... Why should that be our intent? Knowing how to carve is intrinsically good because having more tools in my toolbox is intrinsically good, but why should my intent be to always carve instead of smear? I hear a lot of people talking about how fun carving is, but - so is smearing! I had a few incredible runs last spring where I would do these big power slides down corn bumps and it was just glorious. I don't see why I should feel like that was somehow inferior because I wasn't trying to carve.
You should not feel inferior because you don't carve your skis all the time. Once, a few years ago I had a Level III instructor tell me "you should strive to carve your turns everywhere you ski, a good skier will carve anywhere and all the time". Later that day the two of us skied Northface Glades at Silver Mt. (which is pretty steep in the middle of the area) he fell 3 times. Going up the chair we discussed carving and my premise was somewhat like Monique's. To really ski the whole mountain you won't be able to carve every turn nor would you want to.
The chutes at Mammoth, if you carved your turns you would be in the rocks. Going into one man chute at Kirkwood if you carved going in, you would be doing the small part of hour glass on your face or arse. There are places when skiing the whole mountain where you will want to smear, slip, side slip, hop, side slip backwards etc. to try and carve every turn is foolish and would detract from ones ability to get to the goods let alone ski them. Fun is also a very important part of skiing and if you are smearing bumpb on a soft snow day, have at it.
Can't wait to see where this thread goes.
From the posts above, it sounds like "skiing the slow line fast" means skiing faster is the preferred intent of skill-building. Is that what people mean?
In my world, "speed control" means keeping oneself in a psychological space that feels safe. What counts as "speed" and "fast" is relative to what's going on in the skier's head. There are some skiers who are uncomfortable with fear. For those skiers to have fun, they need to have a feeling that their speed is under control. (Let's leave out of the conversation for the moment those who are comfortable with fear and seek it out.)
So with those skiers in mind I'm thinking that building skill may not mean intentionally going faster (in any direction), but going something-elser. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe "skiing the slow line fast" may be the perfect thing to aim for with some people some of the time, but not all people all of the time.
I certainly agree with speed means different things to different people. There are skiers out there that never go fast as it petrifies them and their idea of speed is much different than yours or mine. Skiing the slow line fast would not be comprehensible to them. So this raises the question, if you taught a speed apprhensive person the use the terrain to slow down, not to brake and to finish their turns uphill to slow down and to vary the radius of their finished turns to help control speed. Would this be the same thing ? For them it probably would be, it would take some time to show them how to use the terrain and their turn shape to control speed but could be done on an easy blue run.
Note. I used a certain method of teaching skiers how to overcome fear (speed is there) and maybe we can cover this some day.