Ever wondered why your carved turns leave two parallel tracks in the snow, even though most of your weight is on the outside ski?

Isn’t it the outside ski that bends into reverse camber and makes the turn?

Well, yes and no.

It takes surprisingly little force to bend a ski into reverse camber – maybe 10% of your weight at most. Try it while you are standing still. Try bending a ski with your hand. Easy, isn’t it?

Even with a 90/10 split on weight distribution between the skis, there is still more than enough weight on the inside ski to bend it and make it carve a track in the snow.

So why do we apply most of the pressure to the outside ski? To make it grip. On softer snow, you can get away with a more equal weight distribution, but as the snow gets harder you will need to commit to the outside ski exclusively. There’s a good explanation of this in Ron LeMaster’s Ultimate Skiing (p 21 and Figure 2.4).

So next time you look back to admire your carved turn tracks you can be satisfied that you had a) enough pressure on the outside ski to hold the turn and b) enough pressure on the inside ski to make a parallel track.