Descending Narrow Trails--Skeats?

[fgd135]

When I was learning to xc ski, in low cut shoes and wood skis, btw, we learned to stay in control on trails like that by holding both (bamboo) poles together on one side of the trail or the other, and dragging them in the deeper snow with lots of arm pressure. Worked like those altai boy's single poles, and by also floating one ski out of the trench at the same time, gave somewhat reasonable control. Of course, descending using skins or walking down is better than hitting trees...if it's really icy, using skins is safer, even with the herky-jerky stop/start is better by far than walking and possibly slipping down the trail. You'd need microspikes on your boots, or who knows, mebbe those Skeat things.
Coming out of a 10th Mtn Hut during a spring overnight a few years ago, we found the trails completely refrozen and dangerously iced from the previous day's thaw. We descended about 8 miles to the trailhead while using skins on the steeper and narrower sections to stay in control. Weird at first, but we didn't take any tumbles. Slow going, what normally would've been a and hour and a half of gliding, at most, took about 5 hours, iirc.

[YooperXC]

Good timing on this subject. Skied a nice easy groomed trail to my nearby town the other day and took a very nicely groomed snow bike trail on the return route. I did encounter a couple of steep, narrow trails with some downhill with a steep dropoff on a turn. The first was too technical for me on my E99 tours. Side stepped down to the turn and decided to give it shot on the rest of the down. Crashed! Close call on doing some damage. Next downhill on the skinny trail I stopped and scoped it out carefully and decided that focused quick step turns would suffice on the slight turn at the bottom of the run. Made it through unscathed. I think my Ingstads would have been a better ski in this situation.

Overall I am in the same boat. Turnings and stopping on these challenging trails is not easy.