Safe Skiing

Think there's a huge difference between having a condition that's affecting your senses, tinnitus or loss of hearing good examples where you adjust your style attitude and awareness to compensate, as opposed to choosing to listen to music down the slopes with an invincibility complex.
Funny that you can buy helmets so your safer then lose one of your senses by getting speaker inserts in the ear muff.

I was told to maintain aggressive stance with hands forward where I can see them both and not to attempt recovery if falling. I read that ACL injuries are not related to high speed as they result from twisting falls that usually happen at lower speeds. I agree with what others are saying regarding general safety rules. My attitude to people listening to the music while skiing is mixed. I don't think they make their life easier by doing it. On the other hand, I understand that I am responsible for my navigation and avoiding others and while doing this I may act on the basis that every other skier is blind or deaf. Two days a week in Verbier there are days for blind skiers and one of them is Sunday when it's really busy. They CAN'T see me. I MUST see them. In a way skiers with headphones are not different from my perspective. The only time when I really need them to hear me is when I am right behind them but I shouldn't be skiing that close to people anyway. So, Rule #5 in Pavel's book Learning to avoid the others will make you largely independent of their actions.

There is nothing worse than hearing a skier/boarder coming up fast behind you and hoping they are in control. I would rather know there is potential danger approaching than be ignorant and unprepared.

felthorpe wrote:There is nothing worse than hearing a skier/boarder coming up fast behind you and hoping they are in control. I would rather know there is potential danger approaching than be ignorant and unprepared.

And do what? If you're maintaining your speed and course, how else can you prepare for potential danger approaching? The truth is that there is very little you can do to change what's happening behind you. You avoid unnecessary manoeuvers in case you are being overtaken but even then it's the responsibility of the overtaking skier to leave you enough room for any manoeuver. Trying to do any more than that will literally require turning backwards which is way more dangerous. Ski fast! By that I don't mean be a speed demon or ski out of control but rather don't waste time and speed unnecessarily. Sometimes you get it so right that you basically ski on empty slopes on a busy day.

We solved this problem when it happened to me because my husband was skiing behind me and when the boarder approached me out of control and was about to grap me to stop himself, my OH gave him a quick tap with a ski pole, he soon changed his mind then and fell over on his own rather than take us both down.

What I meant was that I was aware of the boarder approaching as I could hear the scraping noise of the board as he tried and failed to slow down. I even felt his hands grab the back of my jacket. So I was ready for an impact and had prepared myself to fall. I hoped I would do less damage to myself and others around me by having some choice on how and where I fell over. In this case there was nowhere else for me to go, as the slope was quite crowded and I couldn't easily get out of his way without getting in someone else's way.