Bump Skiing 101 - An introduction to skiing moguls

I had a 3 hour lesson the other day with a strong intermediate skier who wanted to improve his bump skiing.  By his own self assessment his mogul skiing wasn't very good!  We'd had a few inches of fresh snow at the mountain, so the conditions were perfect for an intro to bumps lesson.  After a quick warm up lap to check he could make a parallel turn on blue terrain, we dove right in.  I'll lead you through my progression, and give some explanation why.  I might have taken a different approach depending on the profile of the student.

The first thing we did was some side slips on steep blue terrain.  Standing perpendicular to the slope, we started by offsetting our feet by about half a boot length.  This opens up the hips and upper body down the hill, and I like to point the handles of my ski poles at about 45* down the slope as well.  The goal here is to release both uphill edges at the same time, flattening the ski on the snow, and sliding sideways down the hill.  Practice this facing both directions.  A good verbal cue is to tell the student to tip or roll the ankles down the hill.  If the student makes a wedge, or is sliding forwards or backwards across the hill, take a look at their balance.  Are they balanced over the middle of the skis?  Are they balanced more over the downhill ski?  Don't progress past here until they can do a solid slide slip.

Next, I introduced a pivot slip.  When the student is comfortably sliding sideways down the hill, have them rotate their feet through a full 180* and continue sliding sideways down the hill facing the other direction.  The goal is to stay in a corridor not much wider than a ski length.  Some cues to look for here are, again, a wedge at the start of the pivot, or too much fore/aft movement across the hill.  If you see a wedge, can they turn their downhill foot before turning their uphill foot?  Remember that a ski will rotate easiest when it is flat on the snow, so as the skis pivot into the fall line, the student needs to make a conscious effort to keep moving forward over the skis.  If they don't, they'll be in the back seat making it harder to turn the skis.

From here, add in a small hockey stop and finishing pole plant in between the pivots.  The student should roll their ankles back up the hill to increase edge angles and come to a stop.  Only then can they do a pole plant.  This emphasizes that the pole plant must happen well in advance of the next turn.  Slowly take away the hockey stop so the student is making linked pivot slips with a pole plant.  The skis should turn through 180* but the upper body should remain relatively focused down the fall line.

Once he was comfortable with this we went and found some easy blue terrain where the soft snow had started to pile up.  The smooth patches in between the piles of snow were our cue to slide, and the piles of snow were our cue to pole plant and pivot.  As the mogul field started to become more defined, we focused on pole planting and turning on the top of the bumps.  If you stand on the top of a mogul, the tip and tail of the ski won't be touching the snow, making it really easy to pivot the ski.  Your student should have great success with this if they can keep a disciplined upper body.

By the end of the lesson he was comfortably skiing easy moguls on blue terrain.  If you like this intro to bumps progression, give it a try on the hill and let me know if it worked for you!