[Zironic]

Carving is extremely popular in Alpine skiing. The thing to keep in mind though is that a perfect carve on a perfectly sharp ski means you are literally ice-skating downhill. That means you will go very very fast, much faster then most people are comfortable with on the harder slopes.

So what people do is instead of carving perfectly, they deliberately slip to create some friction and slow themselves down.

[npsimons]

> So what people do is instead of carving perfectly, they deliberately slip to create some friction and slow themselves down.

As an amateur alpine tourist who is deathly afraid of that feeling of "loss of control" from incredible downhill speeds, this is exactly what I do.

That said, I'm here reading because I want to know if the heuristic for sharpening changes when A) one is mostly off-piste (rock, hard ice, etc) and B) really want those edges sharp for ungroomed (ie, icy) slopes.