Hi all,
first of all: I've been away for a few days, working in a small town in north of Sweden, only a few miles from the arctic circle, lat. 66.6 N. It was great to see the burst of activity on the furum during my "absence", in particular, Gravity has been a boost to this forum's activity! Great!
Anyways, I had the opportunity to ski in a very small resort up there in north, no lift lines, lots of snow, perfect grooming, firm snow, and less than 50 people sharing 8 slopes! Can't get any better than that! It was a bit cold though, -25C (-13F I think).
Now, skiing in these perfect conditions, I got the opportunity to experiment with carving. Since the firm snow allowed almost any amount of ski pressure, without any risk of the downhill ski slipping away, I "dared" to push the envelope of my carving to its limits: in normal conditions, which for me is either hard pack or ice, I simply can't stay in control while doing carving when I get to steeper slopes, e.g. black diamonds. Typically, my downhill ski will slip away if I really press to make a short turn, or the speed will build up to uncomfortable levels. But up there in north, no matter how much pressure I put to the skis, they did remain in track, even on steep slopes. However, the speed just kept increasing, even if I tried to do the turns as short as possible, and keep them "High-C-like". So, finally I got scared enough to hit the brakes!
This experience got me thinking about the physics of carving: assuming "pure" carved linked turns, as far as I can see, the only means of speed control is to aim your skis uphill ("extreme finishing of your turns"). And, if you are doing a fairly steep slope, thus gaining pretty good speed, then, in order to keep your speed within any reasonable range, you need to "pull up" quite a lot in order to keep the speed down, and you end up doing some pretty huge and ugly "non C-like" turns!?
The reasoning behind the above reasoning is that in "pure" carved turns, the only forces working against the speed buildup is the friction force from the edges cutting the snow, and the drag from air, both of which are fairly small compared to the pull of gravity. Unless you aim your skis heavily uphill, there is always a component of gravity providing acceleration downwards. Whereas in skidded turns, you can add a lot of braking power by means of friction force. So, because I'm too much of a chicken to even approach terminal speeds where the drag force would inhibit any further acceleration downwards, the only remaining option to control speed is to do these ugly "ride uphill" turns....?
Anyone having any thoughts on this ?
Cheers,
Tommy