Skiing Special Report: Carve yourself a reputation

Slim and shapley, carving skis make getting down challenging slopes easier and more enjoyable

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Gavin sought my opinion. This season we are going skiing together for the first time, and he wasn't sure whether he should take his own skis. I asked what sort they were, and he disappeared into the cellar – to return with a pair of 185cm Fischer FRP Strada skis. I was as impressed as anyone with an interest in design history would be, particularly by the graphics and typography. I offered my opinion: he could give them to a ski museum, or chuck them away. The one thing he should not do was go skiing on them.

Mine was, it turned out, a second opinion – and exactly the same as the first. When he last used the skis four years ago (Gavin describes himself as an "infrequent intermediate" skier), the instructor advised him to "abandon them". They are – or were, if our advice has been followed – almost 20 years old, dating from 1983. In the whole 4,500-year sweep of skiing history, that might seem shockingly new, but, crucially, the Fischer FRP Strada predates what the editor of the US magazine Skiing recently described as arguably "the biggest single innovation in our sport". He was referring to carving skis.

To anybody who started skiing since the mid-Nineties, the idea of having carving skis explained to them would border on the absurd. It is now all but impossible to buy any other type of ski, so the word "carving" is falling into disuse even before it made it into my dictionary (Concise Collins, 1999 edition) as a skiing term. Trying to explain why skiers previously used something so crude as the "traditional" ski, as it came to be known in the years of its swift decline, would be just as absurd: no young skier could credit that for thousands of years people had made getting down the mountain so difficult for themselves.

But my friend Gavin is always curious, and at turns cautious or carefree. He wanted to be persuaded that these "new" skis were good enough to consign his old pair to the dustbin of history. So I found myself scrolling back to 1996 when, wherever skiers gathered, the main topic of conversation was whether "carvers" really did make turning so much easier, whether we were just being conned into buying a new pair of skis, and whether they shouldn't more properly be referred to as "side-cuts", "parabolics" or "shaped skis".

That season, in my early days as this newspaper's ski correspondent, everyone was trying to explain carving skis. My own, rather plodding exposition ran like this. "These new skis are wide at the front, curve inwards from either side down to the binding, and then splay out into a fish-tail shape at the back. The principle behind them is that the wider front helps to initiate a turn when the ski is on its edge, and the narrower middle section allows the ski to bend more easily into a bowed shape. When the whole length of the edge is forced downwards by the pressure through your boots, the curve of the ski will – in theory – make the turn for you."

The tentative "in theory" is something of a giveaway. Still a fairly poor intermediate skier, I didn't have much faith in my own judgement, and quoted all the traditionalist faction's criticisms of these new-fangled skis – that they didn't work in icy conditions, were no good for beginners and suffered from instability on a schuss (a straight downhill run). But even the experts were tentative: in those days, Skiing magazine would go no further than to suggest that "not since the switch from leather boots to plastic has there been such a profound change in ski equipment".

The following season, there was nothing left to be discussed in the bars and lodges except which carving skis to use. The traditionalists had been discredited; the revolution was over. Worn shorter than traditional skis, carvers simply made skiing easier and more fun. With no effort on my part – turning suddenly seemed effortless – I was transformed almost instantly into a good intermediate by a pair of carving skis made by K2, 90 per cent of whose 1997/8 range were carvers.

More than my technical description of how a waisted shape gives more grip during the turn and the fluttering hand-movements which dramatised the greater torsional rigidity of a short ski, I think it was the promise of suddenly improved skiing that convinced Gavin. Who doesn't want to ski better and have more fun on the mountain? I'm not expecting to see his Fischer FRP Strada skis again.

Carving skis have had a dramatic effect on the mountain. But they didn't seem to jolt the trend of the UK winter-sports market, which has seen steady but unspectacular growth since the advent of carving skis in the mid-Nineties, disrupted only by the millennium. Last season almost a million skiers and snowboarders travelled abroad: the highest-ever figure. But tour operators remain concerned that not enough beginners are being attracted to the sport, partly because of the historical decline in school-trip skiers – who, back in 1980/1, made up an astonishing 75 per cent of the whole winter-sports market.

In the last two seasons, a UK body, the Association of Snowsports Countries, organised a marketing initiative offering "Freshers' Weeks" during which beginners were given free tuition, lift-passes and equipment hire. The scheme is not continuing into the coming season, but the tour operator Crystal is hoping to bring in new blood with a promotion which offers a £100 discount to anyone booking a winter-sports holiday (before 31 October) who takes an adult beginner along with them.

Unfortunately, beginners do not feel the full benefit of carving skis, because they have never experienced anything worse. Which is not the case with those adults who tried skiing before the mid-Nineties. In those dark days, lifts were slower, accommodation was more spartan and skiwear did a worse job of keeping you dry and warm; more important, learning to ski on those long, rigid planks was – from my limited experience – far from fun. How many people had dreams of gliding around the mountains which were dashed when they actually spent money on going to a ski resort? Thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands. And how many of them know that if they tried it now, those old fantasies could be realised? Probably very few.

For anecdotal evidence of the joy the discovery of carving skis can bring, I talked to David Griffiths, who with his wife, Susan, offers "skiing vacations for the discerning skiers" with the Classic Ski company. In this context, "discerning" has a special meaning: the company's small niche is the 45-70 age group. (Its statistics show that the number of Classic Ski clients aged 60 and over exceeds that of the under-60s.) A high proportion of guests are people returning to the sport, and Griffiths says "some do bring their old skis, and they want to use them; but after a couple of days they can see that other people seem to be doing better on the shorter carving skis. And once they have tried a pair, they don't go back to their own skis. Nobody ever has."

Griffiths points out that his clients – only about 200 per season – have particular reason to be grateful for carvers. "They are excellent for people who are not so athletic, because they demand less effort. But anyone who has tried skiing and comes back to it will find that carving skis have made it much easier." Maybe it's not new blood that the winter-sports business needs, but the older, more discerning stuff. For any ski company looking to grow, I suggest a marketing campaign aimed at the cash-rich, time-rich fiftysomethings. The slogan? "If at first you didn't succeed, try again."

Classic Ski offers five-night holidays in the French Alps including flights, ski- and boot-hire, five hours of small-group tuition per day, insurance and half-board hotel accommodation from £885 (01590 623400, www.classicski.co.uk). More details of the "Introduce a friend" offer from Crystal (0870 160 6040, www.crystalski.co.uk)