I moved to Michigan about 3 years ago, and one of the things I’ve wanted to try since moving here is Skiing. This year was forecasted to be a high snowfall year, meaning hopefully better slope conditions, so I decided it was the year to give it a try!

Getting Started

I bought a 3-day pass (doesn’t have to be consecutive days) for the ski hill closest to me to bring the per-day cost down. For my first day, I did a morning group lesson to get the fundamentals, then spent the afternoon transitioning from snow-plow to (mostly) parallel skiing.

By the end of the first day, I knew I was hooked! I’m not sure I needed an additional expensive, athletic hobby on top of triathlons, but I now had it. At least skiing is a complementary sport to triathlons; it’s not uncommon for triathletes to use skiing as part of their off-season training.

Gearing Up

The hardest part of the first day was shin pain. It quickly became very clear, and was confirmed by my skiing friends, that boot fit is the most critical aspect for enjoying the sport.

I happened across a new ski shop in town, and stopped in. By the time I left, I had a pair of properly fitting boots and a helmet. I spent way more than I’d planned on the boots, but I quickly realized it was worth the cost, and that this was going to be the place where I would get the most from my money.

The helmet I got was the cheapest they offered that had MIPS. I was familiar with MIPS, and why you should get a helmet with MIPS, from cycling, and was happy to pay the cost to protect my brain.

For skis, I decided to continue to rent for this season so I can try out a couple different styles and lengths to determine what I want.

Carv

I decided, in a weak moment of spending spree, to splurge and get Carv. This involves a physical device (two sensors, one for each foot, that clip to the outside of your ski boot) and a subscription services to connect your device to their servers that analyze the data and send it back to your phone app.

Carv then serves as a virtual, AI-powered coach, giving you tips on what to focus on for each run and a tip on how to improve that area. It also gives you a “ski:IQ” score for each run (or each turn depending on which mode you use) which creates a fun game for solo-skiers like me to try to beat your best score.

Day 3: Breakthrough

Today was my third day of skiing in my life, and my second day using Carv. I just had it on the end-of-run score and lift tips settings. Typically, when I heard what it told me to focus on, I questioned its choice, but I decided to give Carv a chance and see where it took me. As I worked on each skill it recommended for that run, I’d have a light bulb moment where I’d get it and I’d feel how much more control I had as I built each skill.

With Carv’s help, today I went from a ski:IQ of mid-80s (occasionally hitting 90 on a really good run) and feeling very unsteady and very nervous about anything with much slope at all, to consistently getting around 110 ski:IQ, and frequently in the low 120s when runs weren’t crowded (125 was my best score of the day). Best of all, by the end of the day, my confidence was way up, slopes that terrified me at the beginning of the day felt like nothing, and I felt like I was in constant control on the slopes, even on what passes as black diamond runs for my little bump of a ski hill!

While it was an impulse purchase (and still very much a large splurge), it truly has allowed me to progress so much faster than I ever imagined. In three days of skiing (about 1 week apart each), I went from complete novice shakily snow-plowing down easy greens/blues, to consistently parallel skiing (on day 2, my first day with Carv), to confident skier able to carve on easy slopes.

Looking Ahead

I’m interested to see if Carv’s usefulness plateaus, or if it continues to prove helpful now that I’ve learned the basics. I found that for the latter part of day 3 (above), I wasn’t able to progress any further. I feel like that was partly due to the slopes at the ski hill I was at: the only long (ish) run was a pretty gentle blue that doesn’t have enough grade to get the sharp turns Carv was wanting me to do without completely losing speed, and the black diamonds were so short Carv didn’t even recognize them as a run. I’m hoping to get back to Caberfae, which has longer runs, before the end of the season.

It might also be that I’ve hit the limit of transfer ability. Cycling and skiing (perhaps surprisingly) use a lot of the same muscle groups; so my progress this far hasn’t been substantially limited by needing to build sport-specific muscle strength, but I may have hit that limit now.