advice please on falling safely esp. on steep runs?

The suggestion I made is to use a self arrest technique developed by a Mountain Guide named Giles Green. It involves removing the excess sliding surfaces from the snow by doing a press up, thereby increasing friction at each end of the body. Many recreational skiers lack the core strength to hold a press up for long enough, so knees and elbows can be used. To carry out the braking method, you do need to be facing the slope.

The problem with falling is like anything else, if you only do it occasionally, you won't be very good at it. When you push your limits, you fall more often. Like any skill, at first it happens fast, and you don't know what's happening. Then as you get used to it, things start to slow down and you can start taking control. Now if you are the type of skier that will only fall occasionally, you are best off taking Bandit's advise, and having a safe fall that you can walk away from. Trying to recover from a fall is not without risk.


Trencher

Innsbrucker, I should mention that the amount of time where your back on the snow is very short lived. It is part of the roll to get your feet down hill. Think modified tuck and roll, complicated by pesky skis and poles. First time I made it work (it wasnt planned) it sorta happend. I fell on a wide open blue run, kept the feet together as I tucked and rolled, ended up on my hip and dug the side of my ski into the slope. My Skis were perpendicular to the fall line and it popped me right back onto my feet! I wasn't going too terribly fast at that point. On an expert mogul run it gets trickier. :wink:

Trencher wrote:The problem with falling is like anything else, if you only do it occasionally, you won't be very good at it. When you push your limits, you fall more often. Like any skill, at first it happens fast, and you don't know what's happening. Then as you get used to it, things start to slow down and you can start taking control. Now if you are the type of skier that will only fall occasionally, you are best off taking Bandit's advise, and having a safe fall that you can walk away from. Trying to recover from a fall is not without risk.


Trencher

Trencher,
I fall plenty of times in lessons, but unfortunately none of the falls seem to resemble each other, so I don't learn from them. Like, in the powder I catapulted forwards in a cartwheel and lost both skis and overstretched one of my legs, on a patch of ice I didn't see in time I fell smack on my shoulder and lost one ski, in poor visibility I didn't see a 'mound' of snow and went right over crash backwards and landed bang on my back and lost both skis .... etc.

You see what I mean ...

Ally

AllyG wrote:


Trencher,
I fall plenty of times in lessons, but unfortunately none of the falls seem to resemble each other, so I don't learn from them. Like, in the powder I catapulted forwards in a cartwheel and lost both skis and overstretched one of my legs, on a patch of ice I didn't see in time I fell smack on my shoulder and lost one ski, in poor visibility I didn't see a 'mound' of snow and went right over crash backwards and landed bang on my back and lost both skis .... etc.

You see what I mean ...

Ally

That's one of the reasons I like a snowboard in powder. It almost comes naturally, to cartwheel after hitting something, and end up still riding forwards.

Trencher

This is very interesting. I understand the point of the modfied roll, badlandskid. So long as the roll does not stop rolling when sliding headirst on your back...

bandit, I understand now, you are suggesting holding a press-up position, better than using elbows if you have the strength. When sliding at a fair speed, does this not risk injuring wrists, lower arms, hands? Elbows sounds safer. But I will think about trying it.

Ally, I noticed you asked about falling on another thread. My question in this thread was not so much how to fall, but what to do when you are sliding for a long time on a steep slope. If you are rolling etc. it is all going to be more complicated, and for me, too fast to do react much. But my problem was perparing mentally for long black runs, up to the very long and very steep black diamond gullies at Nordkette. At some point on these slopes (where there are no trees, mounds of snow, etc to hit), the fall will become a slide. Foot first, you know what to do: stop or (if youre good enough) spring up and ski on. Head first, there are really only two options, on your back or on your front. You are only heading one direction, down the fall line. In this case I think the specific advice in this thread has been really interesting. On the wider question of how to fall (rather than how to recover from a along slide) the only solutions in my case, probably, are better overall fitness, and getting a bit younger... 8)

My ESF instructor actually taught me to fall!

We did falling practice on a steep bit of a red run, squatting down when standing still, then rolling head/shoulder first down the slope, then trying to swing our skis round (keeping feet/boots together) beneath us then dig an edge in to try and stop.

Much easier on a soft snow piste than an icy one!

This might sound controversial, but is there not enough to think about without adding falling to the already overloaded thought processes. And as for teaching how to fall, well I am a qualified instructor and I've never been on THAT course!!!!!!!!!! :shock:

Every fall is different and gravity and chance play a huge part, so I would say attempting to prepare for a fall would be self defeating. It would be like having 'avoiding inevitable head on collisions' in the Driving Test!

There has been good advice here about trying to get the ski's downhill, but lets leave it there folks.

Ultimately the body's self preservation mechanism will kick in automatically.