How To Ski and How Not To

by Vivian Caulfeild

If you make a halt and take your skis off, clean them thoroughly at once, and see that their soles are neither wet nor warm when you put them on again. If you are likely to feel cold (and you are likely as a rule), put on spare clothing as soon as you stop, not after you feel chilly.

Wax your skis thoroughly before starting the run down if the snow is sticky, or is likely to be so lower down; and remember to button up your pockets, or you may find at the bottom of the hill that snow has either taken the place of, or ruined their contents.

I have so far attempted no description of the snow itself. It varies infinitely in consistency, but considerably less so in appearance, and for this reason it is often impossible for the runner to be sure of the quality of the snow in front of him until his skis actually touch it.

This latter fact adds considerably to the difficulty of ski-running when patches of different slipperiness occur at short intervals. The worst kind of patchy snow consists of a hard and slippery ice-crust in the hollows of which finely powdered wind-blown snow has accumulated; fortunately in this case the difference is generally visible, the slow powdery snow being perfectly white and the ice-crust rather greyer. The safest way of negotiating snow of this sort while running straight has already been explained.

For practical purposes the ski-runner may consider the snow to be of three distinct varieties according to the consistency of its surface: viz. soft snow, hard snow, and breakable crust. There is no real division between these varieties, each melting into the other by imperceptible gradations; but, where the quality of the snow falls clearly under one of these headings, the runner will be obliged to use certain definite methods of turning and stopping, unless he is either a thorough expert, or a stick-rider of the worst kind. For, as I have already said, the former can make any kind of swing in almost any kind of snow, while the latter has only one method of turning, viz. that of dragging himself to one side or the other by means of his stick, carefully preserving while he does so his normal running position, with the knees well bent and the skis level, parallel, and a yard or so apart, which manœuvre he calls making a stemming curve or a Christiania swing, according as the turn has been a downhill or an uphill one.

Assuming, then, that you belong to neither of these classes, you will have to know how to adapt the means of turning to the quality of the snow. It should be fairly obvious from the descriptions of the different swings how this is to be done.

In deep loose snow make all your turns, whether downhill or uphill, by means of the Telemark swing.

On hard snow, whether quite bare or covered by a very shallow layer of loose snow, make your downhill curves by means of the stemming turn, and use the Christiania swing for turning uphill.

In breakable crust, if it is very thin, you may find it possible to turn or stop with the Telemark. If this is out of the question you will have to jump or step round.

Of course soft snow may be so dense that the ski sinks into it but little (as in the case of watery spring snow); you will find it just as easy to make stemming turns and Christianias in this as to make Telemarks—perhaps even easier.