Downhill Techniques in Ski Mountaineering

✅ A quick review of basic skiing techniques, essential to improving your downhill skimo technique:

• Snow plough turns: skidding and control.
• Kick-turns: basic and perfected.
• Basic parallel turns: parallel skidded turn.

✅ You’ll perfect simultaneous parallel turns: just one step, using flexion-extension.

✅ Parallel turns with tail-jump, often needed on hardened, uneven or crusted snow.

✅  Have you heard of the ‘tip-tap’ jump? In this jump, the tails of the skis are lifted in two stages, ideal for steep slopes and narrow passes. We’ll either show you how it’s done or help you to perfect your technique so that you’ll feel confident taking on more complicated situations.

✅ The two-step convergent turn is infallible in narrow or trickier sections. The idea is to execute a successful turn in the smallest space possible. To do this, you’ll have to touch the tips of the skis together to form a ‘wedge’ (convergent) and change edges in two stages. Sound complicated? With the progressions we’ll teach you, you’re sure to get the hang of it.

✅ You’ll also learn the two-stage divergent turn, used on gentle slopes but with highly changeable conditions or very heavy snow. You’ll have to separate the tips of the skis and change edges in various steps. If you’ve heard of the ‘skater’s step’, it’s a similar technique.

✅ It doesn’t stop there… You’ll learn to ‘pedal’ turn, for use on more extreme gradients where independent leg movement is at its most challenging.

✅ And as if that wasn’t enough, you’ll also learn a number of resources to use in more complex situations: skidding, alternative descent steps and the use of the double-poling, among others…

To get the most out of an introductory or advanced course in downhill skiing techniques, it’s essential to get in as many descents as possible. For this reason, you’ll need to take out a ski pass in order to have maximum access to the ski resort.

You will have two complete sessions (approximately 7 hours) in which to practice various progressions, familiarising yourself with different techniques and resources so that you can start enjoying trickier descents.

We will also give you plenty of time to practice in different situations, allowing you to choose the most appropriate strategies to tackle each of them.

To start with, we will select the safest areas for you to practice what you’ve learnt with ease; little by little we’ll present you with more complicated situations. You’ll soon see how quickly and successfully you overcome them.

In addition to the practical part of the course, together we’ll observe and analyse your progress on video so that you can better understand how to improve your technique and keep your progress going.

Important: we would like to emphasise that on this course you’ll acquire all the resources and technical knowledge you’ll need to take on mountain descents, but the best place to really put the theory into practice is on the slopes of the Ski Station.

Various courses focusing on perfecting downhill skimo techniques will take place throughout the season, although not every weekend… If you want to improve your downhill technique, don’t let this opportunity pass you by!

Check our calendar for individuals.

Group limited to a maximum of 5 participants

Price per person: € 90,

✅  Two 7-hour day sessions of classes with a specialist instructor.

✅  Audiovisual resources to facilitate learning.

✅  Liability and Trip Insurance.

Not included:

• Ski Pass (essential to get the most out of this course)
• Ski Mountaineering equipment

Are you interested in what you’ve read but don’t have ski mountaineering equipment?

Don’t worry, we have brand-new sets of kit for hire. They’re light and comfortable so that you can relax and enjoy the experience:

The price to hire the entire set mountaineering equipment (skis with Low Tech fixtures, boots, poles and ski skins) is € 40/day.

No helmet? No worries. We’ll lend you one for FREE

Take on your next challenge: improving your skimo technique has never been easier.

We’ll show you the ‘wild’ side of the Sierra Nevada.

You can also take a look at our Ski Mountaineering Courses or course on Safety in Avalanche Terrain.