Another whiteout day at Crystal

Day two on the teles and another whiteout day at Crystal Mountain, so again no lines, lots of runs and lots of moguls everywhere. The less than perfect training conditions were more enjoyable this time around. I had an easier time with my balance even turning through the piles of consolidated powder and didn't have to fall back to alpine turns as much.

My goals for day two were to weight my back foot more consistently and to get more of my foot down on the ski. My visualization was one-legged down-dog in yoga and stretching the down heel toward the floor.

After the first run it was clear to me that weight wasn't the problem in back. I simply wasn't edging he ski enough. I was putting plenty of weight on it, but without good edging it was still eratic and I would react by unweighting it. So I quickly changed my game plan and concentrated on edging the rear ski. That worked pretty well but it's still being a bit skittish until I'm well into the turn. Next time out I work on edging the back foot earlier in the turn. I think I'm flattening it to start the turn and then leaving it flat until I feel the turn pressure build.

My other big problem is hip movement. I'm having a hard time balancing consistently toward the finish of my turns, and I think it's because I'm holding my hips two far forward (warrior 1) instead of letting them move with the skis (into warrior 2). I think the side-to-side alpine hip movement is probably still pretty well coded into my brain that it's just how a feel my way through linked turns. Only it doesn't work, and after six or seven turns my balance is way off and I restore it with a parallel turn or two. I suspect that if I get my hips around better on the turns that most of this problem will go away.

The most enjoyable runs on day two were the natural-radius turns I was making down the blues in old-school tele position. At first they were mostly skidded turns, but by later in the day I was carving them pretty well. Since you're still riding turn to turn with these huge radius turns, you can get moving pretty darned fast and stay in control. I could do the same with tiny short radius alpine turns, but it wouldn't be as much fun as the wide radius carved teles. The big teles use more of the slope and the allow you to weave around everyone else at a very high rate of speed. That's quite fun, especially when the someone elses are the newbie snowboarders sitting all over the slopes.

My pet peeve is quickly becoming snow boarders who sit down and take a break in really dangerous stupid places. If you are not moving you should either be getting up from a fall or off to the side of the trail. The snow patrol should warn and then pull passes of boarders who rest seated in the middle of a run. Typicaly they do this right after the lip of a hill so that you come up on them all of a sudden, usually in moguled terrain where you expect to find maybe a fallen skier or boarder or two, but not an entire mogul field of boarder wannabes using the moguls as chairs and chatting.

Next week it's blues and maybe a black or two, working on early edging and turn initiation with the back foot, and then working for half a day or so on getting my hips around more.