Hello fellow ski geeks.
A couple years ago, I hit the chair, and realized that I left my poles at the shop. Instead of making the uphill hike and back for twenty, I just went skiing.
A carver apprentice, I did not miss them, and took to leaving them behind on frontside hardpack days when thin bony conditions awaited off piste.
Now that I actually learned to stand up, and ski using correct edge technique, I leave the poles behind almost every day. It is unbelievably liberating to just ski, no poles to drag you back, to hold onto, or worry about. My technique is solid now, swiveling back and forth in the bumps, I just hold that imaginary beachball, or two fists in front, or wave off that nasty roost from those inevitable twintips.
I have gotten a flamboyant reputation slamming and slarving the bumps under the lifts, and everyone is asking why I don't use the poles.
I just return the question, Why don't you ditch your poles? There is no good answer.
When I'm mountaineering, hiking up a boot track, negotiating cliffs, chutes, tight spots, and trees in powder, I bring my poles. Those days, I have my big reverse camber/sidecut boards. But mellow days then there is no fresh to be tracked, I hit the piste sans poles and rack up the vertical as fast as possible on my full camber old school shape skis.
Has anyone here given up the almighty pole plant?
