pinta, this topic about narrow stance comes up all the time. the answer is simple. do not look at the distance between the skis on the snow. That is an illusion. They are on angled slopes, the camaras are shooting from funny angles, but MOST IMPORTANTLY, they are in an angulated position.
Instead of looking at the distance between their skis on the snow, instead look at the distance between their legs. The amount of white space between their legs is pretty constant. When they are laid out in a highly angulated stance with their hips practically touching the snow, their skis are actually pretty wide apart on the snow, but their legs are still seperated by a narrow slit of light (aka, a narrow stance).
When they talk about VERTICAL seperation, they are saying that when you're laid out in a G force turn with lots of angulation, or perhaps you just skiing down something really steep..then your skis simply HAVE to seperate vertically, but horizantally they are still pretty much 8-12 inches apart or so...basically a comfortable width for your legs to be. Walking width.
For example, if you were skiing on some hairy steep colouir, your uphill ski would be a foot or two vertically higher than the downhill ski. If you were out in a helicopter looking at the face of the colouir, you'd see a guy with this skis wide apart on the snow because of this vertical seperation between then. But if you had a camara looking directly down on your helmet from above, your skis would seem to be seperated horizantally by the same so called "narrow" stance of 8-12 inches.
This same thing holds true in a normal high G turn on a blue groomed run. If you're legs are angulated, relative to the slope then in order to maintain the narrow stance, your legs will seperate vertically (vertical being towards your knees). The inside leg will have to vertically seperate in order to accomodate the angulation. Again, the distance between skis on the snow is wider because of this, but if you had a camara pointing staight down from a point up in the air above the skier, you would see the skis are still in a narrow stance from that perspective.
Essentially, narrow "stance" does not refer to the distance between skis, it refers to the distance between knees. The WC guys are narrow stanced. the distance between their skis is not constant, it is changing all the time, depending on the angles they are acheiving.
Read Ron LeMaster's book if you don't believe HH, there are tons of pictures of racers from lots of angles (and on his website too) and you will start noticing that if you look down on the racers from above or from a position that lines up with their leg angles...you will see a narrow horizantal stance. Focus on that and forget about how wide the skis are on the snow.
Regarding the flame throwing... I tend to agree with you that its unfortunate sometimes that HH comes on so strong. But the simple fact of the matter is that he is right about a lot of stuff and PSIA and others are wrong about some stuff and HH has gotten so much resistance from the PSIA fraternity and the Epic BS that he has given up on trying to be nice. He is just saying it like it is...and really...his words are not innaccurate. A little more colorful than will win him any elections, but true nonetheless...
I saw a sign the other day "If you can't say anything nice, join an internet forum".
B-)