There is a battle that ensues when tall people ski. What is a 18-20" swing from one edge to the other for a person 5'8", is about 20-24" for someone 6'6" tall. This causes some interesting phenomena with edge transitions, turn initiation, and the whole bio-mechanical kinetic chain. All that said (as an engineer), what it means in 'normal-speak' is that it takes more time for someone my height to get from one edge of my skis to the other. I have to work harder to turn my 165cm skis in the 16m radius that they can produce than a shorter person does. So I compensate by rotating or 'helping' the turn happen with a stem (pushing off with the up hill ski or "big-toeing" the turn. I have been working on patience and just lets the skis do the work. Then along comes Adaptive ski instruction and keeping up with your student who is rocking their bi-ski so as not to get tension in the tethers (yanking them into the fall line) is more important than "pretty" skiing, so last Tuesday I am behind a bi-ski with Dave, my trainer, in the ski and he is screaming down the hill at mach chicken (thx Kate Howe) trying to keep up any way I can. Stemming, skating, straight run, whatever it takes and loving it!
So last night (Friday) I am out on Bull run at Sunburst doing fast short radius turns in a corridor defined my my ski poles, doing pivot slips, and hockey stops to improve my Adaptive instruction abilities so I can get signed off to tether bi-skis (step one towards my Level 1 Adaptive certification with the PSIA).
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