otherwise known as "Ski Town USA", Steamboat Springs has created more olympic skiers than just about any other town in the United States. The level of terrain is from beginner to expert and varied from groomers to glades and chutes. While I was there, I ventured over to the SSWSC (Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club) at Howelson Hill in the downtown area one evening. They truly have an amazing set-up for a ski club with their own hill to train on as they see fit. It's hard to make a comparison to what we have here with Liberty Mountain, but I was in awe. They train alpine and nordic skiers from extremely young ages to go on to do big things in those sports later on. Overall, the skiing was great. Whether going down through chutes and trees, working on basic fundamentals on the groomed slopes with other CSC members, or challenging other ski clubs in some fun racing competition, this Western Carnival experience was a success once again. Thanks to the organizing trip leaders, Ted Dietz and Jan O'Connor, as well as Bruce Brown for their preparation and hard work to make sure this trip was fun for everyone. It was quite enjoyable and fun to get to know many of you that I did ski with. There were certainly some improvements made. Also, it was great to catch up with Kitty Imdahl, a long-time member of CSC now residing in Park City, UT. I have fond memories from my BRSC Western Carnival trips with the Columbia Ski Club. I created this video presentation from those moments, mainly from this trip with some others mixed in. Click on the link below and enjoy.
Spending most of the time skiing at Liberty Mountain and all of it's 600 feet of vertical drop or other similar mid-atlantic ski areas doesn't offer an alpine athlete the greatest terrain to choose from. Complications from shorter winter seasons, weekend crowds and ski patrol speed enforcers makes terrain even less available. This forces the alpine athlete to be smart in his or her use of time spent on the hill. USSA has come up with an answer for this challenge. SkillsQuest is a progression of drills designed to promote skills as the basis of technique emphasizing the four primary skiing skill areas - pressure, edging, rotary, and balance. Mastering these drills (see table below) result in skiers acquiring the necessary skills to gain speed on the race course.
After seeing the progress of athletes brought up on the SkillsQuest modality, I highly recommend this tool not only to alpine athletes but to any skier working to improve on the basic fundamentals of skiing. I use it often in my own skiing. You can access SkillsQuest on the following link: http://www.ussa.org/alpine-programs/athletes/development/skillsquest/ Click on to skiing assessment at the top. You can find full descriptions for each drill in the progression as well as videos of athletes performing them.
