The Spoor of the Perfect “Ski Runner”

A numeracy exercise: counting finely linked turns on Mount Fletcher. Photo: Alex Lee

Back in 1910, Willi Rickmer Rickmers, a German mountaineer and skier, put forth some prescient rules for descending mountains on skis. And they still hold up.

There are some universal truisms to human powdered snow sliding culture. There’s a thirst for uphilling. There’s a timeless giddiness while descending. And after the descent, as if the DNA codes for it, we glance back and eye the turns. 

The next storm will refresh the canvas, erasing wiggles and wide arcing tracks. So you might as well revel in your artistry. But let’s call the glance back at the skied sloped what it is: a-look-at-what-I-did moment—also known as vanity. 

Nothing wrong with that. Depending on your ski or riding style, you’ll likely be biased and enamored by what you see.

Dissecting the Turn

Published in 1910, Ski-Ing For Beginners and Mountaineers by W. Rickmer Rickmers, is a classic how-to tome that aims to set all things skiing straight. In other words, according to Rickmers, there is most certainly a right way to make a turn and a wrong way. Further, back in 1910, there seemed to be little room for accommodating a spectrum of turn types. And let’s assume any notion of “freeride” was a century off. 

“The problem is not how to get down helter-skelter, but how to obtain the pleasing sensation of continuous glide, that is to say, how to get down in good form and, of course, without falling.

Rickmers gets to the good stuff and lays down the prescriptive law of how good skiing is done:

“The secret of good ski-ing down a mountainside of intricate formation is to know exactly how to adapt oneself to a certain typical feature of the ground. While running, one must always look far ahead to survey the ground and arrange one’s tactics beforehand. One must think of the snow which is likely to be found round the corner as one comes from the shade into the sun or from the lee to the windward. The problem is not how to get down helter-skelter, but how to obtain the pleasing sensation of continuous glide, that is to say, how to get down in good form, and, of course, without falling.”

Rickmers’ advice, pretty much, holds today. 

He goes even further in a diagram titled Stars and Streaks to illustrate what constitutes proper ski turns. It is safe to assume, eyeing the illustrations, that Rickmers might have frowned upon tight, uniform, and oh-so-perfect and measured powder wiggles and praised more Jackson Pollock-esque marks on the snow canvas. 

Read Rickmers’ notes for yourself, but track II looks suitable and fine by the basic linking turns standard. Yet track II is critiqued as “misses three curves out of six.” (Note the small stars, or x marks, indicate falls.)

In spoor number V (yeah, Rickmers calls these ski lines spoor*, I love that), Rickmers sees perfection. “The spoor of the perfect ski-runner. He darts gracefully where it is possible and curves where it is necessary…”

A diagram of proper ski turns from Ski-Ing for Beginners and Mountaineers by W R Rickmers.

Upon further examination and reflection, Rickmers was onto something. Maybe his ski turn prescription drank from the jazz, improvisation, abstract expressionism kool-aid. By today’s standards of less prescriptive and more artistic ski-all-the-features turn-making, line V —or spoor V— looks like someone at least mouthed 3-2-1 dropping before laying down their spore.

But still, Rickmers voiced prudence. He asserts you’d rather not be a skier lacking discretion even if you look dashing in that perfectly baggy-by-design ski costume.

“Approach all obstacles with due diffidence and learn to understand the peculiar ‘cussedness’ of branches, stones, holes, pegs, and snow waves,” writes Rickmers.” Slow down before all corners and unknown channels. Remember that a cool-headed and cautious man has always a good chance of keeping up with a dashing runner who may be superior in skill but lacking in discretion.”

*Spoor: the track or scent of an animal