Looking for the best terrain

Skiing is a highly visual sport; just try to remember how unpleasant the last time skied in the fog or even with marginal visibility was. Saying that seeing is everything is not a mere cliché, it’s an essential condition for a decent on-slope experience. In order to see everything however, it’s necessary to look beyond the “postage-stamp” area generally defined by one’s ski tips. I would even say that a skier should never see, let alone look at his or her shovels. Do we have to watch each step when we walk down a flight of stairs? Probably not; upon a preliminary glance, a message is instantly sent to the brain that in turn computes a path and immediately sends signals to both legs and feet to accomplish the appropriate job, that’s all. On the slopes, it should work the same way: One element intimately related with a skier’s ability to see afar is the stance; if the skier stays crouched, the only elements in sight are the ski tips. Standing more erect provides for a much greater view of the surroundings and plenty of time to anticipate the next move. It’s now possible to see the terrain and the feet can do the rest. In fact, it’s much more than that, because the view ahead defines how a skier will leverage the run and take advantage of particular its topography to scribe the most appropriate line into it. That’s when skiing becomes transcended into a motion that lets the skier espouse the most minute terrain features and use each one of them to speed up, decelerate, do much more with less, in fact become like an agile cat and blend in with the hill…