Remy lecluse explains the art of skiing steeps

http://www.tvmountain.com/index.php?option=com_hwdvideoshare&task=viewvideo&Itemid=112&video_id=1308

two handed pole plants? I do it but not everyone’s cup to tea… some say they put you off balance.

What steep tips do you have?

Double pole plant: yes! It is a must for very narrow and precise turns or rotten snow.
But I don’t think it’s a place to start for beginners in steeps, it would probably encourage the common mistakes of turning the body with the skis and being too much on the upper ski and on the back - more below on that.

This being said, a good (single) pole planting is a prerequisite, that’s the first thing I would check when friends are willing to ski couloirs. With modern skis, many skiers don’t plant their pole properly or even at all: that’s a no go!

Having brought friends and relatives - good skiers - to the steeps, I usually see the same pattern at the beginning: out of fear they turn their upper buddy on the side with the skis, and they try 180 helicopter turns. The result is exhausting and brutal turns, shaky landing, unstable braking, upper hand used as an anchor up and back and a real risk of falling on the upper side or on the back - dangerous as any fall in the steeps.

The ideal turn should minimize acceleration, brake progressively and of course be as controlled as possible - that means touching - feeling - the snow most of the time. Amongst the number of advices that can be given, I have found 2 tips that work like a charm, from my experience:

- No jump, instead plant the pole and put the tips in the fall line by retracting smoothly heels under the butt. Then round up the turn while progressively braking. It requires guts the first time to put tips down the fall line, but the turn initiation is so easy, contact wit the snow is not lost, there is no shock - and this is skiing, not hoping.

- Keep looking at the bottom of the slope, with all the upper body in the fall line. The best tip I have found to obtain that is to ask for both hands to point all the time to the fall line.

Another thing that new comers tend to overlook is the often variable nature of snow in couloirs, one meter after the other. It’s good to ask them to observe carefully the snow and say how they anticipate the effect of orientation, snow and shadows, look for patches of ice and accumulations of fresh.

Happy and safe steep skiing

Some very good advice. I had wanted to spend a couple of days in resort early this season to work on my own technique but ended up touring the whole season due to lack of time.

I can see a number of faults, I’m a two pole planter when it is steep buy I agree with your and some other comments I’ve seen that this can lead to oversteer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkCvHb6-ykw

Having come from the school of Saudan - windscreen wiper turns - which can work in difficult crusty snow I need to practise on getting heels up. That is particuarly true when it gets steeper as the heel can catch the slope behind which is definitely not good.

This book is quite good on steep technique
Ski the Whole Mountain (Tr)

I should organize a steep skiing camp at the start of next season.

As it is now the season to talk rather than practice let’s elaborate a bit.

The choice of technique has also to do with the evolution of skis. With our thin and stiff skis from 10 years ago or before, the smooth “tips down” technique worked well on hard snow, spring carpet or powder. But with crud, crust, slush, mush and other delicacies, we had first to extract the skis from the snow with techniques like an energetic double pole pédalé sauté, or a windscreen turn à la Saudan. Also, these straighter skis required a stronger turn initiation, therefore a jump was necessary to gather energy and arc them into the turn - instead of going straight…

Today’s wider skis with softer tips float well on any kind of stuff, or at least provide a much stronger platform for pushing and initiating the turn. Also, modern tips carve into turn as soon as they touch snow with a bit of pressure on them. Therefore, a smooth turn, sticking to the snow, is possible in 90% of the cases. Then, additional advices are not only to put tips in the fall line but put pressure on them (scary idea but terrific results), and when possible to link turns smoothly and not stop, allowing these modern skis to float without effort in weird snows. And that’s a good preparation for wider, higher speed turns - when snow allows!

When the snow turns really nasty, traditional steep techniques are still very usefull, particularly the double pole pedale saute. And when I end up in steep bad crust with telemark skis, I find parallel windscreen technique the safest way out of the trap!

Finally, one tip for “smooth” double pole technique is to plant them forward (around the tips) and use them not to push up and turn, but rather to swing and dive forward into the fall line (a bit like ski racers at the start gate).

Remy Lecluse makes his double-pole plant work pretty well - (but of course the great majority of best steeps skiers don’t use it). From the video it looks to me like it helps him feel comfortable with rotating his upper body out of the fall line—which I think is a good thing to be able to do well sometimes (or often?) on steep slopes.

The other thing is that it helps him hop his skis up out of deep soft snow. But I don’t think deep soft snow is what scares most of us about skiing steeps.

davidof - 30 May 2009 11:21 AM

I’m a two pole planter when it is steep
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkCvHb6-ykw

Looks like you’re handling that slope just fine—but from the perspective of physics + biomechanics I’m not seeing how the double-pole-plant is actually helping you in those snow conditions.
Maybe it’s good for mental confidence?
(The snowboarder in that same video seems to do just fine with no pole-plant at all).
Maybe the double-pole plant helps learn to commit out down the hill, and once you’ve learned the confidence to commit, you don’t need the special pole-plant any more?
(I once heard it suggested for steeps to practice “faking” the motions of the pole-plant, but don’t actually touch the tips to the snow.)

davidof - 30 May 2009 11:21 AM

This book is quite good on steep technique
Ski the Whole Mountain

A good source I found was a couple of Andrew Maclean’s posts on TelemarkTalk forum—worth looking for. Andrew is one of the famous steeps skiers in North America, and he’s also a good writer. Some things I took away (perhaps misunderstanding Andrew? so check the original):

* keep it simple (versus instructions in some books to transfer weight to the uphill ski, pedal-hop, 1-2-3, etc)

* on steep slopes, initiation of the turn is pretty easy (except in deep soft crud snow), so don’t get hung up with fancy techniques to help with that.

* minimize the hop (because the higher you hop, the more speed you pick up before you land).

davidof - 30 May 2009 11:21 AM

I had wanted to spend a couple of days in resort early this season to work on my own technique but ended up touring the whole season due to lack of time.

I guess that’s easier for you because you know where to find the steep slopes with safe run-outs at these less-known less-expensive less-tracked ski stations.

One place on-piste to possibly practice landing and holding an edge on steep hardpack is on the downside of big mogul bumps. But that’s without the mental exposure of a big long steep slope below.

Ken

ericlodi - 30 May 2009 10:42 AM

. . . Keep looking at the bottom of the slope, with all the upper body in the fall line.

I’ve seen that advice before from several sources. It’s like expert bump skiing, where keeping the upper body facing down the fall line surely is critical for quick initiation of the next turn, which good bump skiing requires. So one theory of skiing steeps is that it uses the same expert skills as other non-racing expert skiing.

A different theory of steeps is that the critical thing is full recovery into balance at the finish of the previous turn. If that takes extra time and delays the start of the next turn, so be it. If allowing the upper body to face sideways across the hill makes it easier to take the time to fully recover from the previous turn in balance, then do it.
Seems to me that’s what’s happening in the Remy Lecluse video: demonstrating practicing taking the time to be sure to finish the previous turn in balance before starting the next turn. And the odd-looking uphill pole-plant perhaps makes it a little easier to feel in balance at the finish of the previous turn.

Complication: mental image versus physical reality. Lots of expert skiers believe that keeping upper body down the fall-line is key to expert skiing, so they think about it when they ski steeps, and they feel that’s what’s happening when they ski steeps. But when you look at objective videos of them out on serious steeps, sometimes it’s not what the top skiers are actually doing, and their upper body sometimes faces noticeably sideways out of the fall-line ("when necessary").

My opinion: Practice both approaches in safe-runout situations: facing down the fall-line, and turning out of the fall-line. Then when it really counts, do whichever works better for the specific situation.

Ken

Well, I am talking about advice to new comers to the steeps. And they mostly tend to get their upper body out of the fall line - by fear - which results in strong unbalance. So asking them to keep the upper body in the fall line helps a lot.
Of course, executing it litterally would be too much, skiing is about flowing, not being rigid and stuck, and the position of the upper body depends on the stage of the turn, what snow would allow (carving or sliding, short turns or curves)…
As you mention, this upper body stance, regrouped and looking down the fall line, is important at the end of the turn for balanced braking (think hockey stop) and initiation of next turn.
There is also an argument to keep the upper body a bit more still than in “free” ski: the backpack…

The Deslauriers

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0971774838?ie=UTF8&tag=pistehors-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0971774838

echo some of Ken’s thoughts. The don’t think the full pedal hop is necessary except in some very steep, narrow chutes (couloirs). They suggest a half hop at most where you jump the skis out of the snow and into the fall but just enough to carve the 2nd half of the curve. The idea is:

i. modern skis can carve steep terrain
ii. it is much less effort as you only just need to get the skis clear of the snow
iii. you keep much more snow contact, which, as ken says, keeps speeds down.

The Deslauriers emphasis is on learning to ski, and that means carving, well on piste and they have the usual ski school drills to help develop these techniques such as javelin turns.

As Pierre Gignoux says though “Steep skiing, it is all in the head”.

Here is some old school “saute/pedale” for anyone interested:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4940294562795340866&ei=G2cvSsXJJJug2AKctpitCQ

thanks for finding that Vallencant - Baud video:
* You mean there actually once existed skis that narrow and that straight?
* Sometimes the skier’s upper body is facing way out of the fall line.

Workshop?

I don’t think the technical knowledge of the instructor / leader is that important - (there’s lots of differing “expert opinions” about that, and different skiers succeed with different technique variations that they’re leaned to make work for them). Skiing steeps is not a “style + beauty contest” where you need a qualified expert judge.

What is important:
Knowing where to find some shorter steep slopes with a safe run-out (and a secure place to put skis on at the top). Because then each skier can try out different things and find out what really works for them, and what doesn’t.

To me its not so critical that those slopes be lift-served—because once you get a good boot-track in for climbing up, it doesn’t take much more time to repeat runs (on a short slope) than skiing all the way down to the bottom of the lift.

Problem with guidebooks is that they focus on identifying and measuring long steep runs, tend to ignore the short ones.

Actually when I’ve been out touring with David, I see him pointing out little couloirs like that all the time.
so . . .
(a) we need to estimate steepness of some of those short “unknown” short couloirs, so we know which ones are appropriate for which snow conditions and for which stages of learning progression.

(b) hike up to one of those “unknown” couloirs, and instead of skiing it once and declaring victory for the day—boot back up and ski it again and again, trying different techniques.

(c) maybe shoot some video of each other skiing it.

(d) maybe the night before get together and look at some videos of great steeps skiers and talk about what we see and what we want to try the next day.

That’s my idea of a “steep skiing workshop”

Probably makes sense to wear helmets for the occasion. (maybe other padding? like for knees + elbows—or ice hockey shorts for hips)

arrest: Another idea would be play around with arrest techniques. I notice that American skiers are more likely to ski with a “whippet” (or two) than Europeans. (Do people believe that “ski pole self-arrest” actually works? Try and find out.)

? other things to try ?
* putting on skis in a tricky situation.
* taking skis off and putting on crampons in a tricky situation.
* setting up entry by rappel.

Ken

It strikes me that it might not be necessary for everybody who goes hikes out to this “unknown” short couloir for an informal practice session needs to be of similar ability.

Especially if you bring along rope (or two) and there’s a good belay anchor at the top.

One person might feel like they want to start by just side-sliping the whole slope, making no turns at all.
Or side-slip on belay.

Somebody else might want to make their turns while on belay.
Though presumably the slope was chosen to have a fairly “safe” run-out, even the fear of taking a slide can interfere with learning.
(and any slide could lead to significant injury, even if you don’t hit anything visible)

I’ve never tried skiing on belay, or belaying someone else skiing turns (though I’ve lowered someone on the rope with their skis on)—but I’ve never heard that organizing and executing belayed skiing is “rocket science” for people with alpine-climbing skills + experience.

Maybe one person might want to simply down-climb on crampons—as their way to start “getting comfortable” just begin there on a steeper slope.

Ken

What I really want to know . . .

Seems like there are some days when slopes steeper than 40 degrees have better snow and lower avalanche danger than slopes around 35 degrees.
(reports on skitour.fr sometimes confirm this)

How do I know when it’s one of those days?

Ken

What is important:
Knowing where to find some shorter steep slopes

Do you mean something like that?

Shorter than the Courtes but still no fall allowed. Some other places on the other side are shorter and good for initiation. And all are lift served

Topo here

Let me know if you come for a ‘workshop’

Wow—that’s a real nice topo of chutes around Sancy (a place I’ve never skied)

Actually for “workshop” purposes I was imagining a slope were a fall is allowed. (but maybe some on your topo page offer that)

more sources of ideas:

Andrew Maclean writing more recently about technniques for steep skiing:
http://straightchuter.com/category/tips_techniques/06_downhill

www.gillesleskieur.com
go way down the page to reflect on this technique in this photo on le Pleureur:

Yes I’m not sure I’m ready for Andrew’s ice ax method just yet!

The Sancy is an ideal “ecole des couloirs”. Lots of really steep chutes within easy reach of the lifts. A long way from the Alps but I must get over next winter. I’m going to read up the link Ken has posted to Andrew’s article to see what he has to say.

davidof - 23 June 2009 06:21 PM

The Sancy is an ideal “ecole des couloirs” ... A long way from the Alps ...

Thanks for pointing that out:  Not in the Alps.
How could I have missed that?
(saw something in the topo about “Enfer”, so I thought of the Roc d’Enfer and guessed it was a little-known spot in the Chablais)

Funny thing is that in mid-November three years ago I had a delightful day riding my bicycle around the Puy de Sancy (with no snow to be seen).  Another nice ride thru Auvergne farmland another day, thought I should go back sometime for more cycling. I wasn’t thinking at all about skiing steeps.

Ken

French National TV news covers Sancy Couloir skiing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RQbl8uiD4s