Warm feet are the royal road to health and comfort: there must be room enough in your boot to leave freedom of motion to each toe.
First learn to move about on the flat, without any support of any kind. If you have followed our advice as to oiling and waxing ski, the under surface of yours will be perfectly smooth and very slippery. So, next, choose the most gentle slope you can find to glide upon. Let it be an easy slant leading on to a flat piece of snow.
Practise going down steadily and slowly, holding in each hand, if you like, a light bamboo or hazel-wood stick. These are to be used only to pick yourself up. Never practise with a single stick, or a stout, heavy stick, or a long stick.
Put the right foot foremost, then the left. Then go down on one foot alone, alternately using the right and the left.
Go through these preliminary exercises with extreme patience. In nothing so much as in ski-running is it fair to say “The more haste the less speed.”
The beginner who raises his ski off the snow surface falls into a serious mistake. He should glide his ski along the surface of the snow when moving uphill as well as on the flat. Ski were not made to be lifted, like feet, but to be pushed along, like a drawn-out wheel. A sensible learner never forces his way up a slope, but, as soon as he feels himself sliding back, he eases off to the right or left. He should always keep his ski close to each other, whether his course be upwards or downwards. The knees, too, should be held close together when descending. The body should not stoop from the waist but lean forward from the ankle-joint, so as to be well balanced over the middle of the ski, the limbs remaining loose and easy throughout.
The whole secret of straight and easy running may be further summed up in the following simple golden rules:—
1. Stand upright on your ski, keeping your body at a right angle to the slope down which you run.
2. Keep ski, feet, and knees together.