Ski Review 03-04 The Fall Line Blisters 100 ... - Off-Piste Magazine

“The alternative to waging war
with the fall line is to work with
it. By tapping into this river of
energy and then guiding or
channeling it, you add its power to
your own rather then using your’s
to resist it.”
once people get in the bunker
it seems safe and they never
want to get out.
The alternative to waging war
with the fall line is to work with
it. By tapping into this river of
energy and then guiding or
channeling it, you add its
power to your own rather then
using your’s to resist it. Great
skiers seem to flow down the
hill and that is not far off the
mark. They have figured out
how to literally “go with the
flow”. Imagine yourself floating
down a good sized river with a
strong current. You can direct
yourself to the right or left and
still be going with the current
but if you try to resist the
current you will quickly tire.
This is exactly what gravity is
doing, the only difference is
that the force of gravity
increases with your speed and
the steepness of the fall line.
As you slow or stop you
effectively turn off the tap.
It takes a certain commitment
to move into the fall line and
go with it. Like many activities
where the brain can get in a
serious wedge, dumb it down
to the easiest and most
comfortable level. Go to a
slope that seems absolutely
harmless and try to keep your
turns in the fall line, eliminating
any traversing in between. This
does not mean you have to do
a lot of tight little turns. Think of
your downhill track as a
variation on a sine wave,
where the turns are round and
even from one side to the next,
Feelin’ the fall line . . .
but as with sine waves, they
can be tight or loose, large
radius or small. Be aware and
play with where you engage
your edges in the new turn,
finding and experimenting with
where in relation to the fall line
this takes place. Remember,
that it’s not on or off the edges
but a gradual or incremental
process of edging and steering.
I use the term natural edging –
when your skis are directly
underneath you (the crossover)
they are flat and the farther
they get out into the belly of a
turn (and out from under you)
the more edge they will have. If
you are skiing in junky snow -
it’s inevitable – try to keep from
engaging your edges until they
are in or past the fall line.
Developing awareness and
understanding of the fall line
will add power to your skiing
and give you another tool to
work with when faced with
difficult conditions. In the next
issue, I will relate the fall line to
your center, the main ingredient
in keeping you moving with the
flow rather then opposing it.
Nils Larsen teaches freeheel ski
workshops and does product
development for Karhu skis. Nils is
a regular contributor to Off-Piste.
visit www.freeheels.com
Issue Issue XVIII XVIII Off-Piste 9