THE ROCKER SKI HAS ARRIVED FOR POWDER

The rocker ski is with us now
By The Senior Skier

The newer things on the ski hills this year (and last atually) are the radical rocker skis. Almost all of the major ski makers have jumped on the bandwagon to market this new kind of ski. As the name suggests the ski is shaped much like the rocket on a rocking chair, curved up at tip and tail but with little camber under the mid-section.
The concept is that with the upward swept tips and tails the skis will be easier to turn in powder snow. No more problems with keeping the tips up so they won’t get buried and stop you in mid-turn. And they work — well in powder but not so well on packed snow.
A friend gave the Rossignol S7s a try and was enthusiastic — as long as he was on powder. Once on packed the skis don’t carve very wwell as the raised tip makes it difficult to get the edges working. If powder is your game, they might be worth the several hundred dollars involved in buying a pair, but if you’re an average Tahoe skier you know how often you can find powder after noon on the day after a dump. You’ve got the dedicated to buy these skis.
Personally, I’ll continue to work on the usual powder skiing technology. That’s chiefly skiing both skis all the time with the body centered over the skis and getting plenty of extension and retraction at each turn. Not that I go off plunging into the woods on powder days; I’m a little cautious that way.
But speaking of the contemporary situation on the hills, I’m constantly surprised by how many skiers using the shaped skis don’t seem to get the message. The shaped skis are designed for carving, that is, getting the edges up so that the ski bites into the snow. You’ve got to keep your body inside the turn and facing down the fall line most of the time. That means you move your body across the skis, rather than swinging it outside the turn as with the old rotational turning system.
Other day at Heavenly I was riding the Comet lift in Nevada and I noted that most of the lower- skilled skiers were still leaning uphill into the slope, banking as we used to call it. With the modern skis you stay inside the turn, leaning downhill inside the turn, not lifting up into a bank. Not an easy change to make from the technique; it’s easier to learn if you do it was a qualified instructor. That’s not your brother-in-law.
More on the contemporary ski technique later. And sorry, I never got past the falling leaf stage on a snowboard (but I enjoy riding when I can).
POWDER SKI TECHNIQUES
If you don’t have a pair of the new rocker skis, you might want to remember how to enjoy the fluffy stuff. First off, you’ve gotta ski both skis centered all the time. Make turns with ski coordination (I sometimes lead with the uphill ski a bit) and if on traditional shaped skis don’t forget extension and retraction, the up and down movements. That helps get the skis off the snow and make the turns smoother. Notice how the experts ski those long steeps; they rise and drop on every turn. And don’t follow that age-old advice of sitting back in powder. All that does is put the weight on the tails of the skis and let the tips wander. Of course, the rocker skis do much of this for you. Sometimes when I get in a crisis I do sit back but I always regret it.
LASSRT MINUTE SEASON PASSES AT HEAVENLY
Heavenly season passes are on sale now for $369, but only until Dec. 19. Heavenly is offering a multitude of time-sensitive deals at www.skiheavenly.com, including its “Heavenly for the Holidays” vacation package, offering a deal during the busiest holiday periods.