An old guy returning to skiing after 38 years

[d-cuttler]

I just wanted to share my experiences with all of you.

I am 67 years old, and used to ski in Michigan back in the early 60s. For some reason I quit, and went on to other things. Moving to South Carolina didn?t help either. Anyway I took up bicycling a few years ago and became addicted to it. It helped me to lose over 50 pounds, and got me outdoors which is a good thing because I now live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A little over a year ago I took a part time job as a bike mechanic in one of the local REI stores, but didn?t work on skis. This year it was different; they made sure I was certified on all the bindings and put me to work on skis and snowboards. I think you can see where this is leading.

I figured if I had to work on skis, and interact with the customers at the counter, I might as well take up skiing again. The first thing I did was look for a book, which is how I learned back when I was young. None of them made any real sense to me until I ran across the ?You can ski like an expert? book. I read it and went to Tahoe and tried it. It just didn?t work for me. The problem I had was trying to tip my inner ski to the little toe. It was good for crash every time. All I did was fall down, so I went back to what I did in the old days, lots of hip rotation and lifting which got me down the slopes without falling a lot, but at my age I was totally wiped out after a few hours.

Not being one to give up, I ordered the DVD that matches to book. I noticed the raising of the heel on the inner ski, and drawing it toward the stance ski, which was not too clear in the book.

I went up to Northstar last week during a weekday Without a crowd, and lots of wide moderate slopes. I tried it again, and it all came together! I think that just lifting the heel of the un-weighted ski, and drawing it toward the stance ski forces it to tip to the little toe edge. I started carving turns. The other thing that helped was to develop enough confidence that I wouldn?t fall down if I made an early weight transfer and just relaxed my body relax allowing it to fall toward the inside of the turn. It seemed to fall just so far until centrifugal force held it up. At the same time I could feel a solid bone connection all the way down through my body to the edge of the stance ski. It took very little muscle work to do this. While turning I felt like some hidden force was holding be up and guiding me around the turns. There was also some shoulder rotation that seemed very natural and helped.

There appears to be somewhat of a parallel between this method of turning skis, and doing fast turns on a road bike. When making a turn on the bike, the outside leg is fully extended and pressed into the pedal with the body leaning way over into the turn, along with some upper body rotation, And counter steering

I tried to explain all this to my coworkers at REI that ski, but they looked at me like I was a bit nuts. It was the lifting of the inner ski that turned them off. Oh well you can?t please everyone.

I am going back up on Sunday to refine it all.

Regards,

David Cuttler

[Ourayite]

Congrats! It is a very cool feeling when this stuff start to click. I can't seem to quit......

[patprof]

D-Cutter
You came to the right place! I took my grandkids skiing 3 years ago (after not skiing for 25+ years) and I feel in love with the sport all over again. I am not noted for doing anything half way--so I bought every book and video that I could find on skiing. I even took a number of lessons from those PSIA folks. Long story short-PMTS was the best thought-out system that I could find and it works. Also, liked the fact that I could learn one system and use it anywhere (bumps, powder, crud, steeps) with very minor tweaking.
Saved my pennies last year and went out to Copper this past December for a Camp. That was also a fantastic experience. I learned something that improved my skiing every day. Best of luck and welcome to Realskiers.