Riding a flat ski

Stuey seems to be following in my tracks exactly

These are some pictures of Stuey skate skiing at Abercrombie before I went to Old Harbor.  The skate skiing is still good at Abercrombie and Stuey and I went again yesterday.  He even went by himself while I was at Old Harbor.  Today we are going to skate ski up Salonie Creek.

It is amazing how quickly Stuey has gotten good at skate skiing.  Ordinarily people pick up skate skiing and get tired pretty quickly.  They do quick bursts of skating but can't keep it up in a sustained fashion.  Stuey can do multiple laps without stopping and I think it is because he is skating with good technique.

We do not have groomed trails on Kodiak so technique is more important.  In Anchorage you can often get by with poor technique because the trails are so fast anyway.  But no so in Kodiak.  On Kodiak Stuey and I often skate ski in fairly deep and slow snow.  And the key to such conditions is skiing on a flat ski.

Rather than waddling along between the skis and pushing off on the edges (what beginners generally do - and frankly what most people on the trails in Anchorage do) it is best to completely commit to a ski and to get it to glide with you above it.  Skiing this way allows you to glide a lot further without having to constantly power up by pushing off.  It is far more efficient.  Patrick