To carve a turn properly a ski must be leaned over onto its metal edge. The edge is what bites into the snow and controls the direction that the ski will travel. It is your steering. Once on edge it can be bowed into a curved shape under the pressure of your weightand your muscular input (this is where shaped skis come into play- as soon as they are tilted onto their edge they are naturally in a bowed shape without any pressure needed!) This bowed shape "carves" you a new direction in the snow. Carving turns is fun!

To hold its grip on the snow along its edge a ski must not twist under pressure (like a licorice whip) at the front or rear. If it does twist, the front and back flatten out against the snow and it loses its grip. Then you are no longer carving…you are (yuck) skidding. In the past, to keep skis from flattening out, the ski makers made them very stiff. A stiff ski would not twist. This worked. Unfortunatly a stiff ski was also harder to force into a bowed shape once the skiier leaned it on its edge. Therefore, only the best and strongest skiiers were able to force their skis into a bowed shape and carve turns. They won medals and became the stars of Warren Miller films. We watched them make the advanced runs look easy. We all wanted to ski like them. The rest of us could not force these skis into nicely bowed shapes and ended up skidding. Intermediate skiiers bought softer skis. This allowed us to get them to bow. The soft skis unfortunatly were soft in all respects and the fronts and backs flattened out. We ended up skidding.

Part Three: Enter modern technology!

The final part of the modern ski story has to do with materials technology. I will not get into much technospeak here but will try to explain why this is important.

What was the answer to the skidding turn situation? If we could have a ski that bowed easily on its edge (a soft ski) combined with a ski that did not flatten out at the tips and tails (a stiff ski) we could all be happier. Well they have done it! Skis now can be made that is soft along its legnth yet stiff across. Easy to turn and hard to skid! How do they do it? Well I said I wouldn't get into technospeak (the manufacturers can do that for me on their web pages) but let me throw out some impressive words: piezio electronics, intellifibers, microchips, kevlar, carbon fiber, and titanium just to name a few.

We hardily endorse these skis and have aligned ourselves with the manufacturers that we feel are on the cutting edge of the new ski design. These companies understand the dynamics of skis and have the technological prowess to build them so that you and I can get the most enjoyment out of every precious day we spend on the slopes.

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