Since we’re officially jonesing to ski, we caught up with Chris Davenport fresh from his recent ski trip to Portillo, Chile, and we also discuss the big announcement that he would be joining Bode Miller at Peak Skis.
TOPICS & TIMES:
- Blister News & Updates (0:00)
- Skiing in Portillo, Chile (5:40)
- Superstars Camp: the history (11:38)
- Ski Instruction: Chris’ philosophy (18:57)
- Joining Peak Skis (24:52)
- Bode Miller: when did you guys first meet? (31:49)
- Ski availability & production (37:28)
- Fall & Winter Plans? (38:30)
- Blister Summit / Skiing with Dav (41:21)
RELATED LINKS:
I’m really looking forward to trying out some Peak skis at the summit.
Self-Arrest:
Dav made a tiny comment that his recent Portillo camp included practice of self-arrest. Great! I have long contended that self-arrest doesn’t get enough attention in the ski community.
Sure, it’s not an issue if you ski on a tiny hill in Michigan with one rope tow. But at resorts with wide open steeps like Blackcomb, I’ve seen too many skiers who were very confident and decently competent at skiing steeps, but they were grossly deficient at self-arrest. None of the “way too common” 800-1200ft falls I’ve witnessed inbounds have resulted in death, but usually a season-ender like a knee injury plus maybe a bump on the head, and then they get hauled out by Patrol.
I guess my sample size isn’t overwhelmingly huge, but what I almost always see during these LONG inbounds falls is that:
1) The fall usually starts with quite low initial velocity, but they STILL fail to self-arrest, and
2) The victims make ZERO movements that could even remotely be interpreted as an attempt to self-arrest. It really looks like they don’t even try, not even once throughout the long, long, long fall that takes forever to end. It really looks as though these people have never even heard the word “self-arrest” before—even though they look pretty competent on their skis in these steeps before they slip and fall 800-1200ft.
Maybe Blister has a platform to help put a little more emphasis on the importance of self-arrest. Jonathan himself had his own very serious accident on Independence Pass when he was unable to self-arrest—and his fall started at basically zero initial velocity, without skis on, but he still was unable to stop. Interestingly, in the 2 podcasts where Jonathan’s backcountry crew debriefed and discussed Jonathan’s accident, and discussed how they could be safer in the future, they came up with many, many great ideas to improve safety—but nobody emphasized that the crew could practice self-arrest to get better at it. Hmmm…