CARVING AND COUNTERSTEERING UNDER LOAD
13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production
After this lesson you can initiate a carve with your body rather than the bars, manage ski pressure through the whole arc, hold a committed line across a steep face, and use bar input as a pressure tool rather than a direction tool.
The Technique
- Define what you are actually trying to do, because most riders who think they are carving are sliding. A carve is the machine travelling along the arc it has cut, with the track up on its edge and the ski keel tracking in the same arc rather than across it. A slide is the machine travelling in one direction while pointing in another, scrubbing speed the whole way. On firm snow you can get away with sliding all day. In deep snow a slide bleeds the speed you need to stay on top, and speed loss is how sections end badly. The tell is the track behind you. A carve leaves a single clean arc with a defined edge on the inside. A slide leaves a smeared trench with snow thrown across the line. Go and look at your own tracks after a run, honestly, and you will know which one you are doing.
- Initiation happens at your feet, and it happens before the bars move at all. To start a carve to the left, weight the left peg, drop your left hip slightly and let your body stay quiet while the machine rolls left underneath you. The roll puts the track onto its left edge and puts pressure onto the left side of the ski, and the machine begins to arc before you have consciously turned anything. Only then do the bars follow the roll, and they follow it by a small amount. Bar-led turning does the opposite of what you want, because turning the bars first twists the ski across the direction of travel, builds a wall of snow against its side and scrubs the machine to a stop rather than steering it. If you find yourself pulling hard on a bar to make something happen, you have already missed the initiation.
- Ski pressure through the arc has three phases and you need to feel all of them. On entry you need enough pressure to set the keel, which usually means moving your weight slightly forward and down as you roll in. Through the middle of the turn you hold that pressure constant, which is harder than it sounds because the machine is trying to push you back and up. On exit you release the pressure and stand the machine up, and that release is what lets the bike accelerate away rather than fighting itself. Get the fore and aft wrong and the turn tells you immediately. Too far back and the ski floats, the machine understeers and pushes wide no matter what the bars are doing. Too far forward and the ski tip dives under the snow, the arc tightens violently and the machine either stops or knifes. The window between those two is narrower in deep snow than on hardpack, and finding it is the whole skill.
- Ski pressure through the arc, the countersteer that holds a sidehill, and linking carves in deep snow
- 5 more technique steps
- The 4 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
- The drill that builds the reflex
- The safety non-negotiables
It opens when you book a trip that runs snow biking - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.
Book a trip, unlock this libraryOr put $200 down - unlock it todayRidden with us already? Enter your Union key.
Not booked yet? The founding list gets first access when the full library opens.
LET'S BUILD
YOUR
ADVENTURE
Whether you want to surf Japan's legendary powder, ride the Old Telegraph Track to the tip of Cape York, or chase a New Zealand winter - tell us what you're dreaming about and we'll build the trip around you.