I suspect that this is primarily a feel thing, and something that you just get better at with experience. I know how to not make it worse (no hard braking, try to maintain front wheel trajectory, etc.), but other than dropping a foot and praying, is there anything I should be focusing on? I find myself scrubbing off more speed than I'd like going into medium turns on dry/loose surface, only because I fear the all-too-familiar sudden and intimate contact with a tree.

I should mention that I'm riding familiar trails mostly and I already know where the bleeding edge of traction is going into those turns. It just feels like (currently) this is the most limiting factor in my riding ability.

Not really interested in a tire discussion per se, plenty of threads already on width, pressure, rubber compound, tubeless, etc.- at some point any tire setup will break traction under the right (wrong?) conditions. Just wondering what your thoughts are on the skills/technique aspect.

Outside pedal down and your weight on it; other foot down as your 'tripod;' steer into your slide weighting your shoulders to the inside over your 'hotshoe' foot. Play around with it on a flat, smooth, packed dirt road and you'll find you can pitch it sideways and control a slide without ever touching your brakes.

Watch flat track racers or Class A speedway guys - - they're wizards at slides.

Thanks for the pointers. Seems like I'm already doing a couple of things right, as I routinely enter a turn w/ outside pedal down (unless there's a reason not to), and I generally lean into turns. Not sure if I have room to steer into the slide - the kind of turns I'm trying to negotiate is on very narrow singletrack with LOTS of trees. Guess I'll just develop the finesse over time.

Shortly after turn in, but before apexing, rotate your hips toward the exit of the corner.

Thanks for the response, but can you elaborate a bit on this? I did some experimenting today and found that rotating to the inside of the turn didn't help, but rotating toward the outside of the turn seemed to make the bike dig in to the turn and actually tightened up the whole thing. So maybe I'm not clear on what "toward the exit of the corner" means, or possibly I'm doing something else in terms of balance and/or weight distribution that is making it work.

I doubt this needs saying, but this advice is predicated on the fact that you should be off the saddle when cornering hard.

I am a proponent of maintaining equal pedal pressure (and therefore level pedals) as much as possible unless it's absolutely necessary, e.g. super slick/muddy and/or hard off camber. If it's a left hand turn, rotate the hips counterclockwise, or in other words, the left hip drops toward the rear of the bike, and the right knee comes close to or even touches the top tube. The bike will always go where your hips are pointing, and rotating them helps square off the corner so the front end doesn't get out in the loose stuff and send you blasting off into the prickers. Also, if your hips are rotated, even if the rear does get loose and kick out on you, you'll still end up centered over the bike and in control.

Hope this helps somewhat and is relevant to the type of situation you describe.

Ok, got it now. After trying that today it was clear that this was the missing piece for me - I was amazed at how much better the tires hook up in the turn. I can feel how getting your center of gravity back over the bike while still leaning into the turn makes all the difference. BTW, it probably does go without saying that equal weight on both pedals, IOW level, is the default position for maximum stability and control, but where I'm currently riding there's almost always some obstacle on the inside of the fast, hard turns that that pedal is going to slam into unless it's up.

Anyway, thanks for the tip, it's helped me immensely.