Carving fans are just as, well, fanatic about their passion as are powder hounds theirs. This doesn’t mean that arc-meisters eschew the occasional pleasures of a great powder day, occasional being the operative word given the relative rarity of bottomless in any precinct south of Fernie BC.
Many hard-core high-edge-angle artists actually prefer etching arcs big and small onto rock-hard ice or into firm velvet corduroy and on any reasonably even tilted surface. This is a good thing between storms and given that powder is harder to come by than ice, boilerplate, man-made marble and even that velvet groomed, they just might be onto something.
But there’s more to it. . .
Not only is carving the highest form of ski art, but it also is the technical foundation upon which high-performance skiing depends. The moves that create carved turns are the same moves that generate every efficient turn, extreme edge angles or not; they are the “scales,” so to speak.
Carve vs. Smear
Once you master the scales, so to speak, you can modify, improvise, innovate and compose. But first, you gotta’ learn the scales—as have these exceptional skiers: