One of the more curious aspects of my experience last summer in New Zealand was the incredible lack of old people in Wanaka. There simply weren’t any. On the snow school staff at Treble Cone, there were precisely two people older than me, and they included my friend Dave who is a whopping eighteen months older than me. Many of the young staff there took an approach to skiing (and to me, at first) that seemed based on the presumption that they had invented skiing the week before and knew it all. After a few runs with me, the lay of the land became clearer to my young colleagues and all was well, but I couldn’t help but think back to all the older people with whom I have the privilege of working at Okemo. Having them around is a real blessing and, from a technical ski teaching point of view, really helps me maintain a healthy perspective on my own goals and on the goals of our guests.
At Okemo, we have many instructors who are well into their ‘70’s, who are terrific instructors, a lot of fun to work with, and who continue to ski and ride at a very high level. Most of them are retirees or second career ski pros, but a few of them have been dedicated to the craft of ski teaching for a very long time. Some can legitimately be considered as major contributors to the development of the sports of skiing and snowboarding in America and the world. As a group they’re very unassuming, and more often than not, the guests have no idea of the vast amount of ski teaching experience staring out at them from under graying eyebrows. It seems to me that my friends prefer to keep it that way, though I often tell the guests the full story when this particular group of instructors is out of ear shot. Learning that their instructor is 77 years-old, has been a full-cert for more than fifty years and was on the training staff at Stowe in the 1950’s has quite an impact on someone skiing for the first time.
The stories our older instructors share about skiing and ski teaching really are amazing, and frequently their skiing will stop our younger staff in their tracks. Imagine a 70-plus year old instructor, with one eye and an artificial hip, having survived a quadruple bypass and demonstrating to the young park and pipe rippers the ballet moves he used to teach in the 1960’s. You try doing a worm turn or a tip roll with a glass eye, a titanium hip and a grin as wide as your goggles!
There are many little funny and heart-warming anecdotes I could relay here, but I’ll resist the urge to do so. Suffice it to say that I hope anyone who considers themselves devoted to skiing has the opportunity to ski with someone like these friends of mine. They have so much to offer, so little concern for the latest and greatest (they’ve seen it all before), and yet, as teachers, continue to learn, evolve and guide their own experiences on skis so as to create a better experience for all of those with whom they share their sport. The ripples emanating from the work of my more senior colleagues at Okemo touch the lives of many, and have a long lasting, happy and healthy impact on the lives of a lot of people, guests and staff alike. Thank God for the geezers.
