Let the edges do the work; meanwhile big Saturday at Heavenly

Spent some time skiing at Heavenly Mountain Resort the other day and the snow was fine, though pretty hard at 9 a.m. but softening as the sun at Lake Tahoe came into play. Couldn't help noticing how many skiers are still using the old rotary shoulder turn yet skiing on modern, shaped skis. That's a waste of energy.
On shaped skis keep the body facing down the fall line, letting the edges do the turn. That's what today's skis are all about. The deep sidecut makes the skis turn when you put the edges in. Gotta keep the hands out front, which incidentally is crucial in avoiding ACL injury.

The anterior cruciate ligament if the biggest single injury these days since release bindings really do most of their job. But the problem is that when a skier falls he or she often is sitting back and allows the uphill skier to take off on its own, twisting the knee.

Three things to do when falling to avoid an ACL: Keep hands forward, stay ahead of your skis and keep skis parallel. They did a big study about ACLs back east a couple of years ago and found that ACLs came when skiers were sitting back and letting one ski go uphill while the other went straight ahead. Check it out on the Internet, there are a couple of sources there that go into detail.
A reminder: if you waxed your skis at the beginning of the season, do it again. The wax scrubs off and those P-tex pores open and slow you down.

Heavenly welcomes rail jam
Haven't skied World Cup run of late but there's enough snow and it's a fast, fun run. Place to be Saturday.
Heavenly Mountain Resort has teamed up with Nike Snowboarding to host the fifth stop of the Nike Winter Chosen Tour on Saturday, February 4, 2012. The slope style rail jam will take place from 4-7 p.m. on World Cup run at the California Main Lodge.
Nike’s Winter Chosen consists of two components: a video crew competition, in which riding and filming crews enter online for a chance to travel to Austria and compete with professional riders and videographers, and the Night Jam, a freestyle slope session featuring production lighting and local and professional snowboarders competing for $5,000 in cash prizes.

Media and guests are invited to watch the competition at the base of World Cup, free of charge. For more information, or to enter the competition, visit www.nike.com/chosen.

— Writer Sam Bauman is a lifelong skier and former professional ski instructor.