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"SKIING IS A SLIDING SPORT":
A
Little Skiing History
by Bill Jones, Ski Instructor
 Certified Professional Ski Instructor (Registration #110478)
Skiing was originally winter transportation. For those who lived in snowy
climates, the invention of skis may have seemed as important as did the discovery of
the wheel and axle elsewhere. The earliest skis discovered are thousands of years old.
Skis were invented in the Europe and Asia continent; in North America, early
peoples used snowshoes for winter travel. (Curiously, when skis finally came to
North America in the mid-1800s, they were at first called snowshoes or snow
skates.) Both the European skis and the North American snow shoes gave more surface
area underfoot to support the body's weight and keep persons using them from sinking into soft
snow. With skis, however, the device could simply be slid forward while a
snowshoe needed to be lifted to be moved forward. Still, each system had its merits,
and both are still in use today.
These early devices differed from modern alpine skis in that travelers' heels were
free to rise with each stride as in a natural walking step. Such a setup is
still used in modern cross-country, telemark, military, and mountaineering skis.
How much has skiing changed? Top: 2009; bottom, 193.jpg) 0s
Just as now, early skiers used a pole or poles for balance, to aid in
pushing forward, and to create friction by dragging them in the snow to
slow up. Surely these early skiers found they could slide down hills.
But it appears to have been a very long time before they discovered how to
turn skis while sliding. Logically, the very first turns could have been merely
steps into a new direction, with multiple steps into the same direction to
create greater turns, which we still do, too. What may have been the next
generation of turns may have seemed more natural to those early skiers than
do the ones we alpine skiers use today, for
skiers of those earlier days first moved the outside hip forward of the turn to
come, thrusting the
corresponding ski along with it.
(Today many skiers still find this move more natural than the one now used by
virtually all advanced skiers who first move the inside hip and ski of the new turn forward, and for good mechanical reasons.) This early
outside-hip forward turn came from the Telemark region of Norway. At another Norway area, another form of
turning was soon invented in which, from a parallel ski position, the ski on the uphill
side of the new turn was moved so its heel displaces uphill, called stemming, resulting in a skidded deflection against the snow that
"pushes"
the skier into a new direction. This turn came from the Christiania (now Oslo) area and so is called the stem christiania
or stem christie. A more advanced turn can also be done without displacing the outside ski heel
uphill and simply advancing the inside ski of the new turn while tipping the
feet and body down the hill--the parallel christie. With modern skis we tilt our
bodies a bit more down the hill, creating a higher angle of the ski's bases with
the snow and minimizing or eliminating the skid, thus allowing the ski's
designed geometry of shape to turn us-the carved turn.
But skiing became a way to have fun early on, too. Witness this poem by a
long-board skier from 1879 in the California gold camps (skis then were called
snowshoes):
The Snow-Shoe
Races
  Down
the mountain side, like birds in flight
Or
meteors on a starry night,
Bending low to miss the trees,
Rushing down to the flat below,
Dancing over the “beautiful snow”.
Falling, rolling, seeing stars--
Then hear the laughing crowd’s hurrahs,
Away down the valleys, where the oranges grow,
They miss all the fun we have in the snow
illustrations from Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper
March 17, 1877
"SKIING
IS A SLIDING SPORT"--a skiing web manual:
Skiing Web Manual Contents Why Read
This Skiing Web Manual That First Lesson
A LITTLE SKIING HISTORY
Motion in Skiing
Conventional Skiing Wisdoms
Skier Excuses Fear in
Skiingr Conditioning
for Skiing
Equipment and
Technique
Skiing Equipment
How Skis
Work How
to Develop Balance on Skis
A Skiing
Turn Simplified Tactics for Terrains and Snow
Textures
Skiing Tips and Tales--a potpourri
Children
and Skiing
Age and Skiing
Gender & Skiing
Culture & Skiing Skiing Ethics and Slope Survival
Slope Safety Skiing
Environment Glossary
Acknowledgements
SkiMyBest Website Contents
This "A Little Ski History" page last modified
12/02/2009: \SkiMyBest\skihist.htm..
Copyright © 2010 William R Jones.
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