A-Basin All-Mountain Camp Q for PMTS newbie

[DownwardlyMobile]

Hi, first post here. Occasional lurker here. I've read/watched both ACBAES books/DVDs and am intrigued about a PMTS camp this winter. But not sure which camp I'd fit in.

While I tried the PMTS stuff last winter, I guess I'm not a full PMTS skier like many here. I ski mostly in Summit County, Colorado (average about 40 days a year). Ski parallel, mostly ungroomed most of the day. Favorite areas to ski: Copper Bowl, Spaulding Bowl, Union Bowl, Jupiter Bowl (Little Trees) at Copper Mountain, all the Back Bowls at Vail, trees at Winter Park/Mary Jane, Wildcat terrain at Alta, Regulator Johnson at Snowbird, etc. While these are my "sweet-spot" areas, I may not be skiing these with good PMTS form. Love powder and crud. Bumps are my weak spot as far as linking turns go -- Cat's Meow or Upper Richard's Run at Loveland are good bump runs for me, but Pali at A-Basin is pretty hard.

So given that I ski ungroomed, but am not a "full" PMTS skier, should I do the All-Mountain camp? My constraint is also that I won't have time to do the camp after mid-January most likely.

Edit: unfortunately I don't have any videos of my skiing for you guys to evaluate.

[Max_501]

How much of your offpiste skiing is carving vs pivoting?

[DownwardlyMobile]

Carving. I learned skiing on shaped skis, so don't use pivoting. Although it may not be up to PMTS's perfect carve. Tend to use skidded/brushed carve (can't tell the difference yet) on really steep terrain and bumps.

[Harald]

Wow, where did you learn to apply carving in all mountain situations? PSIA says that's impossible. The Epic gang says you can't ski without steering and leg rotation.

Are you telling us that a new skier picked the correct ski method without getting brain washed here first?

There goes the koolaid debate. But the skunk works is still operational.

[Harald]

Sounds like you are on the right track for an all mountain camp, and you will learn something and you will improve.

[DownwardlyMobile]

Is there any way I can hook up with some PMTS'ers early in the season, who can see my skiing and tell whether I'm carving as much as I think I am, and whether I'm up to the All-Mtn camp standard? Maybe I need to start at a lower level.

[DownwardlyMobile]

What I'm afraid of is showing up at an All-Mtn camp and finding out that I'm in way over my head, and that I really need to start at a much lower level to work on the fundamentals.

[Hobbit]

Is there any way I can hook up with some PMTS'ers early in the season, who can see my skiing and tell whether I'm carving as much as I think I am, and whether I'm up to the All-Mtn camp standard? Maybe I need to start at a lower level.

I ski the five Vail company resorts (A-Basin, Keystone, Breck, Vail and BC). I'll be happy to make some turns together.
I am planning to do the A-Basin camp this year (my second time).

[DownwardlyMobile]

I ski the five Vail company resorts (A-Basin, Keystone, Breck, Vail and BC). I'll be happy to make some turns together.
I am planning to do the A-Basin camp this year (my second time).

Awesome! I'll PM you when the season starts up? I have a Vail Resorts season pass as well.

I know there's a lot of animosity between PMTS/Realskiers and PSIA/Epic, but the PMTS'ers seem to swear by their success, and Max's skiing montages are quite impressive. So it has got me intrigued to find out more. It seems like beyond reading the books and doing the drills, attending a camp is probably the next step?

[dewdman42]

Wow, where did you learn to apply carving in all mountain situations? PSIA says that's impossible. The Epic gang says you can't ski without steering and leg rotation.

Are you telling us that a new skier picked the correct ski method without getting brain washed here first?

I know of a lot of great skiers that have never had anything to do with any ski instruction system, neither as a student or teacher and as such have not been infected by many of the incorrect methodologies mentioned so often. Their deficiencies, in my opinion, are usually completely different from what PSIA is suffering from. There is always room to improve, but I know I've been carving my skiis for a very long time and working hard to do it way before I knew anything about CSIA, PSIA, PMTS or any other system. I used to ski with a buddy of mine a lot who had some racing background in his youth and we basically put a lot of miles in. He didn't teach me. We just skied a lot and talked about things and tried to rip as fast as possible, and as steep as possible and as big as possible. (back in the good old days). I know it can be improved with coaching. I wasted a couple years trying to be CSIA certified and it literally made some aspects of my skiing worse. I can't deny, however that some things got better. But I attribute that more to the fact that I was skiing several times a week during that period and just thinking about it a lot, not neccessarily learning gold nuggets of wisdom. In fact, I found in the long run that many if not most of the fundamental concepts of CSIA turned out to be flat out wrong. When I finally discovered PMTS I found it to be something closer to what I was doing before I ever got involved with CSIA...except even better than what I was doing before... a more complete and detailed picture of what constitutes great high performance all mountain carve oriented skiing.

I turned my back on the CSIA concepts forever. About the same time I discovered PMTS, I also started investigating PSIA primarily because I am interested in teaching and most resorts base their pay and everything else on your PSIA cert level. But this time around I am much more astute to recognize the gold from the bull crap and PSIA has not impressed me one bit. Not one bit. I keep biting my lip to avoid arguments with other instructors at my local hill. They are so confused. But it shows in their skiing too. Its very hard to take anyone seriously unless they can back it up with how they ski.

The best instructor training I ever got was from the Canadian Race Coaching Federation (CSCF) who did teach concepts more in line with what PMTS is teaching, but with a different language and a more traditional racing approach which is often too much of a mental leap for the common recreational skier.

Anyway, just wanted to say... I've looked at a lot of systems. PMTS is the best I've seen so far. In fact, its the ONLY system I know of that brings racing concepts to recreational skiers in a way that recreational minds can digest.

Harald and his crew have analyzed skiing correctly, just as the better race coaches do... In fact they come from a high level racing background. And they actually have a proper biomechanical understanding of how skiing works in the most efficient means possible. The racing community at the top levels has had to figure this out a long time ago using the best experts in the world in order to win races. The PSIA/CSIA community is each run by a small group of guys that ski pretty well, worked their way to the top and now get the privelage of "making up" the system that will be used by their organization. There is no lack of ego involved there.

Additionally their priority is not performance. Their priorities are more about getting beginners and intermediates to feel safe and solid on the mountain, skiing in control with reasonable safety, having fun and generating income for resorts. Possibly they do an ok job of this task, but unfortunately they are clueless about true high performance skiing....so they don't really know how to get people to that level. They have tried to "make up" a bunch of complicated stuff using rotation and all manner of other atrocities in an attempt to fabricate their own idea of what biomechanically sound skiing should be.

But truly...PSIA has no idea how to teach truly high performance skiing and what is worse..they are teaching beginners and intermediates bad habits that will be very difficult to break.

In any case, If you have not been exposed to PSIA teaching yet, count yourself lucky and STAY AWAY from it.

I highly reccomend you pick up Harald's books. Give em a read. See if it rings true with you. I can't vouch for this camps because I haven't been to one yet. But I hope to attend one pretty soon.

[midwif]

Dewdman, good post. I disagree with one aspect, that PSIA is 'ok' at getting people to ski beginner/intermediate slopes while feeling safe.

The vast majoritiy of skiers learn the wedge as the very first skill. This incapacitates skiers for the rest of their skiing life if they don't find a way past the wedge. Because of this, once a skier attempts more challenging terrain, they feel the inability to control their speed, gaining too much speed, too fast. The only way to curb it is to come to a stop and then start all over again.

The money I've wasted on PSIA certified instructors at different mountains.

PMTS offers a way to teach skiing right from the start. The instructors elsewhere are slowly acknowledging the movements first advocated here as the way to ski best.

I still have that damn wedge. Less, but still there. A work in progress.

[dewdman42]

Notice I said "might" be ok.

..... in this limited capacity to teach people to ski like beginners with no future beyond that. Believe me, I am not a believer in the PSIA way of doing things. I'm just trying to provide SOME kind of justification for why on earth they would think they need to do things that way.

I believe they do things that way because they don't know of a better way to show people in a few hours how to be safe and have fun on the hill. PMTS obviously provides that superior method..but PSIA folks aren't believers yet. Maybe someday.

I think most of them talk about direct to parallel ideas and they all feel that would be greate if snow plowing could be avoided, but in general they feel that all skiers must learn the snow plow as a last ditch safety defense mechanism if nothing else. Safety first. (shrug).

Anyway, I'm not trying to make excuses for them believe me. I am in favor of the better PMTS way. Just trying to provide some kind of explanation. They are not complete idiots over there. I don't even think they are completely misguided about some things. But their priorities are definitely in different areas that don't relate to performance.. so unfortunately they are teaching people anti-performance...and the students don't really have any idea until its too late. Its a dead-end system.