Skiing bumps is one thing; skiing extra-big, extra-steep bumps is quite another. As usual, there are a few tricks to it, and, as with an advanced graduate course at a university, there are prerequisites. Unless you can ski medium and small bumps smoothly and efficiently, you’ll be floundering on serious bump runs. But given the basics, here’s how to adapt to tougher stuff.
On mega-bumps, the slope changes so radically from one moment to the next that you’re always playing catch-up with your skis, which tend to drop out from under you in the steep gullies. The solution is faster, more dynamic pole action. By the time your skis have pivoted into the fall line, you should already be reaching straight down the hill with your pole for the next bump. In effect, this pulls your body forward so you can keep up with your skis and, of course, gets you ready for the next turn.
But often in big hard bumps there isn’t much room to finish your turn between one bump and the next, so once again speed control becomes an issue. The solution is simply to accept a little more speed and then, periodically, wherever there’s room to do so, complete your turn by curving up and over the shoulder of the next bump. This extra uphill hook will cut your speed way back from time to time.
As you ski faster, in bigger bumps, you will often feel yourself compressed, your legs pushed up beneath you, by the force with which you contact the bump. This compression is a natural form of shock absorption, but it only works once. To use your legs as shock absorbers again, on the next bump and the next, you need to make a continual effort to extend your feet and legs back down into the trough as you come over the lip of the bump, stretching out to fill up the available space, and getting tall to absorb the next compression.
Of course, that’s not the whole story of super bumps, but it’s a good start. You’ll find more information, more detail, more help with this and other skiing challenges in my book Breakthrough on Skis, a Vintage paperback from Random House.