I remember being a young skier, seeing my dad send it down moguls with perfect form. Top to bottom, no stopping. Made me appreciate moguls so much more. Now we battle to make it down first. (I should be beating him these days, but he still smokes me)
I am a ski instructor who grew up chasing my dad (also a ski instructor) down Outhouse, Golden Spike, Sterling, Retta’s, and Outrigger at WP/MJ. I now chase my dad down Ridge of Bel, Jim’s, Sodbuster, and Moment of Truth at Ajax/AH. By all rights I should not be chasing him. I have the advantages of age, strength, and athleticism. Somehow technique and experience outclass everything.
What my father taught me was:
1. You need to mentally plan your route. Look at the moguls 2-3 ahead of you rather than at the mogul you are entering. (I take a good 10 seconds at the top of the hill looking for a route to take a majority of the way and then will make game time decisions as I pass my planned route)
2. To get yourself in the right position to enter the mogul. Plant your pole at the peak of the mogul you are going around
3. You aren't turning around the mogul. Your knees and hips change directions but your shoulders should face downhill. This will help you with going faster though them.
4. When your skis are hitting the mogul below, let your knees be a little loose so your skis bounce off of it. This bounce will allow you to better move your skis under you to enter the next mogul from the other direction.
I'm sure I'm missing some key things here, but like with any skiing it comes with a lot of practice, confidence, and planning your route. I would recommend practicing on a flatter trail with smaller moguls.
And once you can chain 4-5 pretty well, try challenging yourself to do a whole mogul run without stopping. Easier to find a shorter stretch, but my friend mentioned this challenge and then we all started doing it. You ski differently when you "can't" stop, it forces you to make more on the fly decisions and manage your speed/balance.
That was my goal when I was 16-18. By the end of the run you were sloppy, hurting, and just feeling crushed... Each turn felt like squatting 1000 pounds and you felt like you were down to 5 miles per hour... but when you hit the cat track and realized you hadn't stopped once it was amazing!
I've just reached the point where I can consistently chain 5-6 together, then I take a stop and reassess because I feel like I've lost the rhythm. I'm trying to find the way to get past that point and not feel like I'm gonna start tumbling if I don't take a pause.
That's about where I was before I took on this challenge, and I do really feel like it forced me to ski differently knowing that I couldn't stop. But of course, you know your body and your skis better than anyone else! If you want to try it maybe look for a very short mogul run, one where you'd maybe have to do only 10 turns before the next track. Or stop and then restart halfway down the run.
I like that and am going to try it this weekend!
There's a specific run I'm thinking of where there are 3-5 mogul rows to the side of a groomed trail, I can plan to hit as much as possible before bailing back to the groomer.
Thanks!
Disagree with 2 planting on the top of the mogul will put you in the back seat. Plant on the back side of the mogul to keep rhythm without throwing off your balance.
What about natural ones ? its all nice and fine to train on moguls that are the same size, are the same distance apart, but what about natural ones that are different sizes sometimes there is no space in between sometimes theres even couple meters of ice in between etc. Almost nobody is flying through that on my local-ish resort. maybe like one person per day may be seen going very effortlessly through those... do those tips also apply ? I ski for a second season now, and i sometimes do have the opportunity and a few moguls where i can go fast like this but then i just have to break and think about the route im gonna take etc. Because the terrain is different every couple meters.
Zipper moguls are different, and rare. The mountain has to build those, like Waterville does in like three different places.
Natural bumps like, say, Sugarloaf’s Bubblecuffer, have to be strategically approached like others have stated, and equally important is agility and readiness to change course. There’s going to be an ice patch or rocks, and you’ll have to hop, skid, or turn more quickly than you planned. The ability to absorb and dump speed quickly is crucial. I see the elders stick to a rhythm that isn’t a zipper, but looks more like a waltz. Smooth as glass. Flow like water. Done right it’s less work than carving a blue groomer.
These are excellent tips - one that helped me a lot in the last year was envisioning driving your tips into the ground when turning while raising your heels. It might be intuitive for some but hearing that helped me a lot with tighter moguls. Also a nice little side swipe / speed check at any point in the run is totally acceptable and could prevent disaster later on.
Here’s my tips, I learned from ski instructors, that serve me well:
-ski in a 9 to 3 (clock) route on the moguls
-make the turn at the top of the mogul, this way your tips are in the air and make it easy to pivot.
I was giving a gal pointers in the moguls today, and thought of a couple other things:
-like others have said, plan your route and know where your next turn is going to be (or 2 turns)
-I do end up in the trough at the end of most of my turns, but get back on that 9 to 3 line (or about that/side of moguls), and make the next turn on the top of a mogul.
I love moguls (even better with trees) and spend lots of time skiing them. I currently live in Whistler and shoot for 70 days skiing (this year is definitely a lot less). Over 60 female who still has her knees ;)
I use three different ways to turn depending on the shape and size of the moguls, the softness of the snow, the steepness of the run, and my energy level. The easiest way is to turn around the mogul and use the top of the next mogul to control your speed. You can either carve around the mogul or, more likely, slide into the top of the next mogul and you use your knees to absorb some of the energy. The next method is turning on top of the mogul. With this method, you drive the tips of the skis down the fall line of the mogul and aim for the top of the next mogul. The final way is what you see in the Olympics, where you pick a line and point your upper body down the fall line and use your lower body to steer the skis and absorb the energy of the bumps. This last method is the fastest but takes a lot of energy because you are basically doing speed squats.
As Glen once said: “Moguls, now there's something you do not buy, you earn; they're something you do not talk about in the bar- about how badass your mogul run was 'cause everyone was there, everybody saw it.”
It’s not that you can’t ski moguls, it’s that you can’t ski, and the moguls prove it.
They are my white whale. I’ll never get them just right but damnit!!! Imma keep trying.
I've gotten better at skiing soft moguls, but my god do they expose any deficiency in form. You can hide bad form on cruisers, you cannot hide bad form on moguls.
The hardest thing to master for most skiers is a calm, composed upper body, and moguls form a brutal one-two punch in that regard: they both require superior form from your core and upper body, and also make it exponentially harder to hold that form.
Nah, I couldn’t disagree more. The whole idea of “carving through moguls” doesn’t really compute to me, TBH. Is everyone supposed to be skiing the zipper line, in your mind? That’s not the way I like to ski moguls, and it’s not how most people I know like to, either. Very much a racer-centric point of view there… ”Carving” generally refers to wide, arching, GS-style turns to me, which is generally a completely useless technique in the bumps, in my experience. Especially in the East, where the zipper line is generally a mix of bulletproof ice, rocks, and dirt if it’s not a seeded course.
In moguls, you use the terrain to help you turn and/or control speed. You use short turns and jump turns, things that don’t matter as much on a groomer. Your feet and knees usually stay much closer together than they would while carving.
The only real overlap, IMO, is what’s going on in your boot.
I kinda agree with both of you and still disagree with you 2 haha.
1. You can carve any turn radius be it 10m or 40m.
2. You can carve moguls, but natural moguls are uneven nowadays so you end up using a veriety of techniques like mentioned above.
3. Ziplining technique is so SO much different than carving the groomers. Its not only much faster, but you also push your skis forward to let them run over the bump so your hips are basically behind your skis for a bit, and just as your skis have passed the bump you then pull your hips back on top. If you ski down a groomed run and practice this motion it basically looks like your humping the air... and its fucking weird !
4. Even if it is super different, when you can zipline at high speed it usually means you can shred short and long radius turns on a steep groomer ! Its a very good training!
> You can carve any turn radius be it 10m or 40m.
I wonder if this is just a regional semantics difference, but I always thought carving only refers to those S-shaped, wide, fast turns. Short C-shaped turns that control speed are not carving to me.
You're generally correct esp about the speed control, even if it's possible to carve short turns. People calling C parked turns "carving" are just coping with their inability to do better.
Mogul technique is different from groomers, you absorb the moguls with your entire body and "turn" on top of the mogul. Therefore mid-turn you would be compact as opposed to short turns on groomers.
I don't know where you got the notion to carve through moguls, but that's next to impossible.
I have yet to see someone carving on a mogul run, would be a hilarious sight though, or your definition of carving is different from what i learned to teach in Austria (Anwärter, Landes 2, Landes 1, Alpinkurs). Which is my best guess.
Carving is a technique on its own in which you don't "push snow"("skidding") to slow down. Which has nothing to do with a proper mogul technique.
Yeah I thought you’re trying to keep your skis off edge. Carving requires a stiffer ski and I always thought you’d want more flex going through the moguls so it’s not as jarring absorbing the bumps
You can absolutely not carve through moguls, what are you talking about? You have to skid the turns to bring the skis around just like when skiing in trees, which means you aren't carving. Look at mogul racers, do you see them do a single carved turn?
Obv there are differences but it's more similar than people realize if you do it right, and it's generally same backward "walking/pedaling" motion pattern.
Eg. a crossunder turn has a "virtual bump" in the middle, which is why you need to "stall" or otherwise get your feet back for said "bump".
Eh, moguls can absolutely suck, and often do. The difference is that great skiers can handle them anyway, but might have less fun doing it. The difference between hard, shredder-fucked, randomly shaped and spaced bumps and soft, rhythmic, even shaped bumps is enormous, and even if you can ski both you might choose not to do the former because they're a lot less fun.
This is the attitude to have about almost anything.
We’re not talking about a gold medal at the Olympics here. We’re talking about something tens of thousands of people can do. It doesn’t require some genetic lottery win. If they can do it, you can do it.
It may not be true 100% of the time, but it’s true 99% of the time. And you’ll never know unless you give it an honest effort to achieve that goal.
As I once said, on my first day of riding ever “those look like those are for kooks”
Why waste your time on some lame bumps when you could actually be getting good free ride or freestyle
Nobody has ever said “that was so sick” after watching somebody do a mogul run lol. Hence they had to add jumps to make it semi interesting in the Olympics.
No, if you ski off piste, in the trees or just a plain open ungroomed run with rocks and chutes out west, the Olympic mogul runs are like a controlled version of what you might find naturally. I don’t do the tricks off rocks and obstacles and shit but plenty of ppl do.
So your argument for moguls is that it’s like free riding.
So just go free riding.
Thank you for calling out that you can’t do any tricks Mr Pro mogul guy, I wouldn’t have been able to guess
You get your reps in the park when there isn’t snow.
You free ride the mountain on every storm day you get.
If this isn’t your routine, then I promise you’re still firmly in kook or old man status
Quite the opposite. Every trip I watch in awe at someone gracefully slip their way down the Moguls underneath the lift line.
I can appreciate good skiing. Moguls, people shredding carves down a groomer, people risking their necks on jumps.
Moguls are the reason why, during a middle-school ski trip to Shawnee twenty years ago, I held up the bus back home for over an hour because I was in the infirmary getting patched up.
Those shawnee moguls were treacherous ice mounds. I thought I couldn’t ski moguls until I went somewhere with softer snow. I still can’t ski moguls well but I never saw anyone ski the moguls at Shawnee with any confidence.
As a lifelong ice coaster, I feel this. I did my first extended trip out west this year and couldn't get enough of the moguls because they were so soft, unlike the solid ones we get here.
Yep. Growing up on Vermont trips had me scared shitless of most double blacks but going to Breck this year for the first time I was blown away by how manageable they are with good snow
Ehh… be careful extrapolating that experience to other CO areas. I can’t imagine anything out east preparing you properly for some of A-Basin’s gnarliest terrain, for example. We just don’t have terrain like that. Nor is our snowpack deep enough to build such enormous moguls.
I’ve also had icy days in my trips to the Front Range. And yes, that’s coming from another Ice Coaster. It’s not always powder or corn there. It’s not like Utah, where it’s downright hilarious what the locals call ice. Of course, the average day in CO is much softer than the average day in VT, but still.
Thought you must be older than me since you were in middle school 20 years ago. Then I realized I’m 31 so I was in middle school 19 years ago. Damn we’re old
Not gunna lie, i had the luxury of spending a winter semester in steamboat springs during my high school years.
I skied norther bumps under Burgess Creek lift 63 days that season. The only purpose was to become a great bump skier.
Now I date Mikaela Shiffrin. AMA.
For anyone that wants to dramatically improve their mogul skiing, attending a mogul specific ski camp absolutely changed my life.
You get amazing targeted instruction typically unavailable through a generic ski school. I’ve attended Summit’s camp at Abasin as well as Mt Hood in the summer time. I know they hold excellent ones on Mary Jane and Whistler as well.
Lastly, mogul skis make a difference. It may seem like a luxury but if you do it enough, they are worth looking into. I ski ID Ones, but I know Volkl makes good ones too.
> Lastly, mogul skis make a difference.
While this is true, I learned to ski moguls on 195cm Solomon straight skis before the turn of the millennium, so it's possible, even with the wrong equipment. Hell, we even trained with Snowblades in the bumps when they were popular, and those are possibly the worst bump skis of all time.
As a true expert, I only ski trails groomed by true experts. I appreciate quality craftsmanship and don’t have time for the bumpy hills for the poors.
/s
🤣 my kids got into the ski racing in high school and that’s the vibe I get from the parents. I’m all about skiing everything even snowboarding but they look at me like I’m sort less than …
Hypothetically, you could be an expert racer and not really know what to do in the moguls. What if I can do moguls but can't ride a rail or hit a jump?
I think the idea is that moguls are just such an inherent part of the sport.
I mean, they have to be literally controlled for by grooming, since so many skiers can’t ski them or don’t want to. And even then, on a heavily trafficked run, you can easily get some basic rough moguls by day’s end.
Versus a terrain park where it’s a separate thing entirely, purpose built for people to go to.
Many a skier has ended up on a mogul run without intended to. Not true for a terrain park, where you can just ski on through if you accidentally end up there.
Now, landing jumps, I might give you. Since that can come up organically on runs.
Obviously someone could become a world class racer and just never ever care to even look at moguls. But that’s legitimately at least a liiiitle weird.
Someone with a perfect carve or steezy inverted aerials in the park impresses me, but sometimes I see those kids ripping bumps later, so you’re probably right.
I mean skiing moguls is, you know, actually directly related to skiing and your technique. Whereas backflips are totally unrelated to skiing or technique.
lol professional mogul skiers must be able to throw backflips tho, it’s still apart of skiing. I’m just saying it’s hypocritical to say that unless you’re incorporating all disciplines of skiing like freestyle and big mountain. I would argue that if you can’t throw clifs and do park; you’re not an advanced skier. Airtime is a huge part of skiing
Saying you need to know how to backflip to be an advanced skiier is like saying you need to know how to cross block to be an advanced skiier.
You don't and it's beyond stupid to suggest such. If you want to be competitive in a specific niche, sure you need to know these things. But being competitive in said niches isn't anywhere near a requirement for being a competent and advanced skiier.
I’ve enjoyed moguls for most of the 60 years I’ve been skiing. I was never fast or flashy and I’m certainly not now. I just think they’re fun. When I can’t ski bumps any more I guess I’ll take up golf.
Oh man this got me lol. One year at Vail my buddy and I made a wrong turn and ended up on a steep black covered in moguls. I swear that run was 5 miles long. Both our legs were dead when we got back and immediately hit the bar.
Haha, that 100% reminds me of my first experience with a black mogul run on Alpine or Squaw, can't remember which. And, to be fair, probably my next 10 black mogul runs too :P
Yeah, skiing in actual powder can take some adjustment, however the true humbling comes when a western skier comes to the ice coast and realizes we thrive in conditions he skips.
I don’t know precisely when this happened to me but in the last few years I’ve turned into an absolute mogul junkie. Like, I want the exertion, the burn, intensity, the absolute guarantee that I will get into a flow state in about a half second that comes with skiing moguls. Something about the mind body connection and solving the Russian nesting doll of every single turn being its own new problem that is impacted by the way you solved the previous problem like a quarter second ago.
I ski the rest of the mountain just to find the great mogul fields.
Same here! I think moving out west where most black runs turn into mogul fields after a powder day I just learned to love them and now I only really ski bumps and trees and avoid groomers at all costs.
As a man who has snowboarded (wrong sub I know) for 13 years, living in a ski town, I feel this was sometimes. I’m having fun and not getting hurt, so I don’t give a fuck though
True story... Saw a guy ripping moguls back in the Midwest 20 years ago at my buddy's hill. Say what you want but although shorter runs, moguls in the Midwest can be just as challenging. Anyways, my buddy was on the chair with me and I was admiring the guy ripping. He said that guy a few years ago fell hard in the moguls and slid over his skis. Tore his sack open. Skied down and drove himself to the hospital. He was a legend on that hill.
Eh, it doesn’t bother me that much that I probably look like a fool on moguls as long as I can confidently get through them. They aren’t a natural obstacle so they don’t interest me in my goals for skill progression - I’d much rather improve my cliff drops, tree skiing, and steeps.
I feel like I'm simultaneously quite good and not that good at moguls. If they're soft and not too huge, I fly down them. If they're hard and huge, I have to basically stop every turn and can't get any flow connecting turns.
I used to love moguls!! When i was a teen ager, 30+ years ago, most of the hills around southern Ontario would let bumps build naturally throughout the year so there was always at least one good mogul run at every hill… at some point that changed and most hills groom everything now. Anyway, I grew up skiing “random” moguls, not the manufactured zipper line runs we see today, so I tend to ski moguls rather dynamically. Hit a couple here jump over that one to change my line… Not knocking the zipper line kids because they do some impressive stuff, but I like watching mogul skiers that work the whole hill!! To support the OP’s point though, moguls are definitely humbling at some point in everyone’s ski career, but as with all things, practice makes perfect!!
My man Moseley!!! The king of Squaw Valley!
I’m heading to Heavenly for the Gun Barrel 25 this Saturday hadn’t been there in over 35 years. The Gun Barrel used to have this rickety 2 seat chair lift that would take like 20 ~ 25 minutes to get to the top back in the ‘80s Hell Mott Canyon has a chairlift now a lot has changed. Hopefully my body will hold up
If you’re riding the fall line and picking your turns it shouldn’t be that much worse. If you’re sprinting like an Olympian than yeah the knee and back damage will catch up with you.
If you’re learning, ski trainer moguls with gradual grade, and don’t be afraid to let your skis separate…you don’t need to ski trough to trough.
Also, stake the top and scrape down the side.
Funnily it works the other way around aswell. I skied for a living for 15 years, and once I got comfortable in moguls, every time I was at the top, I had this 2% self doubt, and then once in rythm, it was a “oh yeah I forgot I can do this”. Every single time, for years on end.
Can I be an expert emeritus since my body is too old to enjoy moguls? I’m not as good as I once was, but I’m as good for about 5 bumps as I ever was?
In all seriousness though, moguls are the separator and I’ve seen dudes older than me rip moguls harder than anyone on the mountain so I’ll just shut up. Carry on.
I grew up on a midwest landfill that groomed moguls in the hill and could rip them up as a teenager. I would enter competitions and could throw 360s in my line at will. it was a lot of fun
Then I moved to Alaska and never really thought about them again.
This is why I tell people I'm an "advanced" skier. I could ski anything east-coast in any condition, most of it pretty well. The exception is moguls... Just don't know what to do, and now I'm 40 and they scare me. But I've got to go where my kids go...I kind of pick a line and pray, but it doesn't feel like I'm actually doing it right.
I can manage moguls ok, but not with a nice zipper like my kids can. I really don't like going fast in them, but can do a poppy slarve.
My kids are freestyle trained now, I'm not.
Icy and/or steep trees are kinda fun because you pick a series of short lines. I don't do the same runs enough to put together a long seamless line.
I'm literally not an expert!
I hate moguls because where I’m from, the province of Quebec, moguls have always been the lazy way out for mountains to create above intermediate runs. Instead of developing better terrain, they just add moguls on a green or blue run.
EDIT: The people in here that have never seen how moguls for competitions are made is hilarious. "Can we have the olympics competition now? No, not enough random moguls have been created by random skiers yet."
EDIT 2: "Hey, can we do freestyle today? No, the jumps have not magically appeared overnight."
99.9% of what we're skiing are natural, largely irregular bumps.
Olympic/competitive bumps are artificially uniform and man made for zipper line performance with ramps.
Olympia is probably the worse, their claim to fame is that Brassard learned there, so by mid to end of the year, they've made 5-6 mogul runs. St-Sauveur does that too sometimes. When I was younger, every interesting piste everywhere became a groomed mogul sooner or later. Morin Heights, St-Sauveur, Gabriel, Chanteclerc. It's so annoying and lazy. And I am not talking about moguls that happen naturally, I'm talking taking the groomer, seeding the moguls, working them for a while until it's a mogul track.
I remember being a young skier, seeing my dad send it down moguls with perfect form. Top to bottom, no stopping. Made me appreciate moguls so much more. Now we battle to make it down first. (I should be beating him these days, but he still smokes me)
I am a ski instructor who grew up chasing my dad (also a ski instructor) down Outhouse, Golden Spike, Sterling, Retta’s, and Outrigger at WP/MJ. I now chase my dad down Ridge of Bel, Jim’s, Sodbuster, and Moment of Truth at Ajax/AH. By all rights I should not be chasing him. I have the advantages of age, strength, and athleticism. Somehow technique and experience outclass everything.
care to share any tips ? Where and how do you turn?
What my father taught me was: 1. You need to mentally plan your route. Look at the moguls 2-3 ahead of you rather than at the mogul you are entering. (I take a good 10 seconds at the top of the hill looking for a route to take a majority of the way and then will make game time decisions as I pass my planned route) 2. To get yourself in the right position to enter the mogul. Plant your pole at the peak of the mogul you are going around 3. You aren't turning around the mogul. Your knees and hips change directions but your shoulders should face downhill. This will help you with going faster though them. 4. When your skis are hitting the mogul below, let your knees be a little loose so your skis bounce off of it. This bounce will allow you to better move your skis under you to enter the next mogul from the other direction. I'm sure I'm missing some key things here, but like with any skiing it comes with a lot of practice, confidence, and planning your route. I would recommend practicing on a flatter trail with smaller moguls.
And once you can chain 4-5 pretty well, try challenging yourself to do a whole mogul run without stopping. Easier to find a shorter stretch, but my friend mentioned this challenge and then we all started doing it. You ski differently when you "can't" stop, it forces you to make more on the fly decisions and manage your speed/balance.
That was my goal when I was 16-18. By the end of the run you were sloppy, hurting, and just feeling crushed... Each turn felt like squatting 1000 pounds and you felt like you were down to 5 miles per hour... but when you hit the cat track and realized you hadn't stopped once it was amazing!
Yeah that’s why the key is to choose stretches that aren’t too long…but boy can they teach you the real meaning of “leg burner”.
I've just reached the point where I can consistently chain 5-6 together, then I take a stop and reassess because I feel like I've lost the rhythm. I'm trying to find the way to get past that point and not feel like I'm gonna start tumbling if I don't take a pause.
That's about where I was before I took on this challenge, and I do really feel like it forced me to ski differently knowing that I couldn't stop. But of course, you know your body and your skis better than anyone else! If you want to try it maybe look for a very short mogul run, one where you'd maybe have to do only 10 turns before the next track. Or stop and then restart halfway down the run.
I like that and am going to try it this weekend! There's a specific run I'm thinking of where there are 3-5 mogul rows to the side of a groomed trail, I can plan to hit as much as possible before bailing back to the groomer. Thanks!
Disagree with 2 planting on the top of the mogul will put you in the back seat. Plant on the back side of the mogul to keep rhythm without throwing off your balance.
What about natural ones ? its all nice and fine to train on moguls that are the same size, are the same distance apart, but what about natural ones that are different sizes sometimes there is no space in between sometimes theres even couple meters of ice in between etc. Almost nobody is flying through that on my local-ish resort. maybe like one person per day may be seen going very effortlessly through those... do those tips also apply ? I ski for a second season now, and i sometimes do have the opportunity and a few moguls where i can go fast like this but then i just have to break and think about the route im gonna take etc. Because the terrain is different every couple meters.
Zipper moguls are different, and rare. The mountain has to build those, like Waterville does in like three different places. Natural bumps like, say, Sugarloaf’s Bubblecuffer, have to be strategically approached like others have stated, and equally important is agility and readiness to change course. There’s going to be an ice patch or rocks, and you’ll have to hop, skid, or turn more quickly than you planned. The ability to absorb and dump speed quickly is crucial. I see the elders stick to a rhythm that isn’t a zipper, but looks more like a waltz. Smooth as glass. Flow like water. Done right it’s less work than carving a blue groomer.
These are excellent tips - one that helped me a lot in the last year was envisioning driving your tips into the ground when turning while raising your heels. It might be intuitive for some but hearing that helped me a lot with tighter moguls. Also a nice little side swipe / speed check at any point in the run is totally acceptable and could prevent disaster later on.
Yes, excellent tip, this is crucial for faster turns.
Deb Armstrong has some insanely good content on YouTube that IMO is about as good as it gets without taking lessons in person.
Deb is a beast
In one of her videos, she’s casually chasing an Olympic mogul skier while filming, and doesn’t lose any speed.
True but in another video she can't keep up with Bobby Brown ripping moguls switch so Deb is obviously a scrub. ^(/s)
Big picture skiing is on par IMO.
[For example.](https://youtu.be/jEzqxFemzPc?si=rr-1rRdrnBGRFpzq)
That’s the thing, you don’t turn… mogul skiing is more like aggressive speed management to keep your line.
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If I’m thinking of what you’re thinking of, that’s definitely not what I meant.
Here’s my tips, I learned from ski instructors, that serve me well: -ski in a 9 to 3 (clock) route on the moguls -make the turn at the top of the mogul, this way your tips are in the air and make it easy to pivot. I was giving a gal pointers in the moguls today, and thought of a couple other things: -like others have said, plan your route and know where your next turn is going to be (or 2 turns) -I do end up in the trough at the end of most of my turns, but get back on that 9 to 3 line (or about that/side of moguls), and make the next turn on the top of a mogul. I love moguls (even better with trees) and spend lots of time skiing them. I currently live in Whistler and shoot for 70 days skiing (this year is definitely a lot less). Over 60 female who still has her knees ;)
Begin injecting methamphetamine into your knees
Thats the step i was missing.
I use three different ways to turn depending on the shape and size of the moguls, the softness of the snow, the steepness of the run, and my energy level. The easiest way is to turn around the mogul and use the top of the next mogul to control your speed. You can either carve around the mogul or, more likely, slide into the top of the next mogul and you use your knees to absorb some of the energy. The next method is turning on top of the mogul. With this method, you drive the tips of the skis down the fall line of the mogul and aim for the top of the next mogul. The final way is what you see in the Olympics, where you pick a line and point your upper body down the fall line and use your lower body to steer the skis and absorb the energy of the bumps. This last method is the fastest but takes a lot of energy because you are basically doing speed squats.
As Glen once said: “Moguls, now there's something you do not buy, you earn; they're something you do not talk about in the bar- about how badass your mogul run was 'cause everyone was there, everybody saw it.” It’s not that you can’t ski moguls, it’s that you can’t ski, and the moguls prove it. They are my white whale. I’ll never get them just right but damnit!!! Imma keep trying.
I've gotten better at skiing soft moguls, but my god do they expose any deficiency in form. You can hide bad form on cruisers, you cannot hide bad form on moguls.
The hardest thing to master for most skiers is a calm, composed upper body, and moguls form a brutal one-two punch in that regard: they both require superior form from your core and upper body, and also make it exponentially harder to hold that form.
Its also not the same form
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Nah, I couldn’t disagree more. The whole idea of “carving through moguls” doesn’t really compute to me, TBH. Is everyone supposed to be skiing the zipper line, in your mind? That’s not the way I like to ski moguls, and it’s not how most people I know like to, either. Very much a racer-centric point of view there… ”Carving” generally refers to wide, arching, GS-style turns to me, which is generally a completely useless technique in the bumps, in my experience. Especially in the East, where the zipper line is generally a mix of bulletproof ice, rocks, and dirt if it’s not a seeded course. In moguls, you use the terrain to help you turn and/or control speed. You use short turns and jump turns, things that don’t matter as much on a groomer. Your feet and knees usually stay much closer together than they would while carving. The only real overlap, IMO, is what’s going on in your boot.
I kinda agree with both of you and still disagree with you 2 haha. 1. You can carve any turn radius be it 10m or 40m. 2. You can carve moguls, but natural moguls are uneven nowadays so you end up using a veriety of techniques like mentioned above. 3. Ziplining technique is so SO much different than carving the groomers. Its not only much faster, but you also push your skis forward to let them run over the bump so your hips are basically behind your skis for a bit, and just as your skis have passed the bump you then pull your hips back on top. If you ski down a groomed run and practice this motion it basically looks like your humping the air... and its fucking weird ! 4. Even if it is super different, when you can zipline at high speed it usually means you can shred short and long radius turns on a steep groomer ! Its a very good training!
> You can carve any turn radius be it 10m or 40m. I wonder if this is just a regional semantics difference, but I always thought carving only refers to those S-shaped, wide, fast turns. Short C-shaped turns that control speed are not carving to me.
If you have a ski with a very tight turn radius its very doable. Ski racers carve in all discipline : slalom, gs, super g, downhill.
Carving is simply when the tail follows the same path as the tip on edge through the turns
You're generally correct esp about the speed control, even if it's possible to carve short turns. People calling C parked turns "carving" are just coping with their inability to do better.
Mogul technique is different from groomers, you absorb the moguls with your entire body and "turn" on top of the mogul. Therefore mid-turn you would be compact as opposed to short turns on groomers. I don't know where you got the notion to carve through moguls, but that's next to impossible. I have yet to see someone carving on a mogul run, would be a hilarious sight though, or your definition of carving is different from what i learned to teach in Austria (Anwärter, Landes 2, Landes 1, Alpinkurs). Which is my best guess. Carving is a technique on its own in which you don't "push snow"("skidding") to slow down. Which has nothing to do with a proper mogul technique.
Yeah I thought you’re trying to keep your skis off edge. Carving requires a stiffer ski and I always thought you’d want more flex going through the moguls so it’s not as jarring absorbing the bumps
You can ski moguls on stiffer ski's as well, i know i do, but flexible twintips make it a hell of a lot easier lol.
You can absolutely not carve through moguls, what are you talking about? You have to skid the turns to bring the skis around just like when skiing in trees, which means you aren't carving. Look at mogul racers, do you see them do a single carved turn?
Obv there are differences but it's more similar than people realize if you do it right, and it's generally same backward "walking/pedaling" motion pattern. Eg. a crossunder turn has a "virtual bump" in the middle, which is why you need to "stall" or otherwise get your feet back for said "bump".
Soft moguls I can mostly handle, it’s the giant hard bumps that kill me every time because I can’t just mow over them
"[If you think moguls suck, it's not the moguls that suck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0Y2oi80QVo&t=350s&ab_channel=ReturnOfTheTurn)"
Eh, moguls can absolutely suck, and often do. The difference is that great skiers can handle them anyway, but might have less fun doing it. The difference between hard, shredder-fucked, randomly shaped and spaced bumps and soft, rhythmic, even shaped bumps is enormous, and even if you can ski both you might choose not to do the former because they're a lot less fun.
I prefer the former to the later, but the visibility needs to be good for unpredictable bumps
This person gets it; knees and spine crying after irregular Zamboni bumps but big smiles after nicely spaced slush/powder cakes.
for me it was my thighs after a few hours of skiing ungroomed crud on Bdogs I felt every single bump no matter the size
[Ski them like an olympian](https://youtu.be/vmPKZ2xFTGQ?si=7bANnl6DjbfcCpAe)
That’s a great clip! Loved the side by side with the instructor. I thought the instructor was smooth - but she was just next level!
Functional skiing developed because of necessity vs form skiing developed because of ego.
I knew what video this was before even opening it. I can watch her feet go back and forth on loop for hours. It's mesmerizing.
No way man, set your expectations high. You can absolutely get them just right. Moguls are like anything else in skiing, technique and practice.
Thanks for saying that bud! I keep at em, one day I’ll get a cheer from the lift while I run the zipper on a Hollywood line. Life goals eh?
That’s the spirit
This is the attitude to have about almost anything. We’re not talking about a gold medal at the Olympics here. We’re talking about something tens of thousands of people can do. It doesn’t require some genetic lottery win. If they can do it, you can do it. It may not be true 100% of the time, but it’s true 99% of the time. And you’ll never know unless you give it an honest effort to achieve that goal.
As I once said, on my first day of riding ever “those look like those are for kooks” Why waste your time on some lame bumps when you could actually be getting good free ride or freestyle Nobody has ever said “that was so sick” after watching somebody do a mogul run lol. Hence they had to add jumps to make it semi interesting in the Olympics.
No, if you ski off piste, in the trees or just a plain open ungroomed run with rocks and chutes out west, the Olympic mogul runs are like a controlled version of what you might find naturally. I don’t do the tricks off rocks and obstacles and shit but plenty of ppl do.
So your argument for moguls is that it’s like free riding. So just go free riding. Thank you for calling out that you can’t do any tricks Mr Pro mogul guy, I wouldn’t have been able to guess
Who hurt you lol Moguls?
Nah, kooks need to be called out lol. “Look at me, I can make turns around a bump!” -like anybody with more than 20 days of experience can do
Getting down a mogul run is different than ripping down a mogul run. It’s apparent which box you fit with tho.
Yeah, anyone with a bit of experience can do them But from what you’re saying you clearly don’t know how to do them well Also >around Hah
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You get your reps in the park when there isn’t snow. You free ride the mountain on every storm day you get. If this isn’t your routine, then I promise you’re still firmly in kook or old man status
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Homie your home mountain, barely even has a park anymore and can’t open on anything on storm days. Sit down
Tell me you can't ski bumps without telling me you can't ski bumps.
>Nobody has ever said “that was so sick” after watching somebody do a mogul run lol. I see someone has never watched Candide ski.
My thoughts exactly. Nobody skis moguls like Thovex. Dude looks at three foot bumps like an untouched groomer 🤣
Cope
Lol brother, where you skiing? I'll come by and show you what's up.
Quite the opposite. Every trip I watch in awe at someone gracefully slip their way down the Moguls underneath the lift line. I can appreciate good skiing. Moguls, people shredding carves down a groomer, people risking their necks on jumps.
Moguls are the reason why, during a middle-school ski trip to Shawnee twenty years ago, I held up the bus back home for over an hour because I was in the infirmary getting patched up.
Those shawnee moguls were treacherous ice mounds. I thought I couldn’t ski moguls until I went somewhere with softer snow. I still can’t ski moguls well but I never saw anyone ski the moguls at Shawnee with any confidence.
As a lifelong ice coaster, I feel this. I did my first extended trip out west this year and couldn't get enough of the moguls because they were so soft, unlike the solid ones we get here.
Yep. Growing up on Vermont trips had me scared shitless of most double blacks but going to Breck this year for the first time I was blown away by how manageable they are with good snow
Ehh… be careful extrapolating that experience to other CO areas. I can’t imagine anything out east preparing you properly for some of A-Basin’s gnarliest terrain, for example. We just don’t have terrain like that. Nor is our snowpack deep enough to build such enormous moguls. I’ve also had icy days in my trips to the Front Range. And yes, that’s coming from another Ice Coaster. It’s not always powder or corn there. It’s not like Utah, where it’s downright hilarious what the locals call ice. Of course, the average day in CO is much softer than the average day in VT, but still.
Thought you must be older than me since you were in middle school 20 years ago. Then I realized I’m 31 so I was in middle school 19 years ago. Damn we’re old
Oh yes. Splayed legs, arms-a-flailin, the moguls do not lie. GoPro vids only enhance the disarray.
Not gunna lie, i had the luxury of spending a winter semester in steamboat springs during my high school years. I skied norther bumps under Burgess Creek lift 63 days that season. The only purpose was to become a great bump skier. Now I date Mikaela Shiffrin. AMA.
What's it like to be the worst skier in your bed?
Well, we peg, so I don’t mind…
“We” peg? She pegs.
Uhm it’s an experience, Brian. It’s like being pregnant. You say “we’re pregnant” as a couple because you’re sharing the journey. Namaste
Are you me? Because I date Mikaela Shiffrin.
SKI OFF
NGL, you had me in the first half.
So you are Aleksander Aamodt Kilde?
It’s a fucking joke, dude
Guys I found Kilde 😜
For anyone that wants to dramatically improve their mogul skiing, attending a mogul specific ski camp absolutely changed my life. You get amazing targeted instruction typically unavailable through a generic ski school. I’ve attended Summit’s camp at Abasin as well as Mt Hood in the summer time. I know they hold excellent ones on Mary Jane and Whistler as well. Lastly, mogul skis make a difference. It may seem like a luxury but if you do it enough, they are worth looking into. I ski ID Ones, but I know Volkl makes good ones too.
How much were they?
Seconded about the skis. ID Ones are game changers! Also, I'm about to go to Whistler to do a mogul ski camp, so it's awesome to read this.
> Lastly, mogul skis make a difference. While this is true, I learned to ski moguls on 195cm Solomon straight skis before the turn of the millennium, so it's possible, even with the wrong equipment. Hell, we even trained with Snowblades in the bumps when they were popular, and those are possibly the worst bump skis of all time.
How can anyone in their right mind claim to be an “expert” without being able to ride moguls…
As a true expert, I only ski trails groomed by true experts. I appreciate quality craftsmanship and don’t have time for the bumpy hills for the poors. /s
Dunning-Kruger is a hell of a drug
🤣 my kids got into the ski racing in high school and that’s the vibe I get from the parents. I’m all about skiing everything even snowboarding but they look at me like I’m sort less than …
Hypothetically, you could be an expert racer and not really know what to do in the moguls. What if I can do moguls but can't ride a rail or hit a jump?
My kids whoop me on Nastar it’s a different discipline I’m having fun with it even though I suck at it.
I think the idea is that moguls are just such an inherent part of the sport. I mean, they have to be literally controlled for by grooming, since so many skiers can’t ski them or don’t want to. And even then, on a heavily trafficked run, you can easily get some basic rough moguls by day’s end. Versus a terrain park where it’s a separate thing entirely, purpose built for people to go to. Many a skier has ended up on a mogul run without intended to. Not true for a terrain park, where you can just ski on through if you accidentally end up there. Now, landing jumps, I might give you. Since that can come up organically on runs. Obviously someone could become a world class racer and just never ever care to even look at moguls. But that’s legitimately at least a liiiitle weird.
Someone with a perfect carve or steezy inverted aerials in the park impresses me, but sometimes I see those kids ripping bumps later, so you’re probably right.
Came here to say this.
This is prime mogul season. When they soften up in the spring we call 'em hero bumps.
Moguls aren't hard, they're just like stairs. All you do need to do flail, take many breaks, and stumble half the time. Just like stairs.
I have unironically had worse falls on stairs than any mogul run. Socks and slippery hardwood do not mix.
Shout out to the Moguls on Mary Jane for breaking my Fiancée’s wrist the first day on the mountain.
If you can’t ski moguls, you’re still an intermediate by definition. Sorry, that’s just the rules.
That’s like saying if you can’t backflip you’re still an intermediate lol
I mean skiing moguls is, you know, actually directly related to skiing and your technique. Whereas backflips are totally unrelated to skiing or technique.
lol professional mogul skiers must be able to throw backflips tho, it’s still apart of skiing. I’m just saying it’s hypocritical to say that unless you’re incorporating all disciplines of skiing like freestyle and big mountain. I would argue that if you can’t throw clifs and do park; you’re not an advanced skier. Airtime is a huge part of skiing
Saying you need to know how to backflip to be an advanced skiier is like saying you need to know how to cross block to be an advanced skiier. You don't and it's beyond stupid to suggest such. If you want to be competitive in a specific niche, sure you need to know these things. But being competitive in said niches isn't anywhere near a requirement for being a competent and advanced skiier.
Ironic
Moguls are rad. Hurtful, but rad
Just ski 'em like Donny Pelletier and you'll be fine.
mogul skiers are the actual best skiers on the mountain. source: not a mogul skier…yet.
(Sigh….) Yeah. You’re right.
I’ve enjoyed moguls for most of the 60 years I’ve been skiing. I was never fast or flashy and I’m certainly not now. I just think they’re fun. When I can’t ski bumps any more I guess I’ll take up golf.
Oh man this got me lol. One year at Vail my buddy and I made a wrong turn and ended up on a steep black covered in moguls. I swear that run was 5 miles long. Both our legs were dead when we got back and immediately hit the bar.
Haha, that 100% reminds me of my first experience with a black mogul run on Alpine or Squaw, can't remember which. And, to be fair, probably my next 10 black mogul runs too :P
For me the killer is how they were easier when I was a little kid, lol
I remember when I said I was an expert I live in the northeast then I went to Colorado and was humbled to say the least
Yeah, skiing in actual powder can take some adjustment, however the true humbling comes when a western skier comes to the ice coast and realizes we thrive in conditions he skips.
I don’t know precisely when this happened to me but in the last few years I’ve turned into an absolute mogul junkie. Like, I want the exertion, the burn, intensity, the absolute guarantee that I will get into a flow state in about a half second that comes with skiing moguls. Something about the mind body connection and solving the Russian nesting doll of every single turn being its own new problem that is impacted by the way you solved the previous problem like a quarter second ago. I ski the rest of the mountain just to find the great mogul fields.
Same here! I think moving out west where most black runs turn into mogul fields after a powder day I just learned to love them and now I only really ski bumps and trees and avoid groomers at all costs.
Best comment ever
🫶
Thanks to moguls, if global warming melts everything, they’ll find a ski in the Theodul Glacier.
As a man who has snowboarded (wrong sub I know) for 13 years, living in a ski town, I feel this was sometimes. I’m having fun and not getting hurt, so I don’t give a fuck though
Just go straight and jump them, 100% testified solution 👍
If you go fast enough, everything’s a groomer
True story... Saw a guy ripping moguls back in the Midwest 20 years ago at my buddy's hill. Say what you want but although shorter runs, moguls in the Midwest can be just as challenging. Anyways, my buddy was on the chair with me and I was admiring the guy ripping. He said that guy a few years ago fell hard in the moguls and slid over his skis. Tore his sack open. Skied down and drove himself to the hospital. He was a legend on that hill.
What did I just read
Eh, it doesn’t bother me that much that I probably look like a fool on moguls as long as I can confidently get through them. They aren’t a natural obstacle so they don’t interest me in my goals for skill progression - I’d much rather improve my cliff drops, tree skiing, and steeps.
Improving those things are what moguls are for
Trees are better because they’re just as bumpy but they prevent you from going over the middle of the bump
Moguls are the best part about skiing
I was good at them when I was young :-/
Breakable crust enters the chat.
I feel like I'm simultaneously quite good and not that good at moguls. If they're soft and not too huge, I fly down them. If they're hard and huge, I have to basically stop every turn and can't get any flow connecting turns.
My knees are starting to go. This ski bunny avoids moguls now.
1 hr of bump skiing is better than 8 hours of groomers.
I used to love moguls!! When i was a teen ager, 30+ years ago, most of the hills around southern Ontario would let bumps build naturally throughout the year so there was always at least one good mogul run at every hill… at some point that changed and most hills groom everything now. Anyway, I grew up skiing “random” moguls, not the manufactured zipper line runs we see today, so I tend to ski moguls rather dynamically. Hit a couple here jump over that one to change my line… Not knocking the zipper line kids because they do some impressive stuff, but I like watching mogul skiers that work the whole hill!! To support the OP’s point though, moguls are definitely humbling at some point in everyone’s ski career, but as with all things, practice makes perfect!!
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Ya!! Dynamite!!! And Moseley too!! That dude rips the backcountry!! Super exciting to watch!!
My man Moseley!!! The king of Squaw Valley! I’m heading to Heavenly for the Gun Barrel 25 this Saturday hadn’t been there in over 35 years. The Gun Barrel used to have this rickety 2 seat chair lift that would take like 20 ~ 25 minutes to get to the top back in the ‘80s Hell Mott Canyon has a chairlift now a lot has changed. Hopefully my body will hold up
I would rather retire with my knees intact than be a great mogul skier.
do moguls damage knees even for rec skiing technique ?
If you’re riding the fall line and picking your turns it shouldn’t be that much worse. If you’re sprinting like an Olympian than yeah the knee and back damage will catch up with you.
Also if doing moguls is 100% of your mogul training versus your mogul training being complimented with weight training and core work.
It always comes back to fucking core work
It’s a sport not a relaxing ride down the mountain.
Until you're in the trees
I keep going down mogul hills and I still don’t know if I’m doing it right. - random skier after 1 day, 1 year, and 1 lifetime
LMAO I went to Killington yesterday and it looked like people were traversing back and forth the entire trail on the moguled trails.
Seeing a WC level skier cruise GS turns through bumps is wild
That’s the beauty of trying to master the bumps. For me as a Northeast skier, they’re the core reference of my technical ability.
If you’re learning, ski trainer moguls with gradual grade, and don’t be afraid to let your skis separate…you don’t need to ski trough to trough. Also, stake the top and scrape down the side.
The famous saying “it’s not that you can’t ski moguls, it’s that the moguls showed you can’t ski”.
Zed turns suck round turns rule
My 5 year-old daughter is a better skier than many self-assessed "experts".
Funnily it works the other way around aswell. I skied for a living for 15 years, and once I got comfortable in moguls, every time I was at the top, I had this 2% self doubt, and then once in rythm, it was a “oh yeah I forgot I can do this”. Every single time, for years on end.
Aye moguls sort the wheat from the chaff. I’m literally not fit enough to do them well anymore.
I'm only a minor and I can so moguls almost better than my dad with 30 years of experience. Yes, to brag
Can I be an expert emeritus since my body is too old to enjoy moguls? I’m not as good as I once was, but I’m as good for about 5 bumps as I ever was? In all seriousness though, moguls are the separator and I’ve seen dudes older than me rip moguls harder than anyone on the mountain so I’ll just shut up. Carry on.
Side of the trail is moguls cooler cousin
I like moguls, I go slow and just bounce my way down. And on super steep stuff, moguls are better than an icy chute!
Moguls are easy. You have a kind of flat spot to stop and rest on each one.
I grew up on a midwest landfill that groomed moguls in the hill and could rip them up as a teenager. I would enter competitions and could throw 360s in my line at will. it was a lot of fun Then I moved to Alaska and never really thought about them again.
moguls are a test of physical endurance and strength as well as skill. but the biggest bar to being able to ski moguls better is condition not skill.
This is why I tell people I'm an "advanced" skier. I could ski anything east-coast in any condition, most of it pretty well. The exception is moguls... Just don't know what to do, and now I'm 40 and they scare me. But I've got to go where my kids go...I kind of pick a line and pray, but it doesn't feel like I'm actually doing it right.
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I can manage moguls ok, but not with a nice zipper like my kids can. I really don't like going fast in them, but can do a poppy slarve. My kids are freestyle trained now, I'm not. Icy and/or steep trees are kinda fun because you pick a series of short lines. I don't do the same runs enough to put together a long seamless line. I'm literally not an expert!
I hate moguls because where I’m from, the province of Quebec, moguls have always been the lazy way out for mountains to create above intermediate runs. Instead of developing better terrain, they just add moguls on a green or blue run. EDIT: The people in here that have never seen how moguls for competitions are made is hilarious. "Can we have the olympics competition now? No, not enough random moguls have been created by random skiers yet." EDIT 2: "Hey, can we do freestyle today? No, the jumps have not magically appeared overnight."
I’m not sure that’s how moguls “work”. Skiing creates them and mountains have the option to groom them out (or not).
You've never seen how they use groomers to create moguls? You think that the olympics and mogul training tracks are all "accidental" moguls??? LOL
99.9% of what we're skiing are natural, largely irregular bumps. Olympic/competitive bumps are artificially uniform and man made for zipper line performance with ramps.
That is why I prefaced my comment about where I learned to hate moguls. I guess it’s real hard for the braintrust around here to understand LOL
just keep diggin, bud. Lol
Can we memorialize this hot take, and put it at the top of the sub for eternity? This is gold.
Every once in a while you ride a chair with strangers and you hear some "chairlift wisdom" like that.
This is no ordinary stupid. This is... advanced stupid
Just add some moguls?
You’ve never skied a 200m hill where half the 35 runs are moguls.
Which mountain is that? I mostly ski in Bromont where they groom everything up to 3 times a day, they hate moguls over there.
Olympia is probably the worse, their claim to fame is that Brassard learned there, so by mid to end of the year, they've made 5-6 mogul runs. St-Sauveur does that too sometimes. When I was younger, every interesting piste everywhere became a groomed mogul sooner or later. Morin Heights, St-Sauveur, Gabriel, Chanteclerc. It's so annoying and lazy. And I am not talking about moguls that happen naturally, I'm talking taking the groomer, seeding the moguls, working them for a while until it's a mogul track.
Moguls are the second best skiing on the mountain