Despite the lack of fresh snow the skiing here in the Chamonix Valley continues to be reasonable on grippy hardpack with a lot of bumps! Along with a strong and confident group of off-piste skiers, including 3 Mountain Guides and a member of the British Ski Rando Racing squad, I have just completed the BASS Chamonix Ski performance course for mountaineers run by Alison Culshaw.

The course is based on four half day sessions over 5 days and gave plenty of opportunity for focusing on the themes to be covered which included areas like; techniques for steep skiing, skiing crust, avoiding "juddery" skis and enjoying the bumps! Alison is well versed in running these courses and has got the balance just right - it's all about off-piste skiing! Being used to working with strong, but not necessarily pretty, skiers she has the ability to use some pretty challenging terrain and certainly got us thinking with a few of the slopes and couloirs we skied. The mixture of instructing general themes and coaching the individual gave rise to some impressive improvements throughout the week and on the last big run of the course all the following new elements were put into practice:

• Very short radius turns (almost within the length of the ski) focusing on pivoting on the centre of the foot and aimed at picking up little to no speed across the slope and thus a suitable technique for steep and narrow couloirs.
• Engaging the new edge for the turn very early in order to push snow throughout the turn rather than all at the end (skidding). This helps to give a smoother turn with a more even distribution of pressure thus possibly eliminating the 'juddering' effect of vibrating skis and is also a technique worth exploring in breakable crust where the new edges might be engaged with a small jump (hop) turn.
• Leg extension, using a much wider range of leg extension to provide shock absorption and greater control in bumpy and variable terrain.
• Using the apex of a bump as a sweet spot for pivoting the boots / skis and getting some very easily won turns in through the bumps.
• Attacking the bumps by ripping it up with fast turns in the troughs....not for the faint hearted!
• Use of different styles of pole plant to compliment different styles of turn
• Being more confident going faster in variable terrain and using dynamic balancing to make constant micro (or sometimes macro in my case!) corrections!

The course provided not only plenty of ideas to work with when out skiing off-piste in the future but also tangible benefits to competence and confidence at the time and thanks to BASS Chamonix and Alison for running it.

The next BASS Chamonix mountaineers off-piste ski course is March 14-18th this year, costs £170 for four half days and more details and booking via this link.

General Chamonix Ski Touring / Mountaineering

Ski Touring in the Chamonix Aiguilles Rouges

Ski off Mont Buet, Chamonix Valley

Contamine Ski, Chamonix