Practice makes Perfect
13th Dec 2013
It has been a pleasure to do some early season skiing with Ken, Steve, Drew and Di once again this year. Conditions in Zermatt had changed significantly since I was there 2 weeks ago. All of the powder has been stripped away by the high winds which has meant that most of the off-piste is skiing on very firm Sastrugi of varying heights!
However, this worked in our favour as it gave us a chance to practice all the things we know that we should be practicing on piste without being tempted away into the off-piste. It may sound obvious but this week was really proof that with repetitive quality mileage and drills our skiing really can improve in leaps and bounds. If we find ourselves struggling in certain aspects of off-piste skiing these skills normally need revisited, and repeated, on piste before a significant improvement will be seen.
One day the team did 8900m of descent (with time for a pasta lunch in Italy), and with me there to keep a watchful eye, we ensured that every single turn was a quality one, right to the very end of the day. You can't get much better practice then that and it certainly paid off for everyone.
