Finding a Round Line in the Bumps with Josh Fogg

This season I was struggling with bumps. In the past, bumps and steeps have been my favorite thing to ski, and for some reason as I worked on a more aggressive zipper line in the bumps, I lost my reaching round turn.

Suddenly I had no speed control, I was afraid every time I rolled up to a bump line. My heart would start beating super fast, and I fell into a world of stories that said I lacked the skill set to ski what used to be my favorite terrain.

I searched all winter for some tip or help to change my timing, my tactics, to somehow re-access the ability to be playful and free in the bumps. On CLOSING DAY at Aspen Mountain, I had the pleasure of skiing with Josh Fogg, one of the trainers in our ski school at Aspen/Snowmass, and a recent selection to the 2015/16 Rocky Mountain Alpine Team.

In dispair, I stood at the top of Easy Chair, a bump run NOTORIOUS for spiky, cross troughed zipper line bumps. I have never ever skied this short run well from top to bottom, it is fast and difficult and the bumps are enormous. It's not very steep but people ski it with high intensity, so it begins to look like a series of tombstones on the way down. The holes are huge, and with each turn, I think, "I'm supposed to stuff my feet WHERE??"

I turned to Josh and asked him, "Can you show me a round line in here, in Easy Chair?" Josh said yes. He gave me one simple tip: Think of the line as a waterslide. Let the momentum of the finish of one turn exist for the purpose of sending you up the wall to begin the next turn."

I had been searching for the "outside line" all season, but for some reason, I was still losing the downhill ski, I was skiing out of the line after five bumps, I was pushing the tails up the wall rather than driving the smeary ski, or in my attempt to get round, I was getting edgy and accelerating. I was so frustrated, I felt like I would never every figure this out again, it was just gone and I would never give it back.

"Ski it like a waterslide." Josh said, and then proceeded to do just that, top to bottom. A lightbulb went off in my mind, and I followed, for the first time skiing Easy Chair top to bottom with ease and control. I was astonished. The fear went away. The enormous spiky bumps presented opportunity after opportunity to ski like a waterslide. We lapped the run, trying it in Blondie's, and on the back of Bell. Suddenly, I could ski again.

Josh gave to me his time, and energy, it was easy and fun for him to go out and ski, and in this one sort of throw away moment, he handed me hope again.

I was so stoked I asked Josh if I could record it as a ski tip so we could share this fantastic coaching cue with the world, and so I would never forget it again. Kindly, Josh agreed, and the result is the video below, shot on my iPhone that afternoon.

Thanks so much to Josh Fogg, Kurt Fehrenbach, Megan Harvey, and Jonathan Ballou for mentoring me and coaching me all season, I am incredibly grateful for your guidance!!

Finding a Round Line in Bumps with Josh Fogg from kate howe on Vimeo.

Picked up by Blizzard/Tecnica!

In other, more fantastic news, I am super excited to have been picked up by Blizzard/Tecnica this year!

I've loved their gear for years, and I'm so very excited to be skiing for them. Thanks, Blizzard/Tecnica, I'm grateful to be part of the team! YAY!!

Making the Grade: Winning as a result of letting go of the desire to win.

Sometimes, I catch myself wondering if it can be done. I mean, I hear the thoughts in my head that say, with good reason, clarity and pragmatism, that the possibility of being a viable candidate for the National Alpine Team in a year and two months is very very low. Silly. Maybe even stupid.

The funny thing about thoughts like that is that thoughts like that make it even less likely to happen. And if it's that remote of a possibility, in order to succeed, there is no room at all for anything that diminishes possibility.

This journey, it turns out, has nothing whatsoever to do with making the team.

I think that the journey toward the tryouts has become a five-year meditation, a practice of training myself over time to let go of what is not productive toward growth and stay focused on what is.

Because the attached me needed an excuse: a goal, I needed somewhere to go, a fixed point to walk toward, making "The Team" gave me that focal point.

Sometimes, I think; Kate, if you were suddenly to win the lottery and had the luxury of paying for every kind of training possible and you trained your brains out without any other obligation for a year and two months it is STILL very unlikely that you would make the team, so why bother going all in for something that you are probably, in spite of giving it a "really good try" going to fail at?

The immediate answer, now that I've been training my heart to believe in me for five years, is simple. It doesn't matter if I fail, because its not at all about making the team. Its about every moment like that one being the lesson. How quickly can I let go of doubt? Can I live in a world where I accept what is and continue toward what can be? Can I stay integritous in my heart, committed to becoming, open to the lesson, open in my heart? Can I open more?

Thoughts like that distract from the possibility of improvement make it pretty likely that I will not get my feet past the ski cut. If I bleed emotional energy wondering why I am doing this, or if it is physically possible, or if it is emotionally possible, I slow down the flywheel of possibility I'm trying to build.

I see self-fulfilling  prophecies all around me, I've done it myself for years. I wonder if I can break the cycle? I wonder, can I be strong of heart enough for it not to matter if I get to the summit, but just to let the next footfall matter? Can I let go of the outcome and focus on the work?

My friend Lissa once said to me when I was having a hard time, "Chop Wood, Carry Water."

It is really immaterial whether I'll have the feet or not, I can't predict the future. All I can do is keep listening to my mentors, keep developing my internal coach, keep turning left and right as much as possible. For me, now, its time on snow. Time on snow, time on snow.

Bump Skiing Videos

Okay, you asked for it! Here are my favorite You Tube videos to watch when I'm thinking about bump skiing, and I usually watch them while I'm doing dryland mogul practice on the Bosu Ball. Ive had a couple of requests to put up that dryland drill (which is really quite simple), so I'll get that up as soon as possible.

SO Much has been going on, we are 35 days from the Rocky Mountain Assesment Trials, so I'm deep in training (yay!) and sore like you wouldn't believe. I fell asleep on the couch last night while reading to the kids at about 7:45 and didn't wake up till 9, when they had built a fort on the floor behind the couch and were attempting to sleep in it for the night.

My little sister had done an epic bike ride yesterday, too, and so the boys were amazing, they were making us tea and covering us with blankets while I was reading. Such sweethearts!!

Enjoy and train hard!!

Even deeper profound insights into the blatantly obvious: Flexion and Extension movements in the bumps help a lot. For real.

OH my gosh I have SO much to tell you guys! But I only have a few minutes to write a couple of blog posts because I have one more day of the Rocky Mountain Trainer exam, and I get to give an indoor presentation tomorrow afternoon which I have to build tonight. WHEE!!

FIRST: Bumps. After the exam yesterday (yes, hang on I'll get to that), I was at the bottom of SodBuster with Jason Closic. He asked me if he could give me a coaching cue, and that was to move the flexion or absorption movement that I was doing at the bottom (or top) of the bump (take your pick) up higher.

So imagine you are travleing down the trough toward the transition of the bump, and rather than waiting for the tip of the ski to begin pushing back toward you because the bump is coming at you, but seeing the transition and begining your flexion movement in anticipation of the transition.

I did it, and an AMAZING thing happened. Suddenly, I had time. More time.

Jason asked me if I had another turn other than a short swing turn in the bumps, and I told him, yeah, I have a reaching round turn, and I've been trying to figure out how to blend them together or pick one or the other in order to be in a more "create" space than "choose" space when skiing bumps.

Jason asked me to ski some of each, using the adjustment of the timing of the felxion movement. A wonderful thing happened.

Because I was able to judge and decide on the flexion BEFORE I got to it, I wasn't looking at it or thinking about it when I was doing it. I was glancing briefly at the lip of the transition and then looking to the next transition. I could decide how round, how much twist and when and how much to dive my skis.

Suddenly, I had six turns where I had options in every turn. I was able to find a steep one and choose to launch into the air, and land in the trough right where I wanted to. I could round out the next one and make the next four quick slidy check turns. I was beginning to paint. And the colors weren't getting muddy.

Wanting to be able to blend the turns the day before, it was miraculous to get a coaching cue the next day that gave me a key to do just that.

You know what it felt like? An integrity gift. I promised to keep my fall line turn that Schanzy had been working on with me in the exam. And I did! And then, waiting as a present at the bottom of the run was Jason, handing me a key.

Today, bumps were an entirely different animal to me. I was playing more and more with them, and that's just what it felt like, playing. Its not always pretty, don't get me wrong. But its changing. The time in the bump seems to be stretching out. The options are opening, and now I get to play and create sometimes. Oh, its BLISS!

At the end of a run in a teaching segment where we got to get air in the bumps on a run called Deception at Highlands in the most BEAUTIFUL chalk snow at the end of a long teaching day, Chris Doyle gave me a new cue.

He said, you get down there well. Stay down longer. He showed me this beautiful move which I've seen in the best creative free skiers in the bumps, which I've felt the beginngs of sometimes in my skiing, but not really identified what it was to make it repeat.

He absorbed early and kept absorbing as he went over the transition. His skis passed the transition and kept absorbing. His ski boots were almost off the snow, the entire forebody of the ski was off the snow, but his flexion movements were from not only his knee, ankle and hip, but also from his spine very effectively, and he was STILL absorbing. Because he was also strongly countered, he was in a great position, so as he twisted his feet, the skis also dived into the trough.

So now I get to add: See it. Begin to move early, get to it, keep moving down, keep that counter developing while absorbing even more. Then go.

Profound Insights into the Blatantly Obvious: In which Kate learns to ski Bumps. Again.

About three weeks ago, I was working with Josh Fogg and Kevin Jordan on bump skiing. I love skiing bumps. And over the years, I've learned lots of things about them from lots of different people.

Dave Evans at Bridger Bowl first gave me the Nollie, Ollie lesson on getting the tips to dive and stay connected to the snow. My first understanding of ski/snow contact came from him.

Steve Hill and Chris Jones gave me opening and closing my ankles in the bumps, and Weems helped clarify it for me.

Lots of people have had me do Pivot slips down the bumps, in the bumps, on the groom, everywhere in order to work on leg steering.

Dennis Handley was the first person who had me ski the outside line (I know that lots of people had explained it to me before, but I wasn't really ready to incorporate it into my skiing yet.).

Squatty gave me "Sun Valley"turns, or upside down bump skiing, which works well in blue bumps.

Kurt made me do 8000 retraction turns on the groomed terrain before he would ski bumps with me again, and then Cindy skied behind me for two days yelling "NO" whenever I was extending off the top of a bump.

Over time, I had thought that I was going for one movement pattern that worked well in the bumps, whose DIRT, (Duration, Rate, Intensity and Timing) changed just a bit to suit the size of the bump.

I knew on some level that there were several ways to ski the bumps, several types of lines you could choose, but I was sort of looking for that "create" place where the line evolved as you skied. For some reason I was thinking that that line would evolve out of one kind of turn as it changed for the bump in front of you.

When I was working with Josh and Kevin, we went back to pivot slips. I got a rotary movement that Josh liked, but I increased my BBI (ballistic bump interface) and decreased my speed control. I wasn't really thinking about the tactical choice we were making, that of skiing fall line bumps, or the zipper line. I was thinking about skiing down the fall line, but not (for some reason) thinking that "skiing down the fall line" was the same thing as skiing the zipper line. Hmmm.

I realized during the day that I needed to make my rotary motion match the distance traveled down the bump to the next transition, just like any good turn on groomed snow.

After I put that piece in, Kevin told me that I had lost my ski to snow contact. How could I blend that diving movement back into this new movement pattern? By being conscious of that concept. The next run down, the tips were diving, I was pivoting through the entire turn and diving again. I was on my downhill ski. I was happy.

Then I went and skied with Jenn Metz, and she asked me if I could round the turn out more. I spent the day high siding until I pulled the movement patterns into a better sequence, and rounded out the turn, but stayed in the fall line.

Here's where I made my mistake. I've spent so much time thinking about one way to ski (oops, first off) for instance, on the groomed in a specific task, (for instance, medium radius carved turns), there is an optimal blend of movement patterns that go toward a better medium radius carved turn.

I let go of what I had learned with Josh and Kevin and continued toward what Jenn and Dennis had given me, thinking that this was headed toward the "optimal" and therefore more mutable bump turn.

What I didn't realize was that I had learned two different types of turns to use in fall line bumps. One is a short radius, reaching turn, and one is a short swing turn. Both of these turns are useful in fall line bumps, one is more optimal than the other depending on the bump, line, or rut you are facing. Having both well developed and being able to develop the blend of skills not ONLY in each turn according to the bump, but being able to blend these turns together as well, as needed is where the CREATE part of fall line, or any kind, of free skiing in the bumps happens.

Yesterday, I was skiing the rounded, reaching short radius turn down the fall line, and I felt really good about my ski to snow contact and about my development of my bump skiing.

Today, I went out and skied with Schanzy. He asked me to ski fall line bumps. I smiled. I was happy. I know that to get where I'm going, I have to ski bumps much better than I am, but I felt like in the last two weeks, I'd made a HUGE breakthrough in my fall line bump skiing, and I was glad to get to practice it now.

I skied the run.

"That was nice, but it wasn't fall line bump skiing."

I was confused.

"In fall line bump skiing, your center of mass doesn't really leave the fall line, Kate. Yours was going back and forth across it." Yes. Because I was making short turns. I was skiing bumps in a corridor, but I wasn't skiing the task of fall line bump skiing.

Schanzy showed me the pivot slip down the bump. I looked at Cindy in abject panic. Why was the "optimal" or "ideal" turn in the bumps this other vocabulary that I'd let go of? I felt like I'd spent weeks taking that out of my skiing on purpose!! Shit!



I let go of my fear and decided to open my ears as big as I could get them. The point here is to become a better skier. Passing the test is a milestone along the way, and not the point. The point is to understand with DEPTH the movements we make and why we make them. I'm here to learn from Schanzy, not to defend my old belief.

I peeled my fear off of me, dropped it in the snow and skied away from it. I kind of wanted to skate back up the hill and get it, but my ears were big and Schanzy was giving me gold. Screw it. I'm brave enough to walk down this path and fail tomorrow.

I worked on this turn. I worked on it until I heard him say that I had great steering and was doing what he wanted, but I wasn't diving the tips and could I add that back in. CLICK! Oh, this is THAT turn, for real! Yes, I can, I know I can because I did it before.

I added it back in. The last three turns had the piece I needed. I had still been, in this turn, missing something, and that was often times speed control. I also wasn't sure what to do when I came upon a bump that this wasn't the best tactic for. (Completely ignoring all of these other choices: a short reaching round turn, airing it out to the next bump, cutting the bump off, skiing the cross line, making an extra turn on the back of the bump... hello, Kate! You are hauling your bag of tricks around FREAKING USE IT!)

Sometimes I get so focused on the lesson I'm trying to learn that I forget that this is an integrative sport. Its about choice, its about creation, its about playing on the features the mountain presents to you. its about choosing from your bag and moving down the face. Its not about skiing a task ONE WAY.

As we stood at the bottom, Schanzy talked about edging in this turn. I love the way he teaches. He asked me, is there edging in this turn? Yes. Where? At the bottom and only for a moment. The rate is quick the duration is short. Its a check that happens just before the flexion or absorption of the bump, or right with it, depending on your choice.

We talked for a while about the blend, about the fact that that's where the mastery is: in the blend, as it changes, over the run.

For now, we'll take four things in sequence and over time, they will blend. Check. Absorb. Dive. Rotate. Repeat.

I had two runs like this, on the way down to the bottom. Then we got to a nice final steep pitch, and the concept of not only blending the movements in this turn, but blending the turns came to mind as I remembered that Schanzy had begun a run following four big bumps around and when they got smaller, he went to more of a check turn.

What if, in these bumps, I made some of each, and some that were both in some places?

It worked. It was the beginning. Finally, I feel like the lexicon has cracked open and I don't have such an unfortunately myopic view. It took real truths from Schanzy for me to see it.

"Often times you choose a bias and it shows all the way down the run. You don't have depth, Kate. You are showing me, right now, I'm working on steering. Right now, I'm working on fore/aft. Right now, I'm working on checking or quick edging movements. Eventually, I don't want to see that. I want to see that sensual, snaky, creative bump skiing that evolves with the run."

Oh, man. Me, too. I felt it a few times today for sometimes as many as six bumps. And there is no feeling I've felt in skiing quite like it.

Its time to get serious, its time to develop. Its time to commit to depth of understanding and move away from pictures into blends that create on the hill. Its time to start skiing.

In which we get back on the horse after The Big Wreck

I was slightly terrified, I'll admit it. My pointer finger and thumb are still numb, and I'm not sure if that's because of the exacerbated injury to my neck, or because I did something bad to my shoulder, which still hurts quite a bit.

I'm choosing to believe that it's because of my shoulder. My body felt like it was run over by a truck until this morning, a week after the crash.

I'm still sore in my whole spine, and of course, more so in places where I was already injured, in the SI joint, and in the cervical area where I have previously compressed discs, and where I broke off the bone spur.

Yesterday was day one of Precision Skiing 401, a clinic that is a recommended prep clinic for the Rocky Mountain PSIA Trainer's accred. I was SO stoked when I walked in and realized that Jenn Metz was leading the clinic, the wife of Todd, who I had just taken Clinic Leading 401 from in Vail. How often does that happen?

These guys are inspiring for so many reasons, not the least of which is that they have been happily married for thirty years and are still madly in love. They are both extraordinary teachers, and I was excited to meet the other half of this dynamic duo!

Jenn has a truly inspiring way of presenting information, the group was moving, the clinic was tailored to the needs of the group really well, we got a wealth of deep technical information without bogging down our minds, and our skiing dramatically improved as a group. My only complaint is that I didn't have a video camera, because I would have loved to watch the things she told us over and over again so that I could remember every single tip and explanation. They were all really well said, clear, concise, and easy to digest.

Day one for me was scary, I was shaky on my skis, afraid to fall, worried what would happen if I did fall, and I felt like I was floating about six feet off the snow. Visibility was challenging, and we were skiing Snowmass, whose terrain I like, but I always feel a bit disconnected when I am there, slightly lost, even though I know where I am.

I felt like I demonstrated the worst of my adequate skiing, if that makes any sense, and I wondered, if I ski like this at selection, will it be enough to meet the standard? Jenn told me she'd let me know at the end of two days.

I stayed on my feet, and by the end of the first day, I felt much more connected. We got some great work done skiing basic parallel slowly through moderate bumps, and I was grateful for the pacing of the day.

The next day, today, was at Highlands, which is probably my favorite place to ski. It is also where the TA selection is going to happen this year, lucky me!!

I got back on my Blizzard Crush's (I had skied the day before on my GS skis, which are precise, for sure, but unforgiving), and we skied the 9+ inches of fresh pow with huge grins on our faces.

Something was different. My body still feels a lot of pain, but I was connected to the snow like I was before the crash. We dove into Sodbuster and skied what felt more like about 18" of windblown pow over huge bumps. It wasn't my best skiing, but it was okay, and I took three falls along the way. Hey, if I was going to fall, this was the place to do it. The snow was soft and forgiving, and even though the falls were ALL highsiding on a turn to the left, I landed comfortably and let go of my fear.

Sodbuster - like terrain

Jenn had some fantastic specific feedback, not just "do this" but why. Why she wanted it, the expected outcome on the ski, how successful she expected me to be at it, all the points that we are supposed to hit when we are giving clinics, but very few trainers hit every point every time. Jenn is so accomplished at delivering that message succinctly, that I felt really motivated to make a change.

Over the course of the day, my understanding depend, and my ability to move changed, and my skiing improved. It was an incredible day, no more falls after that. We skied hard all morning, double black bumps until lunch, and then got into Wedge Christy land. This went surprisingly well, Squatty's old advice about the slinky, about pressure management like a slinky going from one hand to the other is still fresh in my mind, and with some tweaks from Jenn, suddenly, I had a passing form.

We jumped into SodBuster again at the end of the day, and I was stoked to ski it well, even with tired legs, and no falls. I asked Jenn what she thought about the skiing over all, and she told me on the first day, I was below the bar to just touching it all day, and on the second day, I was above the bar to just touching it.

I was happy to hear this, as today I felt like I skied fairly average. It wasn't my most accomplished skiing ever, it wasn't a super star day, but it was solid. And what feels solid looks above the bar most of the time.

I am so happy to be in that place, I have some great notes to go work on and keep making positive change, I have a LOT of work to do to complete the application and requirements, and I have 12 days until selection!!

Thanks to everyone for their help and encouragement, and good luck to everyone who is going to selection for Examiner and TA!!

Retraction Turn Dryland Exercise

Here's a quick video on how to practice retraction turns on dryland, for later use in the bumps.

DONT CHOKE! - Mental Performance Coaching in Whitefish, Montana

Do you teach skiing in Montana? I'll be at Whitefish Mountain Resort in Northern Montana from January 24th through the 27th! Two clinics are scheduled and more will be added if demand warrants it!

 

Don't Choke!

Exam and Selection prep at Whitefish Mountain Resort in Northern Montana 

with mental performance coach

Kate Howe 

 

Coach to PSIA National Teams Candidates

"Kate's experiences as both an athlete and coach at the highest levels of individual sport give her a unique and valuable perspective. The biggest challenge in helping athletes as they become experts in their sport is working on a flat learning curve where each small refinement or achievement is hard won...

Kate's techniques truly shine when good enough isn't."

- PSIA Education Director, and former US Ski Team Adaptive Coach Ben Roberts, National Teams Candidate and client of Kate Howe

Tuesday, January 25

4 – 6 pm “Go Time” - indoor presentation

$20 per person in advance, includes materials $25 per person at the door

Wednesday, January 26

9am – 3pm “Pucker Factor” - On Snow Practical Clinic

$40 per person in advance $45 day of

Limited to 12 spots

Sign up for both sessions for $50 ahead of time!

katehowe@mac.com to register

Learning to Ski is Like Putting Together a Lego Car Without the Instructions: More Thoughts on Copy, Choose, Create

More than 25 pieces, the first build is always by the book.

My kids save up their allowance and buy little Lego kits that come with about 25 pieces. These tiny kits make up a Lego car, most of the time. I stand there with a handful of Legos, and I look at the box, and I KNOW this makes a car, because I see the picture on the box.

I feel this way lots of times when I'm following someone with real mastery around on my skis. Each of them explains what we are doing differently, each of them expresses the final idea with their own spirit showing through their skiing, but in all of them, the pieces are there.

I watch them ski away, and I think to myself, I see the pieces. I look at my hand. I see all the Legos. I know this makes a car.


Lots of times, I put the pieces together, and I have four or five left over. It looks kind of like a car, I tried to copy the picture, but there is something missing - I have rotation but no speed control; I have speed control but no ski-to-snow contact; I have ski-to-snow contact; but no flexion/extension.


Often on the lift, I flip through the Lego book in my head and go to the last page which shows the exploded view of how it all fits together. I can see the diagnostic, I can see where the piece goes that I was missing.


Most of the time, of course, the piece that I have left over goes in the middle, or in the base, and I have to take the entire freaking car apart to fit in that little, but important piece. Now my rotation matches the distance traveled down the bump, and I have rotary AND speed control, but I'm still lacking ski-to-snow contact.

One of the many ships Bodhi makes from his imaginiation

This place to me feels like the space in between choose and create, it's the space where you are skiing with choice, and seeing how often you are able to chose. Sometimes, it goes well, and you get a moment of freedom when five or six bumps feel like freedom and creation. And then, suddenly, there is a blank space: I don't know how to create in this terrain.


This recently happened to me in Sodbuster, a steep, long, fairly narrow double black bump run. There were sections in which I felt free to ski, speed came with proficiency, in these types of bumps, I could choose, and occasionally have moments where I felt like I was free enough to create.

Suddenly, we came across some bobsled run shaped bumps. I only know how to choose one line in here, i realized. I've spent three years trying to learn not to let the terrain dictate turn shape, but for some reason, I had yet to apply it in this type of terrain.

I asked Schanzy if he could show me several different turns in this situation, trying to free my brain from the prescription that it was wanting to hold on to. I had been skiing three bumps and stopping, trying to find the place where I could choose, but while I could chose on this bump and then that bump, I could not seem to string together any sort of fluid choice.

Schanzy skied away from me, and I watched the creative process, suddenly the prescription crumbled. I was in a place where I could copy, slower and more deliberately, but I could feel the liberation coming. I'm excited for the day when I can take apart all the directed kit cars I've made and mix the pieces up. I'd love to be able to come up with a cool car of my own design, like my kids do.

But I have to remind myself that while I'm eager for that kind of freedom, and I love to jump in and see how I do all on my own, its the learning to build that allows me to play with freedom in the future. Bodhi wasn't able to make the creations he builds out of his mind today before he spent years following the directions carefully.

Copy, Choose, Create: Skiing is just like Art School

I was skiing with Schanzy the other day in our Ski Lab (the group of folks from Aspen that are interested in training together before going to National Teams Tryouts), and we had a really great conversation about the bumps. I have been working on my bump skiing quite intensely this season, with LOTS of epiphanies, and the end result has been that I am suddenly able to SOMETIMES ski with more control, freedom and fluidity in the big double black bumps. Yay!

Schanzy said something to me that I've heard often before in teaching situations, but you know how sometimes you hear something in a different way when you are finally ready to take in the information?

It was something like, "You are caught in different moments somewhere in Copy, Choose, Create. Where do you think you fall in this terrain?" It was a great question, one that hasn't been asked to me directly, which it hadnt occurred for me to ask of myself in each type of terrain or situation. Its a wonderful diagnostic.

It occurred to me that learning to ski is just like going to art school. Lots of art school candidates enter school with a portfolio that we are proud of, a sense of where we want to go, and a feeling that going to Art School means we get to skip straight to the CREATE part of the equation. 

Self Portrait by Basquiat

Oh, if only we knew. The hard work begins. Our teen aged angst filled counter culture souls are begging to follow in the footsteps of Basquiat, Schnabel, Cy Twombly, Pollack, Anselm Keefer... let me express all 18 years of my deep, tortured experience in the next five minutes. That's why I'm here. 

Instead, we sit down and learn to sharpen a pencil with an exact o. We practice copying line width and characteristics, we practice copying the masters in one color. We practice copying the masters in two colors. We copy, copy, copy. We draw circles, cylinders, boxes. We draw everything mundane to train our hands to learn to chose line quality, volume, space. We haven't' even got to the part where we learn to chose the story, is it about the light? Is it about the shadow? Is the whole story about the shoulder of the model and nothing else?

Thus begins the painful process of the first three semesters of your undergrad experience: You are taught, and fight against the fact, that you know nothing. I attended art school at three institutions at various levels, first at Montserrat College of Art, then at the School for the Museum of Fine Art, then at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Because I came into each of these fine institutions with a long history of art appreciation (my mom was a painter and my dad an opera singer), and had spent most of my youth wandering around in museums, galleries and attending theater, I had a strong desire to skip ahead to the create portion of the process.

Eager to consume as much new information as possible, I was not realizing at the time that my early education, while a good starting place, had holes in it. It was full of observation, but lacked practical application, and I needed to spend some solid time learning to copy the masters before I could effectively choose in my own work. And that was years before there were moments when I could create. I suppose during this time I learned that part of the process of committing yourself to mastering something over time is being willing to find new information in bodies of information that you already possess. How many times have you re-read a book and found a deeper meaning?

Portrait of Madame X by Sargent

I loved and needed the hard realities of Art school, where so much of the discussion in the lower semesters amongst the students was about the institution's desire to crush your spirit (of course, art school is full of rebellious free thinkers, I can imagine that attempting to educate us is a bit like herding cats...). We griped while we sat on our charcoal covered benches cleaning our size o brushes, mixing pallets full of paint which we could do nothing other than paint a gradient of skin tone to compare to Sargent's palette and see if we had got the right mixture. Not a face, not a creative moment, a honing of the technical understanding of how the pieces interacted together before we were ever allowed to experiment with choice.

After that third semester of dedicated, disciplined, focused work, you find yourself having been beaten into copying the masters and being subject to brutally honest critique of your own floundering work, caught somewhere in between copy and choose, thinking always about the day when you won't get beaten about the head, shoulders and ego for desiring so badly to create.

I thought at this point about what it was like for the painters coming up in the Renaissance, grinding pigment for the master for years before ever putting brush to canvas. Years of rabbit skin glue, years of palette preparation. And finally, one day, if you were diligent, hard working, and your understanding of color and how the master worked, you could assist in putting in the sky. Perhaps the robe. Or a tree on a master's work. 

Art school was a great place to practice humility, setting aside of ego and personal want so you could HEAR what the teachers were trying to tell you. At the same time that you are absorbing as accurately as you can all the information coming to you, you must be nurturing and feeding your own voice, so that one day, the skills you have learned can flow together to show your person, your "muchness" as the Mad Hatter says.

Hamish Cox executing a blackflip with a twist off the Village Raceline. Photo by Charlie Brown

We see this in the best skiers. The technical foundations, well taught, absorbed through discipline of copy, copy, copy, underlined with a strong education in history, physics, bio mechanics, and a willingness to continue to evolve and learn, are present in almost every turn, but in the very best, you see them shine through, not willfully, but subtly.

This, I believe, is the moment of create. It is where the person comes back in, not through ego or desire to show oneself, but because of mastery, because the pieces exist in a way that choice happens almost unconsciously, there is a fluid playful experiential piece that inspires anyone who happens to observe, even and especially if it is in the privacy of the studio... whether that's late at night in the painter's private place, or off the backside by yourself in the trees.

I just TOTALLY figured something out!

I was falling asleep and then I realized I'd forgotten to wash my long underwear, so I crawled out of bed, and threw it in the wash, and decided to kill the 1/2 hour by showering myself, and, as I'm sure you can suspect, I do ski in the shower...

So I was skiing in my shower, and I SUDDENLY REALIZED why I HAD THOUGHT I was opening my ankle, or pushing into the back of the oncoming bump (two very different things.)

FIRST, I was pushing into the back of the bump, but I was extending from the knee and hip, and I was doing it WAY TOO EARLY, so that I was basically pushing myself away from the bump.

ALSO, when I was allowing my feet to crumple into the bump, I was not steering or pressuring the outside ski, I was crumpling, then as I crested, pointing and finishing the turn (which is fun).

HOWEVER, when I was just now skiing in the shower, I realized that the extension into the back of the bump is not a defensive "I need to slow myself down" move that's big and hugely anticipated so much as a "I'd like to be able to steer my skis around this thing, and to be in the middle I'm gonna open my ankle a titch just for a split second."

So I was making the move, but too early, too big, and from the wrong joint, which is why, when I tried to put it into my skiing, it was tossing me into the back seat. Now that I have the kinesthetic understanding of the subtlety and the purpose, it feels natural, and it makes the line much smoother, so you have more time for steering and more precise edging, which means you can butter the ski a bit while still slicing off the top of the bump!

OH OH OH! I can't wait to get out there and try it again tomorrow! Understanding what I was doing before is really REALLY helpful to letting go of it and moving forward. Man. Now I'm all jazzed and can't sleep, and I have to be up at 6 to meet Squatty and Weems for breakfast. Jeeze.

What do ski instructors do when they aren't teaching?

Prep for 3: Kate skis Bumps in Last Chance

Thanks for the video, Shannon!!


Medium Radius Turns in the Bumps on South Bowl

Video from Dave Casto's Bump Clinic

If you were in the bump clinic this morning, click here to see what little video I caught!

Slack Lining the variable snow!

Its 4:30 in the morning and I can't sleep because I am dreaming about the amazing afternoon of skiing that I had with Zach and Shelby, two really rippin' skiers who teach at Bridger, yesterday. I skied so many lines that I've never done before, and it was so wonderful to feel really good about knowing that my skis would turn where I needed them to. The snow was perfect "test your skills" snow, firmish and skied out in the off piste, with about 3" accumulating on top of it. Perfect for practice.

I have trouble with strong leg steering in the mank, and staying forward in thick, manky snow, patience is so important there, and yet, when you ski trees and bushes in that sort of snow, you have to make the move you have to make, or, well, hello, you are not going to miss that tree and ski into the open space you are aiming for! So I was grateful that the snow was variable enough to present a challenge, but friendly enough to allow me to experiment and play in.

So yesterday I skied the chair line down flippers about three times, first off, a line I've always wanted to ski but been a bit chicken to take, and chasing Zach forces me to ski at a bit of speed, and see what technique stays with me. Of course, I have a LOOOONNNNG way to go, but I was very VERY happy to feel some good turns with approrpriate pressure, and good directional movements that kept me going forward even on the steep drop offs and over bumps and variable snow. On the flippers run, I got in a little hop turn and a small air, which was thrilling, and while I got tossed a bit on the big bumps up top (okay, I skied those really poorly), the ones on the bottom where the pitch is a bit steeper and the speed was greater, I actually skied just fine.

All in all, four days of skiing Last Chance in slow motion while teaching bumps, and doing NO free skiing has proven to be a terrific thing, and I realized that it gave me a couple of days to let my afternoon with Hickey and Casto to kind of gell and set in my mind.

Michael (Hickey) had asked me to start slacklining when we first started working together, and I did it on and off, this summer I got on it whenever I could, and it's interesting: When you slackline, the line is going to move. You have to accept that. If you fight the movement of the slackline, it will vibrate and move more. If you accept that the line will move, and allow that movement to exist, rather than actively trying to quiet it, guess what? It quiets down. The vibrational experience of the "ground" under you goes way down, and you can walk.

When I was out with Michael and Casto, we were talking about how to get my stance operating in the off piste the way that it is on the groom, and I got two quick and sage pieces of advice that really, really stuck. Michael said "slacklining" and pointed at the South Bowl, and then took of in big, sweeping turns through the bumps, crud and bushes, and I followed. Casto skied behind and watched the results.

Something clicked in my mind about the correlation between not fighting the vibration from the ground in the same way you would on a slackline, but it took about four or five days of skiing in slow motion to really incorporate that and have the light go all the way on in my mind. The other really excellent piece of advice, which works better in mankier snow for me, is ski it like you are skiing on very thin ice or a thin sheet of glass.

Essentially, you are trying to keep the forces even, keep the touch light, the pressure from building, so you never break the ice.

Today, skiing down the very steep and moving from thick cream cheese to buffed out steeps and over some rocks (mini-huck!), I felt for the first time a real acceptance of the terrain variability, and stopped trying to fight it. Strangely enough, i hadn't really realized how much I had been bracing in that terrain previously, I had felt aggressive and forward, but that's really the key. This snow doesn't need aggressive, this snow needs touch. Suddenly, skiing was so much easier!

I think this is the beginning of a type of understanding I haven't had before about how my feet function, how my center of mass moves (how quickly, how far, when in the turn, etc), the beginning of something that feels like reaching for flow and really "skiing" it, rather than loading at the bottom of the turn and trying to reach for "control" (ie, the ability to scrub enough speed that I feel in control before the next move), but just feeling in balance and ready for the next move, so I don't HAVE to load and compress.

It still happens, of course, but there is some sort of fantastic change that's beginning! OH! And another good thing! I'm in fairly stiff boots, but my Achilles tendons are sore, and my quads are NOT, so I'm thinking I may actually be flexing my ankles finally! YAY!! FRONT SEAT RULES!

Okay, must get some sleep, have to get up in two hours and do it all again!

She Can be Taught! Learning to suck less in the bumps at Snowbird

I want to write a longer post about both of these things, the carve and the bumps, but Its 2am and we have an early morning clinic! So here is a quick summary which I will expand on later:

I pop in the bumps. My hands fly up, my steering move is too quick, single footed, and I am not moving in the direction of my new turn. Hence, I am constantly getting compressed and flying over the handlebars.

Rob gave me a great progression to fix this:
Whitepass turns on the groomer.
Whitepass turns in the bumps.
Allow the compression/absorption phase to be what draws your old downhill ski onto its outside edge.
Phase out the whitepass.
As your absorption phase happens, allow your body to cross your skis over the bump, pulling you onto your new outside edge of the new inside ski. This takes trust and commitment, but is super key to making the move less abrupt.
Use your pole plant to stop your rotation like you would in a short swing.

In this video, I think you can see the top two turns are my old style turns, and I kind of go down the progression, until the last six turns or so are smoother, and I have probably the best ski to snow contact yet! I'll post a bump video from the day before as soon as I get a chance, so you can see it before the 20 minute progression that we did. TOO FUN!!

Dave Casto Bumps 1-4-09