Are we getting worse?

Laughterbang

Laughterbang

Member
I was skiing some backcountry today with a friend who until now has more or less only ever skied on Atomic Giant Slalom anvils. Today he used some fat rockered Black Diamonds for the first time and the improvement in his riding ability in pow was, unsurprisingly, remarkable.

Rockered skis are now fairly ubiquitous. Even pure piste skis such as those made by K2 and Volkl have some form of rocker and the ability of ski companies to dial in much more specific forms of flex with things like carbon fibre, metal, honeycomb tips etc. makes for a much more specified and ultimately easier ride.

Put simply, have equipment innovations caused the standard of technical skiing ability in general to deteriorate? The best point of comparison for this is the way in which everybody relies so heavily on GPS that nobody knows how to read a map anymore... Will developments in technology allow us to become worse skiers whilst still skiing the same terrain?

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When you see old footage of people like Plake and Scott Schmidt tearing it up on 195 girders, or more recently, early films of skiers like Seth Morrison, T-Hall and Candide destroying the BC on un-rockered skis, it makes me wonder if those of us lucky enough to have always skied the deep stuff on rockered skis could ever learn to do it on old equipment.

tldr: do rocker and other design innovations allow us to be worse technical skiers and get away with it?

 
no... how would gear that helps you charge harder make you worse? its like saying that a dick enlargement would make you less good at bangin out strange.
 
I learned how to ski pow on normal, rental type skis. then i bought ARGs and the game changed.

You are right though, most people i know really struggle to ski and kind of fresh snow unless they are on their pow skis.
 
There's probably some logic to that argument. I think the most noticeable difference would be in a skiers style not skill. Guys like seth and shane that learned to tear it up on straight skis had to put a lot more energy into every turn and into directing their skis. Just about anybody can ski fast down a big open face nowadays. Guys with a racing background or guys who have skill driving a 200 cm ski can really arc the ski vs just controlled sliding. Compare Aksel Lund Svindal skiing a line vs sammy carlson. I wouldn't say one is more skilled than the other but they will haven't very different techniques.

I bought a pair of 205 Rossi mogul skis and I plan on really refining my technique on those bad larrys. They're gonna be fucking SICK!
 
rockered skis help you ski pow, but they dont ski for you. even in ten years with the technology we will have in skis then, you couldnt throw someone on them in bc and say have fun. you still have to be able to ski well.
 
On some pow days at Whistler I wish rockered skis were never invented cause half the people wouldn't be able to ski the fresh lines like they do now.
 
Have you ever had a pow day where you forgot your fatties at home? I noticed it would more difficult. You adjust and have fun again. But fat rockers can make a mediocre skier float and turn
 
With any advancement in technology, it forces people to push themselves further to keep up. It's at the heart of progression, because, although the new skis make it easier for a beginner, they make it easier for a pro too, allowing them to progress.
 
This is more or less what I'm getting at, does the lack of requisite skill dull the appeal of skiing the biggest lines, chutes, gullies etc.. If everyone can get a bite of it then where is the appeal?
 
My boss who's about 55 calls my petitors "fag skis". But yeh, i think alot of people would struggle on non rockered skis in pow now.
 
Yes, kids have it WAY too easy in pow and park! as far as people getting worse, very few people are actually good at skiing. everyone here is good at riding skis on rails, and trees and asphalt, not pow.i prefer skinny sticks and tech lines over charging straight down on boats...
 
i been skiing for 50 years!!!!! that old shit sucked!!!! folks always make the best of what is available!!!! in terms of style etc ns beats the shit out of old school!!!! lifestyle...another story!!!
 
Its not a pow day everyday, so people still have to ride skinnier sticks on ice/hardpack eventually, thus learning how to ski?
 
people said the same thing when parabolic side cuts were coming, probably happened with every advancement in ski technology
 
dude, technology of skis greatly changed how we ski. At the same time, skiing techniques are developed based on the technology. As techniques changes, skis are modified to help.

We can do amazing things today because the skis are much more capable. They are lighter, stronger and stiffer. Shane can be credited for the rocker concept. Once he showed it worked, all the ski companies jumped on it with their version.

Every ski has its strong point. I love my mogul skis for moguls and ice hard pack. All mountain skis can carve, do light pow and hit booters. Powder skis can make powder skiing easier to do and give me the ability to 360 off a cliff. Park skis can spin; they are so light and removing the edges make the skis better.
 
I'm going to say no. Only because the skier is in control of the skis. The skier has the skill to turn those skis and rip down the hill. It's quite obvious when you see someone that doesn't really know what they are doing, having all brand new gear, but then you see them ski down some steeps and they are struggling. It has become especially apparent to me this year when I started doing some touring. People head out on all this brand new fancy gear, struggle climbing up the hill, and then when you fly past them coming down the hill you realize how much skill they lack.

Now you could also compare joeys skiing on good gear out west to joeys skiing on good gear in the east. From what I've seen joeys in the east have a much harder time breaking the "joey barrier" no matter what gear you throw them on. East Coast steeps have such touchy snow pack that it really takes a good skier to ski it well and it doesn't really matter what gear you have. New gear might help people initiate turns and carve a little more or float more in powder but it takes an expert skier to be able to jump turn down tight New England trails covered in ice while being completely in control.

Again, all this new gear will help out resort riders to ski better but I don't think it takes away from the sport. No matter what gear you have in the backcountry, you still need to be an expert skier to ski the terrain well. The new gear has made it easier for resort riders to all be on the same skill level but when you start going back to what skiing used to be (hiking to earn your turns) you can see that the equipment is only as good as the user. So yes, the gear has helped to make beginner skiers more advanced, but there is still an obvious gap between an intermediate on good gear vs. an expert skier on any gear.
 
They said the same thing about shaped skis and it was bullshit.

Improved tech just makes the good guys even better than they would have been before.

Beginners don't instantly become MSP athletes because they have a bit of rocker.
 
upper intermediate skiers can now semi-compentently skiing steep cliffy stuff in soft snow conditions. This would have never been possible if they were still skiing on skinner cambered skis.

Because they never learned how to rip on skinny skis they have a TON of trouble when the snow gets chopped and they need to have two edges working as one, transitioning from deep pow to chunder to chop all in a 50 yard period.

Basically people only learn to ski 1 conditon with one type of ski. if they have skinnies on a pow day, they are fucked and if they have their fatties on a hard day they are fucked.

People that learned to rip everything on skinny skis out of neccessity, are far more competent all over the mtn in all kinds of conditions than folks that learned to rip only with special skis for each condition. you can tell who learned to ski powder on pow skis bbecause they just dont rip nearly as aggressivly, and they have lots of trouble when it starts to get skie out.
 
I took out some 210 salomons today for gaper day and went through some pretty tight trees and bumps. Those things are hard as fuck. We might not be as good but we are definitally shredding bigger lines than they were in the 80's.
 
The argument goes out the window when you use terms like "everybody" uses gps that "nobody" knows how to use a map... plenty of people still know how to use a map.. plenty of people still ski well. If you don't want to use the new technology then don't... you can also go back to a car without power steering and horrible suspension. Suit yourself...
 
You can still tell the good skiers from the not so good ones. Sure an intermediate skier can send bigger lines and generally become better on fatter, rockered skis, but the same could be said of people at every level of the sport. It really comes down to where people's comfort zones are and who is willing to throw themselves outside it.
 
I got my first turns in on a pair of old 154 heads. I'm 5'8 and 160 so you could imagine how fun that was. Needless to say I hit everything and anything in an attempt to catch up to my much better buddies. I then switched to a pair of Salomon shoguns that ran 176 I believe. At first it was almost if I had to learn again but the control was much better, clearly. Now I'm on rocker 2s and fully believe the technical improvements do give me more control and stability,but had I not gotten into some interesting situations with those heads then I would be nowhere near as good. So I kind of see your point, but feel a lot of it is on the individual.
 
I always get a laugh out of old farts saying there skinny, strait edge style is the pintical of skiing. With that mentality, if you want true "pure" form of skiing then go split some pine boughs and through some animal skins on for traction.. Real OG shit
 
I think skiing progression has greatly slowed in the past few years. I mean dont get me wrong people are still throwing down way crazier shit than ever before but if you watch some older ski movies, guys were hucking bio 9's and shit off cliffs in AK and kids were hitting chads in like '04. Maybe "slowing down" wasn't the right word choice but I think people were WAY ballsier back in the early days of the sport before it was all about style
 
Remove skinny skis and attach shaped skis to this comment and it nullifies your entire argument.

I lived through the whole skinny ski thing. Hell I was even a hater that said shaped skis were for beginners.

The fact is, people who don't learn to rip everything have always sucked. They sucked on straight skis too. No matter what your gear, you're only rad if you learn everything.

With skinny skis it was WAY harder to ski the gnar too. So even the super badass guys weren't nearly as good as they were today. So sure some beginners are more gnar than they used to be.... so are the experts and as such the entire skill level has raised.

 
I don't think we're getting worse. We're still going bigger and faster, and people still push the limits, none of which could be done on a normal(?) pair of skis. It doesn't make us worse, it's entirely different.
 
i think that better skis have allowed for worse skiers to ski terrain that was once only the domain of "experts".

so the level of skier that is shredding the KT22 lift at squaw is much worse now than it was in 1990.
 
i think that better skis have allowed for worse skiers to ski terrain that was once only the domain of "experts".

so the level of skier that is shredding the KT22 lift at squaw is much worse now than it was in 1990.
 
I learned to ski without rocker skis and i have just as much fun/ease on pow skis whether they are rockered or not. Just slapping on rockered skis doesn't make skiing hard terrain easy, it makes it easier to cut through pow. I would argue "skiing pow" doesn't really take anymore skill than normal skiing and with thinner skis it's just easier to sink in and get caught up which doesn't exactly mean you're bad at skiing.
 
If the question is "are skiers worse now than they were 25 years ago?" the answer is no.

If the question is "can the average skier ski more challenging terrain now than the average skier 25 years ago because of technology developments?" the answer is yes.

If the question is "could the average skier now ski as well on 25 year old equipment as a skier 25 years ago? the answer is no.

It all depends on the question. Equipment and ability progress. Together they progress exponentially. The more you can accept this, the less bitter you will be as the athletes of tomorrow surpass the athletes of today.
 
well out here on the east coast where powder is the consistency of cement and groomers are really just corduroy ice fields, camber skis are the norm and I can definitely say that I can ski pow on skinny full camber skis, but I can shred the gnar on semi rockered mid skinny skis. I can only imagine how much easier it will be with powder skis. So I think that technology helps, but I also believe that the learning curve is dependent on the conditions too. Technology is absolutely a crutch for beginners, but the beginner still needs to learn how to ski to utitilize that crutch.
 
With technology comes greater challenges also. Take someone who is a mountain climber for instance who was an early pioneer with primitive gear, he made use of what he had to get him to the top sometimes compromising but with new gear people nowadays are doing things that guys back then were only dreaming about; making strides in mountaineering that were even considered unachievable. The same goes with anything else including skiing IMO. People are accomplishing things and really pushing the envelope and taking the sport to new heights because of technology. The point I'm trying to make is that because your pushing further to make greater strides, technology doesn't necessarily make it easier.
 
Ehh this generation will be saying the same thing to kids 20 years in the future "you kids with your quadruple rocker banana skis, back in the day we only had regular rocker in pow and we had It much harder"
 
Either way, technology is here to stay. So while one could argue this makes us less technical of a skier, the other could argue who the ef cares.

No one plays with wooden tennis raquets anymore, They play with graphite, titanium, etc. with huge sweet spots.

Does that make today's modern tennis stars any less talented then in the past? Perhaps. But the playing field is level so does it really matter?

 
i still cant believe that you guys think that shit that makes you ski better actually makes your worse. if you forgot your pow gear at home, having the shittier gear would make you ski worse right? so how could the opposite be true as well?
 
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