Stem Christie

Stemming is a technique used in skiing for turning. The modern version is usually credited to the Austrian Mathias Zdarsky who developed it in the 1890s by combining stemming with a variation of the Christiania technique, producing the stem Christiania, or stem Christie for short. Its variations gradually replaced the telemark technique in alpine skiing.

Basic stemming consists of rotating the back of one ski, the tail, so it is at an angle to the direction of movement. This causes sideways forces that push the skier in the direction opposite of the motion of the ski. For instance, if the skier pushes the tail of the left ski outward, they will turn to the right. The Christie variation has the skier wait for the turn to commence and then lift the non-turning ski off the snow, or simply lift their body weight off of it by stepping harder on the turning ski, and rotating it to match the original turn, resulting in the two skis once again being parallel.

The stem Christie was the primary skiing technique into the 1960s, when greatly improved skiing equipment led to the widespread adoption of the parallel turn for intermediate and expert skiers. Since then the Christie has been used primarily as an beginner and intermediate technique, and was an important step in the progressive Arlberg technique that dominated ski schools until the 2000s. The introduction of parabolic skiis and new carve turn teaching methods have greatly reduced the importance of the stem Christie, but it remains common on the ski hill and is still taught at many ski schools.