Cliff jumping tips

cool_name

cool_name

Active member
anyone got some tips for cliff jumping? i dropped some very small ones today but don't know were to start for anything with decent size
 
just try your hardest to stay composed in the air, keep you hands to your front and sides and dont swing them around. stay flat and let your legs come out right before landing to stomp it. watch some videos of people hitting big cliffs and just try to do the body positions that they do
 
stay forward, if you concentrate keeping forward it will keep you in a good body position and keep down the flailing
 
Yep.

If you get nervous, scope it out first. Don't just go up to a cliff and jump off of it with a foot of run in and try for the form. It won't work.

You'll need speed. Keeps the flow of your skiing, and it is a lot easier to get proper form. When you do hit the cliff, pop a little, pull your knees up to towards your chest and keep your arms pointed forward. Spot your landing and prepare yourself. Do this by coming out of the ball you made yourself, extend your knees, don't be leaning too far back or too far forward, or else you can land back seat and have problems with the run out, or land too forwards and have problems with your knees or face hitting snow.

Lastly, land. Keep skiing out regularly, you'll have more speed coming out, keep control and keep skiing till you have met your buddies or done the run. Then look up at your glory.

 
Fuck, I had that once. First week on new skis a couple years ago. Went big off a cornice, the snow broke as a left the ground, the sluff uncovered peppered rocks on the landing. Didn't want to destroy my skis, so I shifted my body and landed on my side. Tearing my pants apart and giving me the nastiest bruise.

For sure check for rocks. Check for flat landings as well, make sure there is enough slope coming out of it. Or else you'll risk hurting your knees, back, ribs, face, etc.
 
get comfortable in the air first...this means being super comfy when straight airing jumps. the mistake most people make when hitting cliffs for the first couple of times is they start 5 feet from the lip, and hit it timidly.

scope the cliff from the side 1 run before you hit it, look where you will take off, and envision where you will land. next run start about 30 yards or so up slope of the cliff. ski down to the cliff in rythm as if it wasn't there, and you were just ripping turns. DONT scrub speed before hand, pop just before the lip, relax and style it out in the air (shifty, tuck into a ball, or spread eagle crotch grab AKA mconkey grab) then stomp the piss out of it. If you get going way to fast, just turn into the slope and straightline traverse it, this will kill alot of speed for you.

when landing in pow, only you can asses how far to lean back or forward, based on your skis, and how deep/soft the pow is. this comes with experience, but gernerally you should always land more or less centered.

make sure you know you can stomp it before hand, or you wont be focused on stomping, you will be focused on surviving.
 
best advise i was ever given for getting the body position, was just before you go off the cliff, lift up a leg and get into the tuck position and jump off with the other one

like your strongest leg, its a quick movement, but it works wonders. spot your landing as soon as you see it, extend before you hit the snow, stomp it, stay strong in the core, continue skiing.

pratice on small cliffs and work your way up
 
this is super true, i always do this when it is a soft take off that you cant "pop" off of. it isn't really jumping off with one leg, its just a quick 1,2 of lifting of the legs into a tuck
 
come in hot, pop, tighten your core, keep your eyes on excactly where you're going to land, dont bitch out and STOMP.
 
keep your knees apart so you don't bash out your teeth if you land frontseat ....
and as mentioned, just huck and tuck ! the 1-2 advice sounds pretty legit as well...
also don't go blind off cliffs, scope em out first, preferably from the top if they're accesible, otherwise just man up and huck it !
and make sure ,if you only scope out from below or from the chair, that you're also skiing the line you had in mind, use recognition points, rocks, trees, etc... so you huck the 10ft cliff instead of the 30footer to the right of it ....
 
As you pop off, push your arms foward and kind of crunch up in a ball. This helps you keep your weight centered and counter act the backwards weight swing that popping off gives you. Try to look at the spot you want to land in. Also, when you land, tighten your core up, it helps a lot with harsh landings
 
the 1,2 thing. yes. we call it a seth hop. def add to the beastly-looking-ness as well when properly executed
i have a bad habit of looking at what i am jumping off of, as i am jumping off of it haha.i don't recommend it. it makes me land forward and not concentrate on skiing out afterwards.

helpful advice in this thread :)
 
First of all, don't overthink it. If it's sketchy, by all means, check out the landing if you can (or send someone to check it for you); but if you're sure it's got a good landing, just go for it. I find that the longer you contemplate, the easier it is to talk yourself out of it. Personaly, I cannot stop to evaluate, which works out fine because launching off a cliff with a bit of speed is a good thing :) Also, when I first started doing drops I would try to imagine that I never left the ground and was simply pointing it down a super-steep slope. This kept me from "rolling up the windows" and tilting off balance. Might not work for everyone but it worked for me. Also, I snowboard so I'm not sure if this applies to skiers, but I sometimes pull a simple grab to stay put in the air. Good luck!
 
I have had some problems landing backseat off cliffs recently, its really annoying to be out of control or fall down when I land. What is weird is that only some cliffs I land backseat on, this cliff I always do along with a few more but there are some cliffs I hit a lot that I land pretty clean on usually.

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I have been trying to concentrate going fast and popping, but what could be the cause of this?
 
The best advice I can give any aspiring cliff jumper is to avoid tourist cliffs. Every area has cliffs that look easy and every body hits them. They also land in exactly the same place, created a landing that is harder than anything else on the mountain. "Do not land where everyone else has been landing!!!". You will knock yourself and your teeth out. Even a 6 foot drop can screw you up if there is a bullet proof crater where all the gapers have landed. I had to bring a friend down and then straight to the dentist, because he didn't listen to this advice.

These types of cliffs have one place where everyone drops, one spot where they land and then they all turn out the same way creating a goat trail. If you really want to hit one of these, there is one good way to do it. Take a slightly different angle, usually landing straighter down the hill, because most people, who don't know what they are doing, try to land going across the hill. When they land like this they create a big rut. If you land in the rut it sucks, but if you land on the low side it is always soft. Not saying that you need to gap the rut, just aim slightly to the low side of where the rut is and you will be golden.

Last thing, keep your hands out in front of you and to the sides, like you are holding onto a bus steering wheel. Don't pop hard; just extend mellow and be ready to start making turns when you hit.

The kids I coach are 8, 9 and 10. The thing I always drill into them is the importance of line selection. Plan your route and execute. This weekend I was so stoked on them. I called a "no look" on a 12 foot cliff that we have hit before. They just had to chase me into it and drop without stopping. They carved into it, dropped it, stuck the landing and skied it out like little bosses. I could have died happy right there.
 
this so much, also scope your cliffs as you come up lifts and stuff, i'm a serious culprit of just launching without checking and it finally caught up on me, luckily it was the ski that was smashed to pieces not my body
 
DONT land flat. have a buddy always go scope out the bottom if it is a unknown cliff. ive made the mistake of hitting cliffs that i didnt scope out the bottom and i ate shit.
 
I tend to kind of wave with my arms like a bird, its just a bad habit. Should i try being less moving in the air with my arms?
 
guage your pop and speed with the slope of the landing. if its a flatter landing, pop less and go fast off of it. if its steeper, go slower and pop more to avoid sending it too big.

also assess the smoothness of the landing. if its bumpy, you could lose control, so be ready to get bucked. 6 inches of untracked pow is sometimes a nicer landing than 2 feet deep snow with gnarly moguls.

also, get some big fat rockered skis. They will float you in deep snow, but more importantly they will ride over bumpier, sketchier runouts much easier.
 
I enjoyed my first two tomahawks out west earlier this month, nothin crazy but they can be kinda fun in nice pow if its one of the fluid motion ones haha
 
practice makes perfect the more cliffs you jump the better you pop and the more stable you'll be, try to tuck and have your wrists near your knees
 
This might not be that important for "smaller" cliffs, but: Do the math!

Make sure that you have enough speed, or, if the inrun is short,

at least have a steep landing. Once you've assesed that the angles

are OK and there aren't any stones or bombholes scattered

across the landing, all you have to do, is just enjoy it, really.

Personally, I love that second, on top of steep cliifs with short inruns,

when you turn your skis to face downhill and you get that sense

of relief, because its to late to pussy out of the jump. That moment

when the decision, wether your gonna go over the edge or not,

isn't yours anymore... that's the great thing about cliffs, the moment

of comitting is a bit seperated from the act itself, allowing you

to really enjoy it.

Hm, I kinda drifted off. The reason I mentioned Math, is just because

I forgot it, two weeks ago. The conditions were perfect, two ft pow

on three ft of older layers, blue sky, good, clean take-off, the landing-

angle about 35°, which seemed sufficient. Apparently it wasn't.

Even though (or because?) I kinda stomed it, I really fucked up my

neck, couldn't breath for about 10 seconds (pretty scary), spat

blood,... I had to wear this fashionable neck-cussion-thingy and I

still can't feel that good with my left hand. And on that 50 foot

Bitch this was probably best case scenario...

tl; dr: Make sure its actually doable, comit and enjoy!

 
A bunch of you guys mentioned making sure there aren't rocks in the landing - how can you tell? Do you actually poke around with your poles, or do you just look at the way the snow is distributed on the landing?
 
biggest I've jumped is 45 feet idk if that's big or small to you. But I just go up to the top, look over, take a couple steps back then just do It. I try to turn my brain off cuz the longer I'm up there the less chance I'll do it.
 
Holy shit I'm retarded. So I read the thread title, I'm thinking cliff jumping like into water.

Reading the responses some of them kind of fit, but some of them are like WUT? I'm not getting this, what is going on, oh holy shit cliff jumping like jumping off cliffs whiles skiing.

I did not make that connection at all.
 
If you get scared while youre in the air you will flail your arms and land backseat. Keeping composure and your arms and shoulders forward in the air is more important that not being backseat at takeoff.
 
13529776:ObeseBunny said:
A bunch of you guys mentioned making sure there aren't rocks in the landing - how can you tell? Do you actually poke around with your poles, or do you just look at the way the snow is distributed on the landing?
Click to expand...

Usually you can visualize. Do you see any unnatural undulations in the terrain? That's probably a rock.

Also, just go with your gut. If it's the middle of February and everything else has solid coverage, then there's a good chance your landing will have good coverage too. But, listen to your gut, if you feel sketchy about a landing, then absolutely go down to the bottom and do a physical inspection -- stomp around on the landing, feel for rocks, take a pole and see how deep your landing is.

Then, just fuckin send 'er bud
 
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