Had my first few days of instructing this past week. While the weekdays matter little, it's the weekend where the majority of our clients arrive. This past weekend gave a clue as to how the rest of the season will go.
Clients wise, we still seem to have no end to younger 4 and 5 year old children. Every season I'm more convinced that some how they magically end up here. The return of the 1970s and 1980s gear also took root. I watched one woman who proudly displayed her recently purchased used equipment (recently was 2 days ago) for $100 (boots, poles, skis) that was last used in 1982. First run, said skis disintegrated on the slide down.
Snow conditions, if they continue like this will be pretty epic. Not all the lifts and trails are open yet. Nor is the coverage all complete. But that's not important. The snow itself feels different this year. It's feeling a little lighter than usual, which makes for some excellent gliding.
My skiing skills have slacked off in the off season. The entire first day on the snow I spent trying to recover from lost edges, a crossed tip, or sitting back and using too much body to turn. I spent most of the summer cycling around the states and have built up some great leg conditioning for skiing. What I didn't expect with this was a change in calf muscle shape, which has resulted in some seriously painful boot pinch going on. Right now I'm debating if it's worth trying to reshape the boot or wait until the calf muscle atrophies a bit.
Skis are now showing the signs of needing to be replaced. This is my 6th season on them and it's clear their rebound is disappearing. Looks like I'll be investigating some new gear and hope that the end of season deals will be kind.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Kids and Snowsports
Over the Thanksgiving holiday I attended several dinners at different homes. Each time, there were several people at each table surprised to hear that I am a ski instructor, and had plenty of questions on the profession. After the initial "oh how interesting" comments and questions, I typically received the "can you make a living at that?". (The short answer, only a handful of instructors seem to make a solid living doing so without a secondary job.) Regardless people begin to ask for your expertise as a professional. Much the same way a doctor tends to be cornered at parties and asked about PainA or Obscure-Body-IssueB. In my case the common question was kids.
Let me start this off by saying at the resort we teach skiing to children ages 4+, and snowboarding to children ages 8+. Why the difference? I used to joke that it took an extra 4 years for a child to build up the proper angst and disrespect for their elders to properly snowboard. Then a new instructor took that seriously one day and passed along the information to a customer. The real reason has to do with physics; specifically the distance needed between the feet and the strength in the legs to bend the board. Does this blanket statement mean it's correct for everyone? Nope.
The PSIA and AASI both have what they call the Advanced Childrens Educators (ACE) certification available in two levels (the link is the best found via Google). The PSIA has the basic guidelines up for review here (as a PDF). Before you scoff at some of the requirements, realize that a 4 year old has difficulty in explaining when something is wrong. It's at this time checklists such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs come in handy. I have attended the ACE 1 training and never finished the certification point. Does this make me an expert at teaching children? Not at all. It's taken several years to feel confident in teaching young children and I still learn more each season.
Back to the basics of the questions received now. Most of these parents tell you their child is 4 or 5 at this point, which serves as a great indicator for how the conversation will continue. Attention spans are still short at this age. Depending upon the child basic needs can be an issue yet to be clearly spoken. While the child can walk, their physical strength may not yet be up to the point of competency when skiing. (If you don't believe me, try laying on flat ground, rolling to your feet, and standing up. Even adults have issue with this one.) Even with these limitations there is still one overall challenge that tops them all; parents.
The real challenge of teaching skiing isn't the kids, it's the parents. Overall kids this age are just excited to be playing in the snow, making snowballs, sledding, falling in, eating, or building snowmen. The introduction of a snow sport just provides yet another avenue of excitement for the children. Which is the key take away from snow sports; to have fun outdoors. For younger children, associating the concept of skiing with a fun time out in the snow is the most important step to creating your future Olympian. Many parents have difficulty understanding that a great ski day may include putting on the ski boots and building snow forts. Yet their kids have already started to bridge the concept of skiing with a fun time outside.
The goal is to build up great memories for your child of having fun outside. This isn't going to happen on the first, second, or (depending upon the age) maybe not even the third visit.
Let me start this off by saying at the resort we teach skiing to children ages 4+, and snowboarding to children ages 8+. Why the difference? I used to joke that it took an extra 4 years for a child to build up the proper angst and disrespect for their elders to properly snowboard. Then a new instructor took that seriously one day and passed along the information to a customer. The real reason has to do with physics; specifically the distance needed between the feet and the strength in the legs to bend the board. Does this blanket statement mean it's correct for everyone? Nope.
The PSIA and AASI both have what they call the Advanced Childrens Educators (ACE) certification available in two levels (the link is the best found via Google). The PSIA has the basic guidelines up for review here (as a PDF). Before you scoff at some of the requirements, realize that a 4 year old has difficulty in explaining when something is wrong. It's at this time checklists such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs come in handy. I have attended the ACE 1 training and never finished the certification point. Does this make me an expert at teaching children? Not at all. It's taken several years to feel confident in teaching young children and I still learn more each season.
Back to the basics of the questions received now. Most of these parents tell you their child is 4 or 5 at this point, which serves as a great indicator for how the conversation will continue. Attention spans are still short at this age. Depending upon the child basic needs can be an issue yet to be clearly spoken. While the child can walk, their physical strength may not yet be up to the point of competency when skiing. (If you don't believe me, try laying on flat ground, rolling to your feet, and standing up. Even adults have issue with this one.) Even with these limitations there is still one overall challenge that tops them all; parents.
The real challenge of teaching skiing isn't the kids, it's the parents. Overall kids this age are just excited to be playing in the snow, making snowballs, sledding, falling in, eating, or building snowmen. The introduction of a snow sport just provides yet another avenue of excitement for the children. Which is the key take away from snow sports; to have fun outdoors. For younger children, associating the concept of skiing with a fun time out in the snow is the most important step to creating your future Olympian. Many parents have difficulty understanding that a great ski day may include putting on the ski boots and building snow forts. Yet their kids have already started to bridge the concept of skiing with a fun time outside.
The goal is to build up great memories for your child of having fun outside. This isn't going to happen on the first, second, or (depending upon the age) maybe not even the third visit.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Ski Pass Defender
Former ski instructor faces off against Vail Resorts over invention. Read the full article here. Short version, Breckenridge ski instructor Jon Lawson created a device to block the RFID of the new Vail Resorts ski pass. From the article, it sounds as if Vail management tried a little strong arm tactic which sent Jon on his way out of the resort. Good luck Jon at Loveland, maybe I'll see you on the slopes there sometime this season.
Thanks to Justin over at ski-blog.com for bringing this to my attention. Yep it's old, but it's a rather important piece. Justin also brings about some valid concerns about this RFID usage with this post
Thanks to Justin over at ski-blog.com for bringing this to my attention. Yep it's old, but it's a rather important piece. Justin also brings about some valid concerns about this RFID usage with this post
Breaking silence
I've been silent on the posting for a long period here. Several events transpired over the course of the summer that had me re-evaluating my time instructing. Not to be vague or confusing, they'll be posted here in due time, as soon as I can work out the words to describe them.
I've also found myself to be not nearly as excited about this season as I have in the past. It's not clear why, but overall the excitement is lacking. I've only seen one of the recent snow pr0n films going through town (TGRs). The recent PSIA off-snow re-certification classes I took part in just seemed to be a continuing rehash of things said before. Uninspired.
I've also found myself to be not nearly as excited about this season as I have in the past. It's not clear why, but overall the excitement is lacking. I've only seen one of the recent snow pr0n films going through town (TGRs). The recent PSIA off-snow re-certification classes I took part in just seemed to be a continuing rehash of things said before. Uninspired.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Mogul Physics
Moguls are pretty much the bane of existence for most skiers. On the east coast, there tend to be more runs that are open and accepting of such runs. Although over the past few years I've found less and less resorts with dedicated mogul runs. On the west coast, there seems to be a very strong attitude that moguls are not any fun (minus the folks at MJ). I've been told that the public just doesn't care for them.
For our tiny resort, the problem has been that customers do not want mogul runs on the mountain, as such they get milled away each night. Our customers would prefer to have steep, deep, and when thats not possible tree runs. The same can be said for the neighboring two resorts as well. Corpy will occasionally create a tight zipper line run down some of their black runs though, which is usually self contained off to the side.
I've never been a good zipper line rider. Maybe it's that my skis are too long, too heavy, or not able to execute a tight enough turning radius. Maybe it's that I'm overly knock-kneed in one leg, weak on my inside half, too stiff on moguls, scared, or trying to rush through the run. Or maybe I just ski poorly and that's pretty much the end of it (I'm told I lead with my head too much). All of this doesn't matter as the PSIA Level 2 and Level 3 exams require passing a mogul proficiency test. For Level 2 it's moguls on a blue run, and Level 3 is on a black run (or greater).
Due to some interesting weather patterns recently, one of our double black runs has been able to actually build up a collection of large bumps (they purposely stopped grooming the side of the mountain). I'm not talking about mere animal sized bumps you regularly see, but VW bug sized bumps that go on for the entire hill. These dumps had deep enough troughs on them that the skier would literally disappear for a second or two. Things I've learned from 3 days of playing on the moguls with other Level 2 and Level 3 cert wannabes:
I'll never be an Olympic quality bumps skier.
Speed hurts on smaller bumps.
Speed hurts even more on bigger bumps.
Air carving (the act of launching off of one mogul top and landing on another's downside) isn't all it's cracked up to be if you mis-judge the distance.
Repeat last learning except on larger bumps it can result in double ejections.
Moguls tend to move up the hill as time goes on
It was this last one that got me confused. I repeated crashed near the top of one mogul and noticed only after a few days that I was no longer on the same treeline I had been originally. This had me go searching online to find an Physics Today Journal on moguls with a really interesting read. Well worth it!
For our tiny resort, the problem has been that customers do not want mogul runs on the mountain, as such they get milled away each night. Our customers would prefer to have steep, deep, and when thats not possible tree runs. The same can be said for the neighboring two resorts as well. Corpy will occasionally create a tight zipper line run down some of their black runs though, which is usually self contained off to the side.
I've never been a good zipper line rider. Maybe it's that my skis are too long, too heavy, or not able to execute a tight enough turning radius. Maybe it's that I'm overly knock-kneed in one leg, weak on my inside half, too stiff on moguls, scared, or trying to rush through the run. Or maybe I just ski poorly and that's pretty much the end of it (I'm told I lead with my head too much). All of this doesn't matter as the PSIA Level 2 and Level 3 exams require passing a mogul proficiency test. For Level 2 it's moguls on a blue run, and Level 3 is on a black run (or greater).
Due to some interesting weather patterns recently, one of our double black runs has been able to actually build up a collection of large bumps (they purposely stopped grooming the side of the mountain). I'm not talking about mere animal sized bumps you regularly see, but VW bug sized bumps that go on for the entire hill. These dumps had deep enough troughs on them that the skier would literally disappear for a second or two. Things I've learned from 3 days of playing on the moguls with other Level 2 and Level 3 cert wannabes:
It was this last one that got me confused. I repeated crashed near the top of one mogul and noticed only after a few days that I was no longer on the same treeline I had been originally. This had me go searching online to find an Physics Today Journal on moguls with a really interesting read. Well worth it!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Spring Break
It's spring break time, and as per usual a few trees end up with a collection of ladies underwear, typically bras, covering it. I've always been curious who/how they get the bras out as I've never seen or heard of anyone doing so. Anyways riding up the quad-chair with another instructor (me in uniform him not) and two women in their 30s. As we passed the tree in question the two women started to giggle and turned to me and asked:
Without missing a beat my coworker responds with
The next 40 seconds of the lift ride left some rather interesting banter between the four of us and drinks at the end of the day.
How do they get the bras in the tree?
Without missing a beat my coworker responds with
Hand me your bra and I'll show you.
The next 40 seconds of the lift ride left some rather interesting banter between the four of us and drinks at the end of the day.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Making the Rounds
I haven't been able to play online much in the past few weeks, and suddenly find my email has been subjected to a few people sending me this link:
#1 Skier Dad
It's an interesting video (safe for work although language gets a bit foul), and I'm sure one that will be around for a long long time. Anyways, watching the video I've got a couple comments upon seeing this.
Watching the snowboarders trying to turn a relatively flat cat track into something more enjoyable is actually inspiring. They seem like they're pretty stable on their boards as well until one of them has to do some massive recovery moves. At this point the camera swings back enough to see that this is a really busy section of the trail and probably not the best place to be pulling tricks. I'm not sure what type of terrain this run feeds into or out of, but regardless of that no one wants to come to a stop on a cat track. It sucks to get moving again (especially for a snowboarder) and there typically isn't very much area to avoid people with.
The Dad's request wasn't unreasonable, but the quick remark back (while not incorrect) most likely wasn't helping the situation any. Then it went downhill from here. The boarders were doing alright, staying calm, and keeping their language pretty clear. If I were to have arrived on the hill at this scene until this point I would side with the snowboarders. It's once the guy starts taking off his shirt while people are moving to break things up that the snowboarders enter the douchebag level they were so nicely skipping.
In the end, I'd have pulled all passes for the day. What's your take?
#1 Skier Dad
It's an interesting video (safe for work although language gets a bit foul), and I'm sure one that will be around for a long long time. Anyways, watching the video I've got a couple comments upon seeing this.
Watching the snowboarders trying to turn a relatively flat cat track into something more enjoyable is actually inspiring. They seem like they're pretty stable on their boards as well until one of them has to do some massive recovery moves. At this point the camera swings back enough to see that this is a really busy section of the trail and probably not the best place to be pulling tricks. I'm not sure what type of terrain this run feeds into or out of, but regardless of that no one wants to come to a stop on a cat track. It sucks to get moving again (especially for a snowboarder) and there typically isn't very much area to avoid people with.
The Dad's request wasn't unreasonable, but the quick remark back (while not incorrect) most likely wasn't helping the situation any. Then it went downhill from here. The boarders were doing alright, staying calm, and keeping their language pretty clear. If I were to have arrived on the hill at this scene until this point I would side with the snowboarders. It's once the guy starts taking off his shirt while people are moving to break things up that the snowboarders enter the douchebag level they were so nicely skipping.
In the end, I'd have pulled all passes for the day. What's your take?
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