The Christiania can also be started, as Bilgeri and his school advise, and as I have practically said already, from a very undeveloped ordinary stemming turn. In order, for instance, to make a swing to the left, one can advance the right ski, push out its heel a little, throw the weight on it, and face towards its point, and can then, by instantly bringing the left ski parallel and to the front and weighting its heel as well as the other’s, finish the turn as a Christiania. This is very easy to learn, and, if the preliminary stem is reduced to a minimum, is quite effective; but it is a much less steady way of turning at a very high speed than a Christiania started with the inside ski leading, and high speed is the real test.
Having said that a “jerked” Christiania is like a skating turn, I think I had better insert the following quotation from Mr. Richardson’s “Shilling Ski-runner,” with the sentiment of which I heartily agree. “The beginner should remember that turns are only a means to an end, and not, as in figure skating, an end in themselves. The real object of all ski-ing technique is to enable the runner to cross the snow as fast as possible, with as little effort as possible, and as safely as possible.”
Any beginner who has followed me through this chapter on the Christiania swing will probably think that a manœuvre which takes so much description must be appallingly difficult. I can assure him that it is nothing of the sort. Indeed the expert, who does it instinctively, will no doubt wonder why on earth I have made such a fuss about it. I do not think, however, that I could have said much less and yet have given a really complete explanation of how it may be done.
The only authorities, as far as I know, who have said that there is more than one way of making the swing, are Richardson and Hoek in Der Skilauf; they do not explain the difference in the making of it, but only in its results, giving a diagram of the tracks of two swings, one “gerissen,” and the other “gezogen,” i.e. “torn” and “drawn,” which, I suppose, are equivalent to “jerked” and “swung.”
Some writers having given directions for one variety of the swing and some for the other; their instructions at first sight appear so extraordinarily contradictory that I am almost afraid of confessing that I agree with them all, lest the reader who knows something about ski-ing should set me down as an amiable idiot. As soon, however, as one understands the cause of it, this contradictoriness is seen to be more apparent than actual. The difficulty in realising the existence of these variations of the swing is, no doubt, due to the fact that between the pure “jerked” Christiania at one end of the scale, and the pure “swung,” “steered,” “drawn,” or whatever one likes to call it, Christiania at the other, there are an infinite number of gradations, one of them being a form of the swing that is often seen, in which the turn is started by a slight jerk and a slight separation of the ski-points, and is carried through by the weighting of the heels.
When one is running across the hill an uphill Christiania of any kind can be made with perfect ease on any sort of snow short of breakable crust; when one is running straight downhill it is less easy, if the snow is very loose and deep; while to make a downhill turn in deep loose snow by means of a Christiania is decidedly difficult, especially if the slope is steep, though on hard snow and a moderate slope this downhill turn is easy enough and safer than a stemming turn, if the speed is at all high.
But although at first, when out on a run, you will be wise if you only use the Christiania for making uphill turns, and that on snow which is easy for it, you should when practising keep on trying it in deeper and deeper loose snow, and should turn downhill as well as uphill, not being satisfied until you can make fairly short downhill turns in deep loose snow on a really steep slope, as it is perfectly possible to do.
As in the case of the Telemark, the beginner can of course learn to make an uphill “steered” Christiania from a standstill by holding himself back with his sticks while he places the skis in the divergent position, and then letting himself go and swinging round immediately. This is in fact a very good way for him to begin to learn it, for he can thus find out in a very short time exactly how to hold his skis and distribute his weight; nor need he be afraid of contracting any bad habit by learning the swing in this way, for though he may find it rather easier to learn the Telemark by making it clumsily at first, he will find nothing of the sort in the case of the Christiania.
Before leaving the subject of the swings, let me impress upon the reader that in every swing or turn the runner at first starts the side-slip by stemming or steering with one ski held at an angle with the other or by moving both with a jerk—in short, by a muscular effort, however slight a one—and that having started the side-slip he lets his weight do the rest, and is carried round without any effort at all. It is the effortless side-slipping that gives a well-made swing its characteristic feeling and appearance.
The whole difference between a novice’s turn and an expert’s is that in the former’s the preparatory stemming or steering preponderates, in the latter’s the finishing side-slip; and that, moreover, in the novice’s swing the initial and final movements are seen (and felt) to be distinct and separate, while in the expert’s swing the preparatory movement merges imperceptibly into the final side-slip. The more the preparatory steering, stemming, or jerking is eliminated, the more comfortable—I will not say the easier—is the swing, and the steadier the balance if the swing is made at high speed.