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All Downhill from Here

As seen in the Boston Globe Dec 22, 2005

There's a wild side for Intermediates
By Tony Chamberlain, Globe Staff

December 22, 2005

You're a pretty good skier and on a groomed, blue trail you look like Daron Rahlves. You can get down a black diamond as long as it is not too bumpy and is wide enough to traverse edge to edge. Big bumps, wild tree runs in outback country, ungroomed powder, and cornice shoots -- you'll leave that insane stuff to the high-flying hot dogs on those Warren Miller films, right?

Well, if you've ever wanted to break out of that neatly groomed plateau and try gamier stuff, there is a way. Next week at Wildcat Mountain, Dan Egan -- a professional extreme skier who has appeared in many of those Warren Miller films -- will hold a series of all-terrain camps aimed at skiers who long to be ''rut busters" and break into a new level of the sport.

A rut buster, he says, is an intermediate skier who is ready to learn to handle conditions and surfaces that have always been intimidating, including bumps, ice, powder, and broken snow (''crud"), all the natural conditions not found on groomed cruising terrain.

For starters, says Egan, it's important to find a skier's ''freak-out point" -- the point at which speed and the terrain ahead cause panic and the skier bails out. Once that's determined, they're ready to move on.

"Once we identify what's holding a skier back -- and for most skiers it's their stance and balance -- we can give them the knowledge to help them move on," says Egan, who has appeared in 12 of Miller's films and has a ''Wild World of Winter" TV magazine on WZMY in Derry, N.H., Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Mondays at 10 p.m.

The Wildcat ski camps are part of a teaching series Eagan has started to help adults, teens, and juniors progress in the sport.

For the most part, says Egan, most skiers have either a neutral or back stance on their skis, not forward.

"That's why these skiers experience uncontrollable acceleration," said Egan. ''And I let them understand that I'm going to teach them controlled acceleration. I'm going to work with them so that they understand how to learn to control acceleration. They'll have the tools that allow the skis to be dynamic, to explode and accelerate, but show them how to stand on it so that they can ski into the next mogul or ski the trees or through powder."

Standing atop a steep, ungroomed, broken-snow slope, you're afraid you can't turn the ski in that stuff and begin looking desperately for a path to the corduroy.

''Over the weekend at Wildcat it was typical of that kind of stuff," said Egan, who has made a lifetime study of snow. ''When we get Eastern snow, it's dense. And our snow falls in layers so it may be wind-affected. What happens is once they break through they make a very sharp turn and go into a traverse. With the shape and the wider ski under the foot, we can successfully get skiers to make a longer arcing turn in that soft crud snow. And once they do that, they understand that they're more in control when they're in a turn than they are when the skis are straight in a traverse

''So I try to get the skiers making one, and then two, and three long arcing turns through snow that they're not normally comfortable with. I show them how their balance point is more stable in the long arc. The nice thing about the shaped ski is that the same turn applies from the groomed to the crud. That didn't happen before. With straight skis we needed a lot of up and down [weighting] and we really had to pivot. But now we can tip and arc in groomed and in powder the same way."

The theory is simple but the trick is finding a way to teach it, especially to skiers who hold back the minute they leave their comfort zone. First, he takes his students to groomed snow and breaks down the way they turn. Most important for them to understand, he says, is that stagnation -- not using the hips, knees, and lower body -- causes acceleration that gives skiers the feeling of lack of control. When the hips don't move, he says, eventually the feet accelerate ahead of the body with weight on the tails of the skis -- classic out-of-control skiing.

"I start with skiers on terrain where they feel comfortable," Egan said. ''Nice, intermediate trail. I go through some very quick speed-acceptance drills. I get them skiing a touch faster than normal and give them a wide range of movement for their knees, ankles, and hips. By teaching people to flex, bend, extend, bounce, sometimes jump, they get the idea that just like on a tennis court or shooting hoops there's a lot of motion going on in the lower body."

After these drills in the comfort zone, Egan takes his students to the cut snow and crud and have them do the same drills. ''I drill into everyone's head that you ski the slope in sections, not top to bottom," he said. ''Just make three great turns and stop. Then we make a series of three great turns over and over again."

One of Egan's pet peeves in modern ski school technique is minimizing motion. Instead, he says, instructors should teach skiers to exaggerate motion.

''It's very hard to duplicate motion you can't see. So I teach exaggerated motion -- big wild moves that anyone can duplicate. Then I show you how those moves apply and keep you in balance. And once it's learned we can get into minimizing the motion. People learn through what they see, so skiers learn to mimic motion, which is the beginning of learning a whole new range of motion, and that's where the breakthrough takes place with the average skier. They start keeping their feet under their hips so they can control their acceleration. They can learn to do that in any conditions."

In a two-hour session, Egan says his clinics can increase any skier's ability to ski better and with greater confidence. ''And that's the important one, " he said. ''Confidence."
Egan's Wildcat clinics cost $49 for two hours ($39 for pass holders). Next Tuesday and Wednesday there will be two adult clinics each day, with a teen clinic Thursday and a junior (ages 8-12) clinic Friday. For more information, call Wildcat at 1-888-754-9453.