By Peggy Shinn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
I first made the leap from 200-centimeter-long Fischer straight-as-an-arrow giant slalom skis to a pair with more sidecut-hourglass-shaped skis-in November 1998. Like many of us who have skied for decades, I was reluctant to make the switch. Shaped skis, with their wide tips and tails, looked like something Bugs Bunny or Sylvester the Cat would ski on. They weren't for real skiers.
On that gray November day a decade ago, I tentatively took to the slopes on a pair of borrowed K2 Fours-the ski model credited with popularizing shaped skis in the United States after an unknown brash teenager named Bode Miller clicked into the skis and took three firsts and a second at the 1996 National Junior Championships (two weeks later, he finished third in slalom at senior nationals and made the U.S. Ski Team).
Although I never measured the tip-waist-tail dimensions of my old skis-who did back then?-I later learned that the K2 Fours sported a profile of 98-65-87 millimeters (tip-waist-tail widths). This compares to the more plank-like profile of 83-64-73 mm for a pair of Rossignol 4SVs, circa early 1990s (as quoted by Seth Masia in an article on shaped skis for Skiing Heritage Magazine).
Before I set off on my debut run on the K2 Fours, my friend Debbie, from whom I had borrowed the skis, advised me not to lift my inside ski anymore. She also recommended that I widen my stance and simply roll my ankles to initiate a turn, rather than drive my knee, old-school style, into the hill.
I liked the part about the wide stance. Since moving past the wedge turn and trying to impress the boys in junior high, I never really had mastered skiing like Stein Eriksen, the 1952 Olympic gold medalist who was always pictured skiing with his legs glued together. Unless conditions were perfect-and in the 1970s, they rarely were-my style was best described as a series of linked recoveries. To stay balanced, my legs naturally drifted apart, especially on ice.....
