Style File: Buyers Guide 2010/ Ski Canada Magazine

Reading Time: 2 minutes

SKIER: Chris Lennon
SNOW: Blackcomb
PHOTOS: Gillian Morgan

Air turns

When skiing fun little lines in the trees, it ‘s often necessary to catch a little air without interrupting the flow of your turns. In tight trees, you can’t always land in the same direction that you took off from, but there’s no reason to. Just make an air turn like this:

1. Ski the line as if there wasn ’t any required air, focusing on your ultimate line of travel. Ski until the terrain falls way beneath your feet.
2. As you start to feel the terrain disappear and send you airborne, begin to steer your direction of travel a bit with your upper body.
3. Once fully airborne,turn your feet to catch up to your body’s direction of travel.	3. Once fully airborne,turn your feet to catch up to your body’s direction of travel.
4. Extend the landing gear, and the moment you touch down, continue steering your skis as though you never left the ground.

Hop to recover

Skiing is about constantly dealing with hanging terrain. occasionally little obstacles will get in your way and threaten to knock you off balance. The key is to adapt as best you can and roll with it. And that sometimes the best way to regain your balance is to hop into the air for a moment to re-centre. For example, in this sequence, I unexpectedly got a little too close to a tree: