Glossary
Carve Zone
Carve Zone
When a ski is tipped to the highest edge angle possible, it will carve the sharpest turn it's capable of carving. The more sidecut a ski has, the smaller it's sidecut radius will be, and the sharper the turn it can carve. The compromise is, a small radius ski won't be able to carve as large a turn as a larger radius ski will. To execute turns of a radius that are outside of a ski's carve zone, a skier has to steer.
Any ski has a limited range of turn shapes it can carve. We call it the ski's carve zone. The radius of the circle a ski would produce if the curvature of its sidecut were projected into a full circle, represents the radius of the largest turn that ski can carve. To produce that turn, the ski must be kept on an extremely low edge angle.
