J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by Jan I Stenmark

Tino: A good point well made :)

I hope that if you look now it should be a "little" more reasonable :oops:

BTW, thanks for only criticising the image size ;) You are a gent!

Jan

Pavel,

When I took this photo I thought - "I wonder what feedback I would get if I posted this on J2Ski?"

I didn't because I wasn't sure (or confident enough) in the community. However I think it would be an amazing development!

Now should I start with ellistine's Avitar or Mr Admin's for that matter ... ;)

Seriously, I think Mr Admin should consider your suggestion :P

Now back to (my) skiing, do you think I over pressured that last turn?

Jan

I’m glad that this post was well received and I think some very interesting points have been raised, especially about the methods of personal perception of performance.

What I didn’t mention in my original post was the difficulty I sometimes face in deciding how to respond to a particular request for information. It certainly seems very clear from the posts that there is no easy way to ascribe a certain level of ability to oneself.

So what makes this an issue? Well aside from the obvious difficulty this causes ski shops and ski hire outlets, it also makes providing sensible and more importantly relevant, responses in this forum nearly impossible.

Imagine person “A” says –“So what does anyone think of piece of equipment B?” or person “C” asks how good resort “D” is? Without a fundamental understanding of the basis and ability on which that question is being asked the possible answers could be polar opposites …

So to some extent my interest was more directed towards how we operate within this online community than how we perform on the hills of the world.

What has become clear is that a number of people have used “skiing” days as a guide to others about their likely ability – A guide, which on a purely personal basis, I find very helpful. So are there other useful guides to ability? Some people mentioned their perceived comfort with different piste grades, again very helpful indicators.

So what other “guides” do people find helpful in deciding how to provide answers? Or would be possible to provide when asking a question?

Jan

skidaddle - you may find this thread helpful http://www.j2ski.com/ski-chat-forum/posts/list/1702.page

As you will see from the post, I have been there and would be happy to answer any specific questions you care to pose!

Tony_H -

Just been looking at some info on Pila, and put it like this, its not on my wishlist.
I think you and I would have done it in 2 days max.

I hope I'm not going to cause offence here ;) but I had to laugh out loud when I read this! It kinda goes hand in hand with my post about ski ability - I (and many, many others) could ski every piste in Niederau before lunch on day one, but could I honestly say that I've "done" Niederau? That would be a definite "No" ...

I’d be interested to understand what you mean by “done”?

To me “done” suggests that there could be no circumstances under which I would not be able to execute a perfect 100% run in all conditions and using all techniques – I doubt I could claim this for even the gentlest beginner slopes here! But then perhaps I don’t fall into the “usual” category :lol: and the basis I use is meaningless!

However, I do understand that there is always the challenge of “covering miles” when on holiday which does seem to be an important factor to many. I suspect you would certainly be able to ski all the pistes in Pila within 2 days but for me just skiing the Chamolé well in a whole week there would be a significant achievement!

As you will realise I have nothing to gain by recommending Pila but I would go there again at the drop of a hat – It’s a fantastic resort with some really challenging pistes and an “undiscovered” air that certainly makes it refreshing for an Italian resort!

Jan

I was very interested by Ollie123's recent post and one that Trencher posted back at the beginning of the month not to mention several that Pavel has posted over time.

The question of “How good am I?” seems to be almost impossible to quantify.

For example when I ski with my friends I’m probably at best “competent” but then several have been Olympic or World Cup Skiers and I managed a punt down the hill from time to time too ;)

My wife used to be the assistant head of Ski School at a major UK Ski centre and one day a chap came to the counter to hire skis and when asked to declare his skill level on a scale from 1 to 7 he said “Well if you only go as high as seven then I suppose I will have to drop to that” – Accordingly every instructor and tech in the place went to see this God perform his stuff :P and naturally he was probably a good 4 or an average 5 ..

So how does one balance the natural need to preserve modesty whilst at the same time give an honest appraisal of ability? This is doubled or quadrupled when instead of us all standing at the top of a Black Run and polling off and watching who dances down and who bails big time we only have the benefit of words …

Certainly I’m not going to tell Ollie that he’s not a very good skier ‘cos he very likely is. The difficulty is that when we have so few clues to use to build an imaginary picture of another person’s ability we do tend to pick up on every word however carefully chosen … So my reaction (and probably to my eternal shame – Sorry Ollie) was “If this guy doesn’t know what skis he’s got and wants boots to match then I’m *guessing* that he's probably a 1 to 2 week a year intermediate” But how fair is that? Probably not very. Maybe the guy is a legend but just doesn’t pay any attention to the marketing hype behind the products he uses … He just does his stuff and that’s really what it’s all about

Here are two more examples which highlight the problem:

1. A *very* well known figure in UK / Olympic ski coaching used to take 1 week courses to evaluate potential athletes and he told me that he used to watch his course members walk across the car park in ski boots on day one and could tell with 95% accuracy who would pass and who would fail there and then – Is that fair? Can anyone tell a great skier by how they walk across a car park? I don’t know, but I suspect I could make a guess.
2. Our family was skiing in Stanton two years ago and whilst my wife, younger son and I wanted to have a lazy afternoon our oldest son wanted to go and explore the mountain. So I visited the local ski school and enquired if they had a guide who could show my son the hill? They naturally asked how good he was and I was immediately faced with how to convey his ability? (remembering the level 7 guy from the UK ski slope) If I say “Oh he’s a fantastic skier blah, blah, blah” then the ski school think “yeah mister, they all say that!” whilst if I say he’s just a competent, confident skier you can bet he’ll end up with a first year “intermediate” instructor who struggles to get parallel on an easy red … So I chose to just grin and say “Oh, he’s skied a bit but I don’t think he’ll be too much trouble to you.” When the rather bored looking 20 something instructor showed up and started going through his welcome spiel he asked about ability and our boy just looked at his feet and said “Oh who knows?” the instructor looked at my wife and me and we just grinned … When they got back 4hrs later the instructors first words were “You could’ve told me he could ski like that!” and here’s the nub of the problem – Just how do you say that without sounding like your head won’t fit in the gondola?

So if it’s hard in resort how do we expect users of this forra (?) to establish a realistic reflection of their ability?

That’s your homework for this weekend :wink:

Jan

(Oh and thanks to all for their congrats on Pav’s gloves!)

Ollie,

I await, with some intrest, your review of those babies later in the year 8)

As for a higher bid, lets wait until you've skied 'em eh :)

MFG

Jan

AJ: Yeah, but to be honest they took me for a test drive :oops: they were more of a ski than I would want to ride around the mountain on a daily basis ... Like I said at the time I didn't have the opportunity to try them in a closed course environment but I bet they’d go like stink ;) I was telling Pav today that I’m thinking of entering some Master’s Slalom events this winter so maybe they’re just what I need ;)

Ollie: You’ll forgive me for saying this but you’ve just bought yourself an F1 pair of skis and from the things you’ve said so far I’m not really sure if you know what you’ve got :shock: The switch allows you to adjust the flex of the ski and change it from what is effectively a slalom ski to a GS one …

The “Ten Foot” has a narrower waist and a smaller turning radius whilst the “Twelve Foot” has the broadest waist in the range and a larger turning radius … Perhaps you could measure the width of the ski between the bindings and let us know then again have a look behind the bindings and it’ll say 10ft or 12ft :P

As for boots, for goodness sake get yourself to an experienced boot fitter and to hell with the looks. If you find ten pairs that all share the same fit then maybe allow colour to be a deciding factor.

… and now for a totally unfair blag – I’ll give you £100 for those skis when you find you don’t like ‘em ;) and that’s a promise! PM me for payment details :D

Good luck!

Jan

Bandit, I had forgotten about the Lev and all it entailed :) You made me smile just thinking about it !! Thank you :D

Jan