Three Top Pros Help Make the Most of Your Ski or Snowboard Trip

Ski Butlers takes the work out of lugging your gear on your next ski or snowboard vacation by providing award-winning delivery service as well as top-rated equipment from Rossignol. Three snow pros and Rossignol athletes provide you tips on how to get the most out of your day on slopes — whether you’re skiing powder, carving up the corduroy or riding a variety of terrain and features at your favorite resort.

Ann Schorling teaches at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she coaches Jackson’s Elevate Women’s Camps, and in Portillo, Chile. She’s also a member of the prestigious PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors of America) National Alpine team. Here she shares a tip on how to ski bumps better.

If you want to ski bumps better, use less edge. Increased edge angles increase pressure on the snow. When your ski has too much pressure and it encounters a bump, it will send you flying across the run and straight for the trees. To avoid this unpleasant consequence, use a lower edge angle and let the bumps do the hard work of slowing you down. For practice, see if you can sideslip an entire bump run with very few turns. Stay within a two-bump corridor. You’ll get a feel for yours skis’ reactions to all kinds of bumps and find the slower spots. Once you feel confident sideslipping in bumps in both directions, take the same tactics into turns. For powdery bumps at Jackson Hole, I prefer the Rossignol women’s Soul 7, with a waist width of 106 mm.

*****************

As the training manager for Ski and Snowboard Schools of Aspen, Josh Fogg logs in many hours on the slopes of all four Aspen area resorts. Here he shares a tip for carving on the groomers or hard snow.

I love carving clean arcs on freshly groomed slopes to feel what kind of turns Rossignol Experience skis are really capable of. For me to get the best out of them, I have to keep a couple of things in mind. First, I plan ahead from turn to turn and choose where I am going to change edges and where my skis will be pointed at this crucial moment. When I see the spot and know my trajectory at the edge change, I can make sure that my shoulders and hips remain level with the snow to change edges without turning where the skis are pointed. This allows the skis to slice through the snow and make the transition from turn to turn without losing the speed I need to make the skis hold and carve.

*******************

Joshua Spoelstra is the Ski and Ride School Director at Big Bear Mountain Resort in California and a two-term member of the AASI (American Association of Snowboard Instructors) National Team. Here he shares a tip for finding the right snowboard to shred your favorite terrain.

A lot of places in California and the West have lots of terrain variety: You can hit everything from chutes, steeps, powder, corduroy, plus the park and pipe. At bigger mountains, you want a board that can ride everything and shred everything at all times. Look for a balanced platform underfoot — something stiff enough to handle steeps, plus plenty of reverse camber at the tip and tail for flotation. The Rossignol Templar and Frenemy are all-mountain freestyle boards for intermediate through advanced riders. Rossignol’s Serrated Edge technology provides edge grip for groomers and hardpack, while AmpTek rocker/​camber profile blends power and float to handle whatever snow comes your way.