CARV My Story
My parents started me skiing at the age of 2; cruel, cruel parents making me go through such an experience! We went skiing once or twice a year, then I lived in Val d’isere for a whole season in the 90s and once I started on my career and earning an income I went skiing as often as holidays would allow, booking onto off-piste, freestyle and avalanche courses.
Eventually I got my level 2 Alpine skiing and level 1 Telemark qualifications with BASI (British Association of Snowsports instructors). So you can see, I became a bit of an addict, something my bank account is struggling with to this day.
Editor Lady Charlotte, my partner, came to skiing in her 30s, which can be tricky as skiing is not initially the most natural of sports to take up as an adult. However, after 5 seasons of skiing she was doing pretty well, mastering all the pistes that any ski report could throw at her and dipping her toes into powder when nature allowed it.
So this was going to be an interesting test of CARV, one skier with decades of experience and another skier with a handful of winters under her belt.
CARV The Gadget
Many ski based gadgets have come and gone over the years, and many have been utter piffle, so when CARV appeared on the scene I thought… ‘right, a gadget that makes you ski better! Pull the other leg, it’s got a snowblade on it!‘ Allegedly this piece of kit consisting of two small blocks hooked to each boot with attached footbeds inside my ski boots will improve my skiing!
CARV Set Up
It was a pretty straight forward set up. The boot liners were removed, foot beds inserted into the boot shells and a little tape used here and there to keep them and their cable in place; did the boots feel tighter with these extra inserts? Not at all. It is worth investing in some good headphones, although I only use one at a time for safety, so you can still listen out for fellow mountain users.
Then it was over to the CARV app on our phones to fill out all of our details such as weight, equipment, history, age, level etc… Once all this was filled in it was time to hot the slopes.
CARV The Experience
Once on the mountain, open up the app; Initially it might feel a little overwhelming, but my advice is just set it to ‘Free Ski’ and go ski. I use this setting to get used to the app and for the app to get used to my style of skiing. Once CARV learnt my skiing style it could then start giving me various tips backed up by great short videos from some of the worlds best instructors and coaches. I found there were common themes for me to work on, which I then pinpointed and worked on by going through the various exercises designed to target the areas that I wanted to improve.
The app is pretty extensive, you can drill down really quite deep into 4 specific areas of your skiing: Balance, Edging, Pressure & Rotary movement with each area being broken down into even several more detailed parts with explanations of each aspect of your turn.
This is comprehensive beyond belief. It turns out that CARV have worked with some of the world’s best ski instructors and coaches to gather oodles of data on how they ski, so that CARV can extrapolate what is going on to create the perfect turn. These same instructors and coaches recorded many tuition videos which are accessible via the app, so when you are working on a particular technique, say you are working on Maximum Edge Angle, then you can read and watch detailed videos and explanations about the Edge Angle in turn.
Now you might think that turning skiing into a science might take away the fun, far from it, rather it gives you more of an idea of when the feeling is right and you are on the right track. You can instantly tweak your technique in real time whilst you are skiing thanks to the immediate feedback. It evaluates your skiing against all of their collated data and gives pointers as you go.
CARV looks at these 4 specific areas of your skiing and then combines your recorded data to give you an IQ score. This IQ score improves over the course of the day and week and gives you something to aim for, which in turn (excuse the pun) helps improve your skiing and take you on a journey through the ranks of skiing level from ‘Green Guru’ at Ski IQ 50 all the way up to the ‘Grim Ripper’ at Ski IQ 150+. For me this added a whole new level to my skiing, giving it the feel of a computer game.
I found that I preferred certain parts of the app over other areas, but it really depends on what type of learner you are. I liked the ‘Free Ski’ and used it to get a general overview of my skiing technique. It was then great to drill down and use specific exercises such as the real time read out from Edge Angle, Outside Ski Pressure, turn IQ to turn G-Force, Fore:aft Ratio to End of Turn, there a plethora of exercises.
CARV: Is this the end of Ski Instructors?
Is this the end of the ski instructor? Not at all… this is another tool to help you refine your skiing in a particularly fun way, and various ski schools have embraced CARV as a tool to use in class as well.
CARV Conclusion
It was fun to see our IQs increasing over the season as we moved up through the various ranks. We both found Carv pretty addictive and can not wait to get back on them. It was amazing how quickly CARV improved our skiing, I was starting to get ski edge angles I never thought possible before. The feedback and tutorials are great, echoing some comments that the International Ski Instructors Association President Vittorio Caffi gave me once during one lesson.
The programmers of CARV are obviously adapting the app and the growing amount of data means that the app is constantly evolving. However, with this evolution at one point the IQ score entry for each ski level did change meaning that we both moved down in IQ a little at one point which was a little disheartening initially, but we soon got back on it to build our IQs back up.
I noticed that the snow conditions heavily affect the IQ scores and achieving the various goals i.e. early morning solid bullet proof pistes are not conducive to achieving the best edge angles and slush is not the best time to aim for high pressure on the outside ski; so picking your piste, time of day and conditions will enable your best score; but on the other hand it can show you your weaknesses when the going gets tough. Although sometime you can be surprised with a good score when you were least expecting it.
We also enjoyed how CARV measures your statistics, showing where I have skied, how far I have travelled on skis, my top speed and how many turns over the whole season. One upgrade Charlotte would love to see is that the app talks to her apple watch and apple health to count the calories while skiing, as they do with her Peloton; after all people who love data will love CARV and most importantly you will know how much cheese fondue you can consume after a day of skiing with CARV!
As an instructor I wondered how I could improve my skiing outside of training camps and dedicated self-instruction on the mountain which can be tiring or expensive; it seems that CARV is the answer I was looking for, it has improved my skiing already and I am pretty sure I will keep improving as I continue to use it.
For more information visit CARV.
