Ski Ashville | Winter Sports Fun

Downhill Skiing, is it for you?

Downhill skiing should not be attempted on a black diamond trail until you’ve mastered the basics on a bunny hill. The bunny hill is the best place for an adult beginner to practice the basic skills of snow skiing. The terrain of the slope offers a more or less open area and doesn’t include some of the obstacles that are common with the more advanced ski slopes. Instructors can help you develop proper stances, learn how to control movements and turns, and in general allow you to become comfortable with the skis and ski equipment. Once the instructor is confident that you are competent to move on to a more difficult slope, then you can move on to slopes that are more of a challenge.

Downhill skiing is also widely known as alpine skiing. The downhill event is the longest course and the highest speeds in alpine skiing. Each skier makes a single run down a single course and the fastest time determines the winner.

Alpine skiing evolved from cross-country skiing when ski lift infrastructure was developed at mountain resorts to tow skiers back to the top of slopes, thus making it possible to repeatedly enjoy skiing down steep, long slopes that would be otherwise to difficult to climb up. Downhill skiing is popular wherever the combination of snow, mountain slopes, and winter sport fanatics gather. A few of these places include parts of North America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and, East Asia. The South American Andes, and, mainly Japan and South Korea, and lately China is seeing an increase in the popularity of the sport.

The main technical challenges faced by skiers are simply how to control the direction and speed as you ski down the mountain. Typically, novice skiers use a technique called the “snowplough turn” to turn and stop. This method requires you to point one or both skis inward, but more advanced skiers use more difficult but more elegant and speedier methods. Another method of turning is called parallel turn; it involves keeping both skis parallel to each other while altering the weight distribution between them in order to turn them in any particular direction. The angle of the ski in relation to the slope called edge angle is also important as it determines the resistance friction created by the edges of the skis.

Today the most advanced downhill skiing technique is dominated by “carving,” to carve, a skier rolls his or her knees from side to side while keeping the upper body and hips facing down the hill, so that only the knees and feet are turned. This method of turning allows modern skis to turn using the radial properties of the edges of the ski without skidding or slowing down, creating a smooth arc.

To maintain the line of a parabolic ski, you need to lean your center of mass into the turn. As skiers gain confidence, they tend to tackle steeper, longer and more uneven slopes including off-piste and ungroomed runs at higher speeds.

In North America the easiest slopes are marked by green circles, and are typically fairly flat and smooth. Sometimes known as bunny hills, they are usually groomed by specially equipped snowcats every night. A blue square marks slopes of medium difficulty; they are steeper than green circles and may be left in a natural state rather than machine-groomed. A black diamond slope is steeper than a blue square and often involves challenging terrain such as mogul skiing moguls, double fall lines, or glade skiing gladed sections. A double black diamond is for downhill skiing experts only; these trails are steep, rarely groomed and often left in a completely natural state.

Downhill skiing is one of the first events on the schedule for the Winter Olympics, and you’ll be able to see Bode Miller and the other competitors take to the hill on February 15, 2010. In one of the first main races in the Vancouver, Canada games. Whistler Creekside will be the location for the downhill skiing portion of the 2010 winter Olympics, and United States’ skier – and occasional distraction – Bode miller has numerous world championships to go along with silver medals in the giant slalom and combined events in the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Miller stumbled in 2009 and many wrote off the Olympic skier as being on the downside of his career before Bode won a World Cup Super-combined event in 2010.