How To Carry Skis
Keeping The Skis Together
Let's begin by looking at how to get them to both stay together. It is far easier to move the skis around if they are joined into one parcel.
Alpine skis have brakes attached to their bindings (the part that the boot steps into to attach you to the ski). These brakes prevent your ski from running away down the hill at high speed - because this could hurt someone further down the hill. When your ski boot is in the binding the brake will swing up out of the way allowing the ski to slide. With no boot in the binding the brake sticks out from the bottom of the ski.
In order to help our skis stay together we want to interlock the brakes on the skis. To do this we start with the bottoms of both skis facing each other. Lift one ski up a little(say 6 inches) and bring the skis together so the bottoms are touching. Then slide the higher ski down. The two skis should end up joined together with one brake over the other one.
Now we need to pay attention to which brake is over the other. This is the ski that has the most chance of moving away and disengaging from the pair. We want to carry the skis so that we do not slide this ski around too much. Conversely when we want to unlock the skis we need to move this ski up and away from the other ski.
Please note that some brands of bindings don't lock together well and others lock together better with one ski on top rather than the other way around. Check them out to see how well they stay together. Also a strap made of velcro will help to stop them sliding apart unexpectedly.
Tactics and methods for carrying skis
Carrying Skis Vertically
At some point you will have to carry the skis straight up and down. Perhaps just to get on the Gondola or walking to the ski rack at your lunch stop.
Guys mostly seem to have large enough and strong enough hands to just grip the skis around the middle and squeeze them tight and go. Women and children often find this more difficult. I usually stand the skis up so that the ski with its brake on top is towards me. Then I wrap my arm around the ski and place my hand underneath the toe end of the binding of the ski away from me. This allows me to just lift the skis by raising my arm a little. No grip strength required and because you have the underneath ski held its brake is pushed up into the top brake keeping the skis together.
Carrying Skis Longer Distances
I find the easiest way for small children to carry skis is for them to hold their arms out at a natural height then lay the skis across their arms. When I do this I try to lay the ski with the brake on top as the bottom ski. This means the weight of the other ski stops it moving so much.
To carry my own skis I like to place them over my shoulder.
Again I like to position the ski with the brake on top as my underneath ski. More important here I think. I place the skis with the toe bindings just behind my shoulder. and then stretch my arm out to place my hand as close to the tip of the skis as possible. I place my hand flat on the skis and that is almost enough to balance the skis. Sometimes I have to push down a little to keep the skis balanced on my shoulder.
You need to do this where you have a bit of room so that you don't wave the skis around into someone's face while you are getting them up there.
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