How to Carve on Skis
Coach Eric takes to carve a clean turn…no guesswork, just the mechanics.
Carving is one of the most satisfying feelings on skis… but it’s also one of the most misunderstood. Here’s what it actually takes to hold a clean edge and carve a real turn.
Hold a Sharp Edge
The biggest thing you’re looking for when you’re learning to carve is holding an edge. That edge needs to be sharp – imagine a knife slicing cleanly through a piece of ice cream cake, cutting a smooth line instead of dragging through it. Once you’ve got that edge down, the tip of it should follow all the way through to the end of the ski, holding that same clean line the whole way.
Stay in Front of Your Boots
The hardest part of carving is staying forward in your boots. That forward pressure is what lets you roll cleanly from edge to edge, instead of skidding through the turn. The moment you start skidding, you’ve lost the carve. Instead of cutting a clean line like that knife through cake, your skis are now sliding sideways across the snow – more like spreading butter across toast than cutting through it. That sideways slide is the opposite of what you’re after.
Weight Transfer and Angulation
As you ride, your weight transfers onto one ski, your dominant ski. Once that weight is set, you angulate, tipping that ski up onto its edge. The better you get, the deeper you can take those edges into the turn.
The tricky part about going too deep is that sometimes you can’t pick the ski back up out of that angle. The key to recovering is pushing through the front of the boot to keep that rotation going, so your skis are still slowing you down while you hold the edge through the turn.
Momentum Carries You to the Next Turn
Once your skis are pointed in one direction, they’ll keep going that way until you transfer your weight onto the uphill ski. Pushing into that uphill ski creates a pivot point under your toe that pulls you around into the next edge. The secret to all of this is momentum…without it, you can’t carve.
If you don’t have much speed, you end up slowing down every time you hit an edge, losing your flow from turn to turn. But once you build momentum by pushing into the front of your boots, gravity carries you through the turn instead, and your skis cut cleanly through the snow – back to that knife-through-cake feeling, holding a sharp edge all the way across.
Timing the Apex
Your edge should start before the apex of the turn, and once you reach that apex, you hold the edge until it comes all the way around. That’s what you’re after – a held edge throughout the apex of your turn. Once you’ve got a good apex and the momentum from that drop, use it to set yourself up for the next turn. Speed is what lets you hold an edge longer. Without momentum, carving isn’t possible.
