Where to put feet and the effect on BOTH sides of the course of any boot placement or moves.  i.e. toe out, toe in, how much for each. 

I've been taught to initiate the offside with the little toe of back foot and the onside with the little toe of front foot.  Is the oft stated view that the front foot controls the offside and the rear the onside still valid now that we are all trying to ride a more balanced ski and postion?

What is your view of adjusting fin for feel of water, cold v. warm.  Through a season what do you move and why.  When you start skiing in 60 degree water are you riding the same set up when it fires up to 90?

How do you suggest balancing practice time between acute awareness of all things technical and letting loose and focusing on going around the orange ones?  Avoiding the paralysis by analysis problem.

What are the acceptable ranges of setup on an MPD with respect to bindings and fin?  No way can one setting be right for all.  What is in range and what is leaving the reservation?

Thanks.  Good information in this sport is hard to come by.  Glad you are willing to share with the common people.

the only thing that i think is important to specify with the fin adjustments is that i have seen many skiers that are adjusting their fin to compensate for major problems (body form etc)

How the hell do you get the ski to finish the turn thus creating angle?  I know I'm suppose to do this but I don't (or can't).  I don't create the angle needed to complete the course at 32mph, let alone 34 mph.  This is driving me nuts.

Thanks Chris and Wade.

Garn Arnold

Chris,

Thanks for volunteering your efforts in this manner. A common and somewhat enigmatic topic is that of a ski’s “carry out” properties. It seems to me that any high end ski should possess great “carry out”.  For example, one will often hear that ski ”A” has great speed but ski “B” has better “carry-out”. IMHO if a ski (“B”) has great “carry-out”, this implies getting wide and early and therefore the ski must be generating better speed than the so-called fast ski (“A”) that doesn’t “carry-out” as well. After smoking a pass (i.e., extremely wide and early, happens occasionally), I always ask the time because they feel like a slow pull, however they’re usually right on in the 16.9’s. Conversely when I ski crappy (buoy to buoy), the pass feels real fast, but because it isn’t a wide and early pass, the path must be shorter for a given line length and thus given a shorter path in the same time the ski would be traveling slower despite feeling “faster”. My point here is that a ski that has great “carry-out”, i.e., gets wide and early must inherently be “fast”. Regarding the independent ski tests, I do not understand the rated characteristic of “speed”, since any ski rated high in “carry-out” should also rate high in “speed”, but it doesn’t appear to align this way for all the skis. Until GPS studies are done on a slalom ski “speed” qualities assessments are just too skewed.

Proper ski tuning of course is vital for good “carry-out”. For example, fin DFT and length, conventional perception dictates that moving the fin back and increasing length sacrifices width. While this seems true behind the boat regarding generating width, I lately have been finding that decreasing DFT and increasing length substantially improves the crispness of the offside turn allowing better balance on the ski both in the pre-turn and stronger exit, thereby entering the next onside turn wider and earlier, i.e. seemingly better “carry-out”. The initial feeling of maybe a slightly slower onside turn from such fin changes rapidly dissipates thus retaining good “carry-out” to the next offside buoy.

Since you possess a good deal of knowledge regarding a ski’s characteristics regarding design and tuning, perhaps you could elaborate on the above topic of “carry-out”. What particular properties of a ski and tuning techniques improve this quality.

Thanks.

Pete Gloersen