Above the Horizon

Give a blind man a camera ...

It’s the little things. Beginning several days ago, those of us that meet at the same spot in town to catch the staff vans to Cardrona for the work day could look each other in the face as we chatted. An odd thing to note, I admit, but it means that it was light outside. The dark days of winter here in Wanaka are very dark, and when the season begins in June our early morning pickup feels more like the dead of night. This week, on the heels of several days of shockingly beautiful weather, all of us marveled at the amount of gorgeous early morning light casting pink and orange hues on the Buchanan Range of mountains visible across Lake Wanaka. This week, the staff vans crested the long, windy road to Cardrona just as the sun popped above the horizon. It literally and figuratively sheds new light on a place that is genuinely extraordinarily beautiful even in the darkest days of winter. The whole staff has been in great spirits as a result, and our guests are more dumbfounded than ever by the views. And the birds are singing …

Like a few other places where I’ve been lucky enough to have spent time with and without my ski boots on, Wanaka makes amateur photographers of many of us and is a magnet for exceptional artists. Much like Santa Fe, New Mexico, the beauty of the Southern Alps and the quality of the light and air here stirs even the most jaded folks into fits of artistic expression. Luckily, while most fail to find the right words or the right technique and skill to capture the essence of the place, there are a few genuinely world class artists who call the place home and who successfully express the essence of this remote little spot on the globe. I’m very fortunate to know or to have worked with a few of them who travel the world pursuing their craft but who call Wanaka home.  In a blessed result of the advent of social media, a few of my favorites are kind enough to share some of their work with the wider world on a regular basis, capturing those images and feelings that I fail to while I’m here in New Zealand, and providing regular reminders of the stunning nature of the place while I’m home in Vermont. I try to stay away from being brazenly commercial here on my blog, but these folks are definitely worth a little time and a lot of oohing and ahhing.

Among the more celebrated of the photographers who call Wanaka area home is Camilla Rutherford. Camilla’s an award-winning and hard working young photographer who has somehow managed to create an immensely successful career that seamlessly blends her commercial work doing photo shoots for catalogs and magazines with her amazing gifts as an artist. Camilla’s regular facebook posts are most impressive given that they’re only a small sampling of her work. She can be found at  https://www.facebook.com/camillarutherfordphotography and http://www.camillarutherford.co.nz/.

Anthony Hansen is a long-time ski industry film camera guy and a true Kiwi local with amazing palmares through his career in film that are too long to describe here. Ant is a fixture on the local scene, including great work with some of Wanaka’s signature events – Warbirds Over Wanaka (http://www.warbirdsoverwanaka.com/), the World Heli Challenge (http://worldhelichallenge.com/) and others. Ant’s work can be found at http://www.facebook.com/wanaka.tv and http://wanaka.tv/.

My good friend John-Jo Ritson is a classic case of someone who arrived here to snowboard and teach snowboarding and discovered that he has a real talent as a video story teller, both commercially and otherwise. Getting to watch John-Jo’s work develop over time has been a real gift, and I’m genuinely excited that he’s finding success in his career behind the camera. His company is called Flashworks Media and his work can be found here: http://flashworksmedia.com/; and https://www.facebook.com/CreateWithFlashworksMedia. For a great little slice of his work, check out the short film of our mutual friend Biff Russell telemark skiing, playing the blues and just being Biff: http://vimeo.com/60938997.

Queenstown Wanaka 360 is in part the brain child of my friend and great snowboard coach Keith Stubbs. Keith’s been working hard on this business and its site for a couple of years now, and it’s become a cool blend of artful commercial photography work and NZ resort updates and information, and the photo pano’s are awesome: http://www.360queenstown-wanaka.com/.

Last on this list but not least and definitely not the end of what could be a long list of talented people is The Picture Lounge. The Picture Lounge is a gallery space and business opened a few years ago by photographer and graphic artist Christopher Thompson specializing in local NZ work. My disclaimer here  is that I don’t know Christopher and I’ve never met him, but his shop would be the first place I’d send someone looking to purchase local photos to help fuel their daydreaming problem. Don’t go there unless you want to insure you have trouble focusing on your work in your office. http://www.thepicturelounge.co.nz/; and https://www.facebook.com/ThePictureLounge.

And now, I’m going to head back out in the sunshine of a spring day in Wanaka and marvel at all of the natural beauty that I fail to capture, daily.

My work day on August 24th began like this at Cardrona Alpine Resort ...

 

... and ended like this along the lake in Wanaka.

I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Ski Lessons

Red sky in morning ... at Cardrona Alpine Resort

Pardon my grammar but it’s a sentiment I hear frequently, if not exactly in those words. Each time I hear someone explain away why they don't take lessons, it shines the bright light of day on a perplexing issue for those of us dedicated to teaching skiing and riding to the public. There are many sides to the story, many different perspectives from which instructors discuss this issue over quiet beers, in far flung pubs, in small mountain towns all over the world. In the end, it all comes down to the problem of people who think that they’re so good at skiing that they don’t need lessons, along with its invisible but necessary corollary, that they’re so good that a mere instructor couldn’t possibly teach them anything. As you can probably tell, it rubs me the wrong way.

Usually, the folks who express the sentiment that they don’t need lessons are the same people who explain to their children’s instructors that they ski double diamond terrain all the time with their kids and that they’d like their kids to not ski in a wedge any more. Notably, the kids being described are usually five or six, and they usually ski in a wedge because they’re five or six and their parents drag them down terrain that requires a wedge for a five or six year old to survive. What we need to impart here, what we need to provide these guests, is a bit of perspective. On their kids and on themselves.

Let’s play a little game here: let’s list the reasons people give us to explain why it is they don’t need a lesson. So, here it is, in no particular order, Russ’s Top 10 Reasons People Give for Not Needing No Stinkin’ Ski Lessons:

1.       I ski double diamonds all the time with my buddies and I’m really very good.

2.       I skied [famous chute] at [famously difficult Western destination resort] last year and survived.

3.       I skied with [mildly famous skier] last year when I was in [famous far-away ski area] and [he/she] gave me the best tips.

4.       I read [name of ski magazine] all the time.

5.       My buddy was an instructor when he lived in [big Western resort] after college in the ‘90s and gives me great tips.

6.       I ski raced as a kid and I hate skiing moguls anyway.

7.       My kids are ski racers (as though you couldn’t tell by looking at my ski gear).

8.       I had an awesome private lesson when I was in [big Western resort] [decades ago].

9.       I don’t like standing around and talking, I think exercises are stupid, and that’s clearly what instructors spend their time doing.

10.   I’m too arrogant and closed minded to find any value in learning, I lack enough deep-seeded self-confidence to be open to coaching without feeling inadequate, my ego is too delicate to survive finding out that I’m not a total rock star, or I know I’m not as good as I say I am and don’t want to be called out on it.

Ok, that last one was actually four, but they’re all basically rooted in the same psychological stuff. And, yes, it’s a bit snide. Sorry about that.

One of the great joys of teaching kids to ski and ride, really working with kids at all, is that their principal vocation in life, what they spend 100% of their time doing, is learning. How awesome is that! Whether they’re taking ski lessons, going to school, playing foosball in the Cardrona Kids Club, running around in the woods, or simply reading a book, kids are in the business of learning for a living. The bad news is that at some point in some people’s lives, somewhere in their ongoing evolution, they develop the mindset that learning is no longer fun, productive, or valuable. This is crazy, plain and simple. Adding learning to any experience – eating, cooking, vacationing, walking down the street, reading the newspaper, chatting over a cup of coffee, or simply vegging out on the couch in front of the television – elevates that experience and makes it all the more rewarding. It’s not an accident that describing an adult as having a child-like sense of wonder and curiosity is a great complement. It’s also a description that often applies to smart, successful people. Go figure.

All kidding aside, when discussing with other ski industry folks about how to get the skiing and riding public to understand and appreciate the tremendous value of embracing that child-like learning mindset, I divide this issue into two related questions. The first question is more interesting than important: what happened to make experienced skiers stop taking lessons the way they used to? The second question is not merely interesting, it’s vital to growing our sports and the importance of our profession in them: what can we do about it?

My usual glib response to self-professed expert skiers when they pooh-pooh lessons is “You don’t look like a complacent person,” but that’s not exactly the friendly, guest service minded approach we need. We do spend a lot of time as an industry and within the teaching profession discussing how to make this change happen, and it’s definitely something I focus on a great deal as the Director at Sugarbush. At the end of the day, as individual instructors the best thing we can do is work hard every day to embody in our professional approach the same sense of wonder and curiosity, the same dedication to constant learning that we admire in kids. How can we promote expert lessons for adults if we ourselves are not open to constant learning, continuous evolution?

When we do this, when we enjoy and share the learning process with our guests, when we seek to understand our guests and their skiing and riding better all the time, we can’t lose. And we might even love it more all the time. Even if it means playing foosball left handed in the Cardrona Kids Club so we make it fairer for the 6-year-olds. Hey, at least I'm learning to play foosball left handed.