bawfuls posted:

Every "gate" is really a set of two gates, one the inside gate and the other the outside gate. There is a pair of blue sticks several meters apart and you have to ski between the two of them, then a pair of red sticks and you ski between those two, etc.

The combinations have these pairs set vertically with the fall line instead of horizontally, so instead of inside-outside the gates are more uphill-downhill. How close you want to get to any given gate depends on the relative position of other gates before and after it. So in some cases you want to be right on top of the gate and knock it down with your shins, but in other cases you're aiming no where near it because you're setting up for the next one.
This link is busted.

Here is a very poorly drawn picture. This is a birds-eye view, and the black line illustrates the direction you must go between each pair of gates. You can see why the fastest line often doesn't go close to one half of each pair.