I think you're deluding yourself if you think the community has no role in this. It can be gracious and grateful for the pro bono assistance of its better-educated and more experienced members, or it can be obnoxious and make their lives less pleasant. Would you keep answering questions about First Aid or running sleds if I, knowing very little about either topic, argued with you every time you did it?
There are technique discussions that don't involve MA. If somebody asks a "How should I.." question, they're asking about technique/tactics/etc, which falls into categories best-answered by people who know what they're talking about, and gingerly treated by those who don't. It's important to note that this is always relative. In some unfortunate crews, I'm the most knowledgeable. In other, luckier ones, far from it. How and whether I answer such a question or defer to others depends on the company.
Maybe they're interested in the ideas of multiple experienced people.
Dude, I like you, but have you completely lost the plot? First, it shouldn't require somebody with the credentials of a Daron Rahlves or JP Auclair for you to respectfully listen. There are plenty of guys way worse than they are and way better than you who deserve respect for their skills. Dialectic might be the real joy for you, but plenty of others get pissed off by it when it's initiated by a relatively uneducated source, and are only willing to put up with it for so long. They don't have the time, interest, or energy to engage in dialectic with every unqualified forum poster on the internet. By continuing to harangue them, you encourage them to stop contributing their time and expertise, and all of us lose. Would you please think it over from their perspective?
Dan,
I don't think I was being disrespectful. And frankly, depending on the technique in question, I'm more than comfortable and qualified to make a suggestion as are the PLURALITY of posters on this site (like I said, we're not discussing studying someones turn mechanics and breaking them down movement by movement). I wouldn't (nor did I) give advice or corrections to Heluva or any one of the Dan Boisvert approved expert commentators. I didn't drive him away, I merely remained convinced there is a place for hop turns in the terrain in questions and I didn't buckle as he threatened to 'expose and humiliate me.'...or something like that. Honestly, reading through the nature of the posts, you'd think it was me who was being driven away (and yet, here I am). I don't think anyone doubts Greg's experthood or skilled skiing analysis abilities because we disagreed (sort of disagreed, I might add) over hop turns.
What is more, looking at the specific advice given and solicited: recommending that an intermediate venturing out onto truly steep and cruddy runs ought to have a familiarity with some form of a useful hop turn is very much in accord with what many EXPERTS advise. I didn't come up with that on my own, It was taught to me by far stronger and more experienced skiers when I had the same questions. It is condoned and taught by expert skiers from Deslaurier to Lito to Josh Foster and Section 8 Tobin, to CSIA, PSIA...in fact, it is only the Dan Boisvert approved experts who got their panties in a bind over it being recommended. (Even Bushwacker, who I'm happy to see got a nod in the Dan Boisvert round-up of those who may speak in this forum wrote to me, he's been reading this thread and says depending on the pitch, width, and surface conditions of the run in question, hop turns are/ and will be used by experts as well...along with active rotary, of course).
So who's arguing with the experts?? Plus, I never said Heluva/ GeoffDa's way was wrong. Never. I merely stated that a grasp on hop turns might be advantageous to an intermediate in steeps. I even conceded that as they gain more true expert skills, the hop turn becomes less and less a necessary or desirable option. Fair Enough?
Dan, for you who just 'likes to learn' from the experts, well what's preventing you? A recommendation from one skier to another to consider hop turns (and a bullet proof side slip...even more important and useful than a hop turn)?? You're a player on the PMTS forum, don't you get your fill of the bonafide experts there??
Also, where was all this impassioned defense of listening to the experts when Bushwacker was the one on the chopping block? Problem was, he ain't really your kind of expert.
Speaking of, Bush asked me to post this video of his crew (he is skiing with the POV camera) skiing a very narrow and steep backside chute in Northern, VT (check out the avalanching snow, gives a good perspective of how steep this pinch zone is:)
It's a good video of one of the known experts on this site (formerly, unfortunately) skiing the terrain we've been discussing in this thread. Josh say he'll have video of him skiing this (not POV) up soon as well.
Now, these guys are better skiers than I, and they ski this way faster than I'd ever be comfortable skiing it. Still, it's a real world video of steep, narrow and cruddy (well, powdery, terrain).