Ice Ice Baby
The Snowcard team have spent January in the Grand Massif ski area, team building and working on ideas for the year ahead. Our first blog for 2025 is a subject close to MD Russell Dadson’s heart, namely his hate of skiing hard packed ice and skied out off piste!
Russell and Freddie D on a hard packed run into Les Carroz
The team arrived in the Alps early January to fresh snow, perfect conditions and beautiful blue skies. After two weeks of fantastic early January conditions, the pistes and off piste areas in the Grand Massif were becoming skied out with little positive snow forecast.
After a few days of Russell’s aging legs fighting hard packed ice, he took to trawling YouTube videos for help with his nervous relationship with ice.
There is plenty of advice online but we wanted to share a couple of short videos offering sound and achievable tips.
Kili Weibel, a Swiss Snow Demo Team member puts it all down to ski position or skiing stance. He says ‘think goal keeper’. Shoulder width legs, balanced, ready. His 4 tips for skiing ice better:
Early edging in to the fall line
Build up ski pressure slowly and evenly – roll the skis over through the turn
Body separation between upper and lower body – squeeze or crunch your obliques (the area between armpit and waist) – don’t rotate the upper body
Think flow not force – untense the body and relax
Alicia at WILDR Online Fitness and Training encourages us to think positively about ice and not stay at home just because conditions aren’t perfect. Her top tips are fitness biased. Of course, you need to be fit to ski but thinking about your core as well as aerobic fitness can make a big difference to staying centred skiing icy conditions. Alicia recommends:
Keep the outside ski weighted but don’t let the uphill ski drift so you put weight onto it
Use core strength to stay balanced with weight forward and shoulders facing downhill, lean back and you’re toast on ice
Tune your skis, blunt edges will make the task twice as hard
Agreeing with Kili, Alicia suggests thinking about body separation and practicing keeping the upper body facing down the slope whilst exaggerating twisting the lower body through the fall line – this action improves your control of ski speed and edge connection with the ice
RD says – “I’ve tried Alicia’s exercise and it made a massive difference to my edging and speed control – being an old school skier my stance was learnt on old long thin skis. Modern carving skis need a wider stance and a more even flow, watch Kili in action and you’ll see what I mean!”
As ex worldcup alpine skier Deb Armstrong suggests, ‘ice does the teaching’. If you can get your ice technique right, everything else flows. Just practice!
Alicia @ WILDR Online Fitness Training
Hard packed blue run, nervous skiers, veins of blue ice visible on runs into Morillon