All Mountain Skis That Are Great In Moguls

[stuckathuntermtn]

At least he has a sense of humor.

[ill-advised strategy]

Ok, watched the vids and here are my thoughts:
It’s important to realize there’s several valid technical approaches to skiing bumps, and that those approaches can mix and match based on the terrain. There is competition-style straight fall line tight package high speed sending it...which is best for situations where you know the line and can run some speed out somewhere if it gets loose. That style seeks speed and really only controls speed with absorption and check turns if necessary. Only skiing the fall line, seeking the zipper line, feet tight, short poles, hands locked into one position forward, knees coming to chest when necessary to take the big hits, leading with tips into the uphill side of moguls.
There's no shortage of comp bumping to watch....here's some footage from years ago before it got so incredibly robotic, but when the straight-fall-line zipperline full speed approach is still evident:

here's a bunch of good stuff from the modern comp-ish point of view:


There is rounder-turn, absorb-and-extend, technical mogul freeskiing that can be applied in nearly any type of mogul field at any steepness. It differs from mogul-comp style skiing in that you might deviate from the fall line and you’re going to be using all different aspects of the bumps as you turn. You’re controlling speed by driving the ski through short round turns, and your challenge is picking a line that doesn’t stuff your tips into a wall. Shoulder-width athletic stance, driving round short radius turns with some hip and some knee, skis on the snow and being turned and flexed through the whole turn.
Round turns in the bumps:



There is also wide-open alpine-race-style approaches to the kind of short flat mogul fields in your vids....or chundery chopped up pow-type snow that feels like disorganized bumps. That’s more like the technique you’d see from a downhiller or super G racer in a section of the course where they’re both turning and absorbing terrain. You see this in IFSA big mountain comps where skiers are carrying speed through mogul fields or chunderfields doing long radius turns or straightlines. This is wider stance, hands forward, using hits from bumps to unweight between turns, taking a line that follows your turn shape, not necessarily dictated by the placement of the moguls.
High-speed absorption:



All are valid, all are great to do and or watch, but they’re all very different in terms of best equipment and in terms of the tranferrability of the technique to other situations. If you buy a “mogul ski”, that’s for comp style zipperlining. It’s not going to be great for anything else.

Round swing turns is a broader category of ski...anything you can drive through short swing turns can do those turns in a bump field with the right pilot.

Mach stoopid gs/super G turns in bumps and chunder takes a stable ski. It can be a wide ski you use for the rest of your freeskiing. Some of us like a stiff ski without much sidecut, some like more sidecut or a softer ski... it’s a personal choice, but really you would have to have raced a bit and gotten used to a ski type to start with a strong preference there. Basically stability is the key, so any ski that feels stable at speed is right for that approach.

So if you’re going to make round turns in steep bumps and open it up on the flat ones, you want a ski you can drive through swing turns and that feels very stable at speed. Mogul-comp skis are not for this, that’s its own thing...I have a specific pair of skis just for zippering because that approach is so specialized. A lot of freeride skis are skiddy and floppy and don't like being driven hard or carrying speed through bumps. But if you demo a bunch of freeride skis and find something you can drive hard through short round snappy turns and also confidently ski fast in high speed turns, that’s a good ski for ripping a bumpy inbounds ski area in a variety of ways.

Shorter poles help. Weight always forward. Know exactly what approach you’re taking and do it.

Edit: had to cut it off and head to work there...here’s some more to consider:
The entire thing with skiing moguls, regardless of your turn shape, gear, line choices, or approach, is to ski in a body position where you can absorb and extend while continuing to edge and direct your skis. You can do a great deal of skiing and turning while out of balance on more forgiving surfaces, but moguls will expose those off balance moments. So the coaching, or self coaching, involves kind of two things: feeling what it’s like to absorb hits without letting yourself pitch forward or back, then bringing that balance to some different turn shapes in the flats, then putting the absorption and well-balanced turns together with a growing sense of line selection in the bumps. Eventually you’re solid in a variety of turn shapes and you become skilled at looking ahead into good line selections for the kind of turns you’re favoring....while simultaneously selecting the right kind of turn for whatever steepness and type of bump field you have in front of you. You want comp skills? Learn to absorb very well and learn to make very quick well balanced turns, then find a zipper line and put those skills together. You want to freeride inbounds at a bumpy ski area? Get your absorption dialed, then work on driving your whole toolbox variety of round turn shapes while in that balanced absorption-ready body position....then go put it together with line selections and approaches that fit the situation in front of you.

A ton of this is just mileage, time in the saddle, or whatever, but you can train some of the balance on dryland...stick landings off your stairs—hands forward, eyes up, knees meet chest. Balls of your feet, every body part stacked to absorb in balance.

Get your shit as tight as you can get it on your own, then go ski a week of high-level instruction in Taos with Deb Armstrong, Josh Carlson, or Alain Veth....they'll give you plenty to work on from there.

There’s nothing wrong with skiing inbounds or skiing moguls... moguls are nature’s ski coach...they fuck up your shit if you’re not technically sound. It’s a good base for any other type of skiing you’ll move into down the road.

Good luck.

[Ted Striker]

Wow. That's the best advice I've read here In quite a while.

[Core Shot]

Nice breakdown yetiman

But you forgot the 4th style

Straightlining off the tops of the bumps. Turns are too much work

[ill-advised strategy]

Nice breakdown yetiman

But you forgot the 4th style

Straightlining off the tops of the bumps. Turns are too much work

For me, the best part of getting to see a world cup mogul event was the training day....you see those guys finding the exact max speed by exceeding it. I couldn’t believe how many times those guys would blow out of a line and just 11 the rest of the course at 50 mph in a gorilla stance, skipping over 3 or 4 bumps at a time with the insane mega hard shutdown in the finish. It was mindblowing.

[Vt-Freeheel]

This is how it is done on Superstar in May, our own powbmps

[Bushwacka]

To slow down, unless I see there's some shit I don't wanna ski over.

^^^^ that is your problem.....

if you goal is just to slow down it usually means very defensive herky jerky skiing. You should pick a line down the hill that is the speed you want to go and ski that line as quickly and aggressively as possible.

This does nt mean go 60 mph everywhere, or anywhere for the matter it just means the path, your turn shape should be the primary means of setting your speed, not heel pushy break checks.

BTW I think Comp bump skiing is awful as its based on subjective ideas and judge as such. There is nothing objectively better about sliding sideways to the next bump hitting hard and doing it over again, its extremely defensive fast line fast skiing that will beat up your body.

The technical bump skiing video that was posted its a great video to watch and see the line I am talking about.

[Bushwacka]

lastly bump skiing isnot forward forward forward, its for aft, for aft, with a back pedaling motion. Those who try to crush their boot usually end up in the backseat on the downhill side of the bump.

[alias_rice]

Are pull-ups required for good bump skiing?

[FLS]

Depends.


eta... Nice pic!

[muted]

Nice breakdown yetiman

But you forgot the 4th style

Straightlining off the tops of the bumps. Turns are too much work

And cross-rut line bump skiing, never gets any respect!

[Timberridge]

BTW I think Comp bump skiing is awful as its based on subjective ideas and judge as such. There is nothing objectively better about sliding sideways to the next bump hitting hard and doing it over again, its extremely defensive fast line fast skiing that will beat up your body.

The technical bump skiing video that was posted its a great video to watch and see the line I am talking about.

No one cares what you think. Go back to Pugski.

[Self Jupiter]

For me, the best part of getting to see a world cup mogul event was the training day....you see those guys finding the exact max speed by exceeding it. I couldn’t believe how many times those guys would blow out of a line and just 11 the rest of the course at 50 mph in a gorilla stance, skipping over 3 or 4 bumps at a time with the insane mega hard shutdown in the finish. It was mindblowing.

X2. I watched the junior mogul tour guys practice at Squaw one day, it was awesome to watch.

[Jacques Strap]

At least he has a sense of humor.

Hyuck, hyuck.

...here are my thoughts...Good luck.

Hoooooooooly Fuck. You definitely gave me a lot to digest. Great videos by the way. Sincerely, thank you for taking the time to help me out.

The 3rd type of mogul skiing you mentioned (Mach Stoopid) is clearly beyond anything I'll ever try. I'll never have the racing chops and will never be able to handle that stiff a ski.

The 1st type (Zipperline) is my idyllic, unattainable destination. Buying skis specifically for this (no matter the skier is) seems like a premium luxury.

The 2nd type (All-Mountain Carving) certainly seems the most achievable from the way I currently ski; but in general, I've never enjoyed stiff skis or those with considerable side-cut. Furthermore, I don't get much of a kick out of going fast. And I don't ski often enough to have the skills to tear ass and not get seriously hurt. I gravitate towards more turns, so I don't need a lot of stability at speed. And, since I don't get a lot of say in when I ski, I almost never see actual powder, so I don't need much in the way of flotation, although a rocker tip would be nice for chopped up crud (which I do ski one day per season or so).

I may be wrong, but it seems to me there's another way I've seen folks ski moguls. I've only seen one dude actually zipperline recreational bumps that weren't seeded. But I've seen a lot of folks ski moguls with a very tight-footed, direct-path appraoch. Kinda like in these videos:

https://youtu.be/8jlRPwHlfMc?t=33 (at 33 seconds, the guy in the lime-green jacket, who is probably also the guy in all black and gray sweatshirt and white-kneed mogul pants, but I'm not sure)
https://youtu.be/lzQKDslU3Bw?t=398 (at 6:38 minutes. I know this is from the same set of videos from the first video you linked... but Fistfull of Bumps is awesome.)
https://youtu.be/PmrXUoMN3D0?t=39 (at 39 seconds)

Those skiers seem to have a very comp style but don't seem as out of control as some of the dudes in the Fate gear from your first video; and not as robotic as modern comp mogul skiers. Is that just the Zipperline skillset done at a slower speed and less steep pitch? Or is there something else I'm missing?

This is how it is done on Superstar in May, our own powbmps

That is rad as hell.

that is your problem.....

I can definitely see what your saying. I remember reading about some drills in M. Elling's All-Mountain Skier similar to this; where the goal is to make as many perfect (round, finished, edged) turns in a given distance as you can. Seems to me like this would also train you to know how quickly you can complete a good turn; and therefore judge how fast to take a mogul field (like you were suggesting).

Clearly though: more absorption/extension, weight forward, and technically sound turns are what I should focus on. As you mentioned Ill-advised, the key is mileage. But, given my limited ski time, I'll be making the most of dryland work; so feel free to throw any other good mogul drills out there.

[Cabinfever]

https://youtu.be/TWBkCDdgj2E

[Vt-Freeheel]

I added these to my quiver for spring K bumping this year.

[Self Jupiter]

Nice

[ill-advised strategy]

Those skiers seem to have a very comp style but don't seem as out of control as some of the dudes in the Fate gear from your first video; and not as robotic as modern comp mogul skiers. Is that just the Zipperline skillset done at a slower speed and less steep pitch? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Yeah, it's just a little more edging and a little more deviation from the fall line with the skis.
You can see the technical differences by watching a lot of comps and comparing the men vs the women....they're on the same lines but the women are skiing a little slower, just a little more angle to the turn, a little more edging.

[::: :::]

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[hafjell]

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[/QUOTE]
This is why you can't ski bumps with a hat on. Ever. You'd never be able to keep your shoulders that square with a hat on. A helmet? Forget about it. Might as well snowboard.

[savemeasammy]

Also notice how quiet the hands and upper body of the guy in the mogul pants are compared to the other skiers.

[Jacques Strap]

I added these to my quiver

Don't even bother riding up the chair with those dude, you're going to HATE them. I suggest you just sell 'em to me.

men vs the women

You know, I remember watching the last Olympics and noticing that. I remember watching the men and thinking "no way, never", but then watching the women and thinking "you know, one day, on my best day, maybe I could ski like that". So yes, I dream of skiing like a girl.

can't ski bumps with a hat on

I knew it. We talked a lot of about skills and technique in this thread, but I just fucking knew the problem was with the gear: my backpack is too small, not enough carabiners, wearing a hat...

quiet hands

Yeah, that's something all the good mogul skiers seem to have in common.

[bodywhomper]

Black pyramids

[Vt-Freeheel]

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[savemeasammy]

^quiet hands. Probably a good bumper.