I learnt to ski in a Norwegian resort where the mountains were more like steep hillocks, and the longest runs were half a mile, cutting narrow swathes through the birch trees. Short carved turns were the order of the day (and sometimes the night). Arriving in the European Alps I was amazed to find huge open pistes rolling down the mountainsides for miles. Short turns were out for the time being; long turns at speed were in.

Speed, however, is as potentially dangerous on a piste as a loaded gun in the hands of a five year old, unless we know how to use it. How many times have you been run into? How many times have you run into somebody else? How many times have you seen people totally out of control careering headlong down the mountain?

How fast do you think you ski at the moment, excluding the time you get into the tuck at the bottom of the blue run? 10, 20, 30 mph? You are probably not going much more than 30 mph, but have you thought how well you would be after hitting a tree even at this speed? (See article) Even at 30 mph you have to look out for people, rocks, and snow machines, etc, but how will you anticipate these problems at 50, 60 or even 70 mph? The fat lady in the lilac shell suit may be two hundred metres ahead, dithering, but how do you avoid her at 60 mph? It may be hysterically funny in the bar afterwards, reminiscing on how you went straight over the front of her skis in the air for God's sake, shouting 'Get out of my way!'.

An alternative, which does happen, is that you both end up in a wooden box.

It is now standard practice in some ski resorts to breathalyse those who ski dangerously, so this suggests a direct comparison with driving a car: Be aware of your speed - Keep your distance - Watch out for others - Know your reaction time - Know your stopping distance - Reduce speed in heavy traffic. As responsible skiers we must file these comparisons away so that they become instinctive and do not need thinking about again. We can then safely apply ourselves to the technique.

For all the fast turns choose a good wide empty blue run on a Monday when the weekenders have gone home. Make sure you can see the whole piste you are going to practise on before stopping. It doesn't need to be more than 25 degrees to start with. There are no stray weekenders hiding behind those hillocks, nor snow machines chugging up round blind corners? Good. Unless it's warm put some goggles on. There's nothing worse than being blinded by tears at speed.

Get going on a fast traverse. Your upper body can be facing the ski tips, unlike the short turns. Because you are skiing on a reasonably flat slope, there will not be the need to edge greatly, so you will be standing almost upright with your knees slightly bent over the skis just to give a bit of shock absorption and to have your upper body in a good position for initiating the turn. This means that the skis will be virtually flat on the snow.

To initiate the turn you must now anticipate by rising into an upright position, and at the same time projecting your weight forward towards an imaginary spot about 12" to the downhill side of your ski tips. This projecting will do two things. First it will unweight the back of the skis, and secondly, because your body is now facing slightly down the hill, your natural torsion will be brought into play. As the skis come round into the fall line, apply slight pressure forward on the inside edge of the downhill ski. This will help you to come round more smoothly. The faster you are going the more effective will be the turn.

If you initiate the turn with a stem you are cheating.

Try to describe a perfect arc on the snow. There should be no pushing down on the back of the lower ski to get the skis round against the fall line and therefore brake them. The basic fast turn is designed to give you a feel for accelerating into the fall line. It has little or no practical use. I use it at the end of the day when I’m trying to get home quickly and haven’t the energy to angulate and edge the skis into more precise turns.

This turn should not be used on a crowded piste.

Remember that your weight should always be slightly forward of the middle of your foot.

This is the same turn as before but on a steeper slope so that you can make full use of the skis' edges to give you more precise control. Choose an easy red run without too many bumps. You must provide sufficient angulation to keep the skis on their edges at all times, except when you rise to come round across the fall line. As you come round apply the pressure to the front of the down hill ski as you angulate once more. This is the basic giant slalom turn used by racers, and as long as your edges are sharp it will work for you just as well on ice as on nice stuff. Like the basic fast turn with your skis flat it is not designed with any braking in mind, as the skis are carving for the most part. While the skis are coming into the fall line, however, there is a chance that they may side slip and lose the precise control you are aiming for. To reduce this here is something really exciting - lateral projection.

Ever since you started skiing you have been encouraged to keep your weight on the downhill ski. Now for the first time (officially) you are going to ski on your uphill ski. Try these two exercises to give you an idea of what it feels like:

1) Choose an easy gradient and traverse across it slowly, skis flat, with weight on the lower ski. Transfer the weight to the upper ski, but keep the lower one on the ground. Don't overdo it unless you want to sit down. Tool around for a bit. Try to keep the skis moving forward with no side slipping

2) Try it on a steeper slope where you can use the edges with some angulation. You will of course be edging with the outside edge of the upper ski. You will be climbing up the slope with steps of about 6" each time.

When you are bored with this, get going on a fast traverse, angulating over the lower ski, take a step up onto your uphill ski, and as you do so, project your upper body exactly the same way as you have done before, up and forwards towards the fall line, keeping your weight on the uphill ski. As the skis come round to the fall line the uphill ski becomes the downhill ski, and changes from one edge to the other. As soon as the ski has changed from one edge to the other you begin to apply pressure on the front of it with angulation.

The step up accelerates you into the turn by reducing any braking side slip on the lower ski at the start of the turn (see 'contre virage'). It is used significantly by giant slalom racers to gain height on a course, and a variation is used by slalom skiers for the same purpose. You too can use it to gain height when you are traversing round a mountain, and you realise you have to climb as well as going forwards, to reach that restaurant for lunch.

You will notice that stopping after doing several of these high speed turns is an art in itself. It is safer to convert to a few short turns, which applies the brakes slowly, before coming to a stop. Going straight into a standard christie stop from 40 mph with your head and shoulders almost touching the ground, and a fountain of snow spraying skywards, is asking for trouble.

This is the most exciting turn you can make and in racing is really only seen in super GS and downhill. If you have been going fast enough doing the previous turn then you may well have got a feel of it. Again you need a well prepared wide blue to red piste with nobody on it, and preferably no trees on either side. You should have a clear view for at least two hundred metres.

The main difference between this and the previous turn is that you are probably going ten to fifteen mph faster, between fifty and sixty miles an hour. To get going this fast on a traverse you will need to be in the tuck most of the time. Your weight should be well centred between the two skis but as you approach the turn you will need to move onto the uphill ski. In the tuck position and at speed this could really start to hurt those thigh muscles. You should only rise up enough to start the uphill ski turning before you lower into the tuck once more as you cross the fall line. You will be projecting your weight forward and downhill towards the inside of the turn and as you come round you will feel the power coming on. It stands to reason that the skis are on their edges all the way through the turn (apart from the edge change), but there is a minimum of reverse camber to provide the long radius arc for a very fast turn. When you get it right it feels like you are being flung round in a bucket on the end of a rope. Well that’s what I imagine it feels like never having been flung round in a bucket.

With practice it is possible to just make the edge change without rising up to unweight the skis at all. By projecting your upper body forward and down the hill, this should provide enough to bring them round. Obviously if you don’t come up you will maintain your aerodynamic position in the tuck and not lose speed.

If you start getting into trouble come up out of the tuck and use the natural air brake of your upper body. Your speed will be controlled even more if you are wearing a baggy anorak.

A word of warning! Making these turns should be done in a controlled situation and never willy nilly on a piste with other people skiing at slower speeds in front of you.

Contre Virage (literally from the French ‘against the turn’) is a good one for the bar at the day's end, but is a simple enough manoeuvre. All it involves is bringing your downhill hand up and towards your chest in a short arc. If you are going fast enough the back of the skis will slide round. This can have a useful braking effect as the skis are coming round against the fall line, and with angulation can have quite a dramatic result. You can also use it to initiate an edge set prior to breaking into your short turns at the end of those long fast turns we have just described.

How does it work? Once again it's your natural torsion at work again. When you bring your arm up, your shoulder twists round a bit, followed by the muscles down your side, your thigh, your lower leg, your heel, and low and behold the tail of your ski. You may remember that you can achieve the same kind of tail slide by the rapid drop of your upper body in the short turns. The result is the same, but they are different methods for different turns. Contre Virage depends on steering while the rapid drop depends on unweighting. (back to 'lateral projection')

SHORT TURN WITH LATERAL PROJECTION (RACING STEP TURN)

This manoeuvre is restricted to skiing slalom gates, but hopefully you are going to practise through gates whenever you can, aren't you?

Lateral projection in a slalom course is used to gain height as well as to accelerate. It is made immediately after the edge set on the lower ski, and is no more than a transfer of weight onto the uphill ski before it comes round into the fall line. It would not seem that a lot of height is gained, but on a steep slope the transfer from lower to upper ski can have a considerable effect if a racer is low in the gate (when combined with avalment), and in theory is more efficient. As we have seen on the long fast turns, if the weight stays on the uphill ski which then becomes the outside weighted ski in the turn, the edge change is going from one edge of this ski to the other. This makes for a smoother transition than from the edge of one ski to the edge of another.

Finally, to round off this chapter, we can couple this lateral projection with avalment, which allows the uphill ski to accelerate into the turn This involves the jet turn technique I mention below. The turn then becomes a short (step) jet turn with lateral projection and avalment. Interesting if a little complicated, huh?

These turns do not get my vote for practicality, and should not be confused with the short swing turns we have discussed already. These are linked turns made on the flat of the skis, with little edging and no unweighting. They defy the normal rules of unweighting and steering, and rely instead on a waggle of the bottom, minimal knee angulation back and to across the fall line, and a slight push on the downhill heel at the end of the turn. The upper body stays directly over the skis facing forwards, and the skis pivot on the middle of the feet. Wedelling is often used to make nice looking tracks in a few centimetres of fresh snow, and looks quite impressive in front of your friends at the bottom of a run, but it is not going to get you out of trouble on ice, or the steep, or in deep powder. I once skied with a chap who could wedel so fast that his legs and backside were a complete blur. He walked a bit the same way. Do you remember the Twist from the 60's? Wedelling is a bit like the Twist on skis.

The jet turn is sometimes used by slalom racers to get out of trouble, as well as to accelerate, and is often used by people experimenting in the bumps.

At the moment of the edge set on a short swing turn, try sitting down quickly with the weight on your heels. The maximum you need to sit should have your thighs and legs at about 90o. This is the 'avalment' the bumps were doing for you. Now you are having to do it yourself on to the back of the skis. Having tried it, you will probably fall over unless you can pull back up. On a steep slalom course, when a racer gets too low in the gates, he may try a jet turn and virtually throw his upper body sideways down the hill at the same time. This means that the skis have a lot of catching up to do as they are describing a wider arc round the gate than his upper body. Hence he accelerates the skis so that they will catch up. Jet turns are fun with a bit of air off the top of a bump, but more often than not are brought off unintentionally as the skis accelerate on the downside.

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GLOSSARY

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CHAPTER 8