HOW TO SKI ON ICE | 4 tips to tackle icy ski slopes

Greta pointers! ......but .....☺that's definitely NOT ice

He can stand up his ski poles on that surface. Hardpack; not real ice.

Another completely different thing you can do is to use a scrapy hardpack day to work on your balance. Find a flat icy area on an easy trail and glide across it slowly while edging as LITTLE as possible, I.e. keeping your skis perfectly flat. By doing that on a flat part of the hill, you’ll reduce the terror that comes with sliding on ice, and you’ll train your body to stay in a good position through balance. Gradually improving your balance in this way will have amazing benefits for all parts of your skiing and especially when you hit icy patches.

I live in New England and we would call that packed powder, certainly not ice. Good try.

Great tips thanks! There's one more fundamental one to add perhaps: control your speed! Any extra speed will amplify the effect of the ice and reduce breaking ability and therefore safety of others?

I recently improved my carving. What an amazing feeling to cut into the crude ice

when you hit ice go straight and don't start your turn until you get to a better spot on the other side. Give yourself more room between other skiers and boarders too.

Great tips! This is why I ski a long pair of '05 Atomic M2Tron (Metron) EX. They do not care if it's icy.

The older I get, the more afraid I am of ice skiing and the worse I get😄. Next holidays I'll recover my confidence!! Thank you for tips

I wish our ice looked like that. That's our conditions for the 1st hour or 2 then it's all skied off and actually a solid sheet of ice below. I've found the more I edge the ski the worse it gets. To much edge force and you're down and taking an uncontrolled ride to the bottom, hoping not to hit something or someone along the way. I've witnessed lots of skiers slide over 500 yards trying to stop. To me that's groomed granular, not ice.

Big clumps of soft snow here are ice chunks!

Good enough for Brits en holiday; the Basic Stance: Assume the Position and drift sideways till you hit a pile of snow. Most people can't generate the high edge angles needed for grip. I see 'em all now: Inside foot propping up these over-weight corpses... just about looking back uphill. yeesh. However; Experts Know: No Up Motion. NO Rotary Motions: and I ain't talking only body; I'm talking skis too. Experts Know: The Flexed Transition.!! And Only Edging... from the Ankles and then the Knees. Rolling onto a new outside ski Before you even get near the fall-line... Of course looking for a bit earlier pressure on the front o' da' boot helps. Feet are still outside the body... which is of course Flexing -just like Harold Harb sez: into high edge angles. Oh; all this and a .5 Base Bevel and a 3 Degree Side-edge ...on your Skinny Skis which are of course only 68mm: because we know about the Right Tool for the job.

Agreed. That's not ice

Like they say at Mad River Glen, If it’s not blue, it’s not ice.

Better advice would be ski straight through ice patches and aim for snow patches to turn and break your speed. Unless your skis just got sharpened, don’t turn on ice, actual ice! ..or put on ice skates!

Try skiing the Midwest ice cubes. Then you will show us. If you can ski the Midwest everything else is is a cakewalk.

Just got back from skiing we had real ice that’s not ice 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

This is NOT skiing on solid ice. It's just granulated hard pack. The problem is dealing with a solid ice patch, where the edges don't grip at all.

looking for places with soft snow to turn？well，good luck…

The only thing you can do on real ice is not edge at all. Keep flat and straight until you're past it.