43SLEDHEADSTHROTTLE APPLICATION
There are many ways to use the throttle that
are appropriate for different situations. The key
is knowing how much throttle you actually need.
As odd as it sounds, most of the time too
much throttle gets people in trouble. If you’re
climbing a hill, racing across a meadow or cut-
ting a long open sidehill, you can hold the throt-
tle wide open or steady in one position and be
just fine. However, when you mix in varying ter-
rain and trees, too much throttle will lead to too
much speed and getting out of control. Contin-
uous partial throttle leads to many mistakes on
the mountain also. Constant throttle means con-
stant direction. When riding tight trees, you are
always making directional changes. We typically
ting the obstacle.
When a rider focuses on an object, chanc-
es are they are going to head toward that ob-
ject. The solution is to always keep your head
up, looking for possibilities and staying aware
of your surroundings. If you know what gaps
in the trees you can get through and focus on
that, you are much more likely to successfully
navigate between and around the trees.
I often tell my clients that they give the trees
way too much respect. It’s important to recog-
nize that they are there, but our focus needs to
be on where we can and want to go. The farther
ahead you can see, the farther ahead you can
plan and execute smoothly. Good awareness at
all times will help keep us safe. This means look-
ing around in all directions so that we can recog-
nize changes in the terrain as well as in the snow.
(top) Focus on the tree ... end up in the tree.
(lower) Good body position, vision and throttle
control are essential for technical exploring.