A Rolling Stone Gathers No … Stitches?

The view from along the Cardrona Road today, September 14.

One of my graduate school professors had a game he liked to play, just for fun. If you presented him with a pithy aphorism, he’d respond with another one that had precisely the opposite meaning as the first. Try it: good fences make good neighbors; a rolling stone gathers no moss; a stitch in time saves nine; and, my current favorite, for every complex question there’s a simple answer that’s wrong. While I’m in New Zealand, I become acutely aware of the volume of folksy American expressions in my everyday speech, and I’ve been thinking about Professor Paul’s game a bit to entertain myself.

Today, as I enjoy a rare second consecutive day out of ski boots, enjoying the sunshine in town, the two somewhat competing maxims that come to mind are “the devil is in the details” and “Heaven shows itself one detail at a time”. In the dark days of the early part of the New Zealand winter, each detail seems to confirm winter’s wintery-ness. Wake up in a cold house, eat breakfast in a down coat, leave the house in the dark of night and return long after sunset, always clothed in layers like an onion. “Turn on the bed”, for crying out loud, meaning give the electric blanket a bit of time to warm the sheets before getting in and hunkering down for the night. In spring, it’s quite the opposite, and with each passing day more details emerge to help us appreciate having moved on from the depth of winter. First, we can actually see our colleagues as we wait for the early morning staff transport. Then, we observe the street lights turn off as we stand waiting. Then, the sun is above the horizon when we arrive at work. We don sunglasses when we arrive at the resort, and then need them first at the bottom of the access road and eventually in town on the way there. Now, after returning to town at the end of the day, it’s actually not the end of the day – the sun remains up for a while, warming us as we enjoy the stunning spring views across Lake Wanaka from town. In September, the great statistic is that we add something in the neighborhood of six additional minutes of sunlight every day here in Wanaka, and we certainly can tell. As they say here in New Zealand, that’s awesome with an “o”.

All of this is particularly meaningful for me this year. Over the past several Southern Winters seasons, I’ve had to leave Wanaka in early September to head home and begin working in Vermont. Not this year. This year, I get to experience the slow wind-down from a very busy ski season and make the most of a proper Kiwi spring. I’ve moved on from my Director position at Sugarbush and aim to make the most of the decision, beginning with getting my flip-flops some badly needed outside time. Notably, the best thing about walking around in flip-flops is that to do so safely requires moving slowly, which is part of the point.

It’s been a banner season for me teaching skiing at Cardrona Alpine Resort, and I’ll continue working through early October and then remain here in Wanaka for a couple of weeks. Some travel, some hiking, and lots of time contemplating my next move (a/k/a my continuing tour of the cafes of Wanaka) is all in the cards. After all, how can I adequately pay attention to the many glimpses of Heaven that show themselves every day here, one at a time, if I’m in a rush to leave. You’ll just have to speak a bit louder because the birds in my neighborhood are creating quite a racket this morning. They must be the early birds ...

Ode on a Beach Chair

This year, for the first time since becoming Director of the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School, I had some real time off between the end of my season in Vermont and my departure for my “summer” in New Zealand. My time involved a range of things in a number of places, but it was principally dedicated to two inanimate objects that have important roles in my life. Both embody a certain philosophy and an approach to my personal time; both harbor lots of memories going back a long time; and both comfort my mind, body and spirit. One, my bicycle, involves exertion, suffering and euphoria, constant movement, and speed. The other is the opposite, by design. It’s my beloved old beach chair.

My beach chair is nothing special at first glance. It’s a clunky old-style chair that sits close to the ground with an aluminum tube frame, wood arm rests, an adjustable back, and an odd and really pretty ugly sliced fruit design on the fabric seat and back. It doesn’t have a handle or a shoulder strap, it has no snazzy bag it slips into, it has no brand, and it doesn’t advertise anything. My chair doesn’t have a name (I’m not prone to anthropomorphist tendencies). It is simply “my beach chair”. And it is mine. All mine.

The story of the acquisition of my beach chair is a part of its allure for me, but just a part. I bought it while strolling to take a ferry to an island in the middle of Long Island Sound to spend a very hot 4^th of July. It was in the middle of a very busy and incredibly stressful period in my former working life (that is, my life prior to seeing the light and becoming a ski professional). That day and my chair were part of a bigger point to make about where my priorities were (and weren’t) at the time. I headed out in morning with notes for the work project that was still in process, a fully charged cell phone, the New York Times, a good sandwich from the local deli, flip flops, hat, sunblock and the like. I walked directly to the neighborhood hardware store, bought the chair and sat in it for the entire day. That was almost twenty years ago and the chair has been a part of my life ever since.

The thing that makes a great beach chair so wonderful is what it’s not. It is a beach chair, not a lawn chair, a deck chair or a piece of outdoor furniture. It’s not particularly mobile, so it’s not the sort of thing one can bring anywhere requiring a lot of walking. It’s low-slung style and casual posture makes it unworthy as a dining chair for meals with friends on the patio in summer. It’s a bit tough to get in and out of so it’s not ideal for watching sporting events. It is however, perfect for short strolls to village greens to watch 4^th of July fireworks, listening to outdoor concerts, outings to not-very-distant beaches, reading the entire newspaper in the local park, and generally listening to the wind in the trees and watching the world go by. It’s also exceptional for that particularly indispensable warm-weather activity: the impromptu nap while “reading”.

After a long season of constantly running around, looking after the best interests of our guests, my staff, and lots of other folks in weather and under circumstances that can be challenging in a good winter, my chair looms in my imagination. Don’t make too many plans and make them all stress free; commit to doing things that are open-ended by design; eat when hungry, sleep when tired; spend time with people of your own choosing; rotate every so often to face the sun; spend hours contemplating your next move – not your next professional move, social move, or intellectual one. Water or ice tea, or maybe that ice cold Miller High Life hiding in the back of the fridge. It’s a big decision, so don’t rush it. Above all, be present, be aware of your surroundings but at one with them, and be yourself. My beach chair promotes all of this and, in particular, this mode of thinking.

We've had a good few weeks, my beach chair and I, and I’m grateful for it. Unfortunately, my beach chair cannot come where I am going and it wouldn’t be very useful there anyway. I’m on my way to New Zealand for my next winter, but I’ll look forward to reconnecting with my beach chair when I come home and to finding the peace of mind it promotes. In the interim, my tenth Kiwi winter starts next week and it won’t exactly be a hardship!

Some Time in the ICU

Breckenridge, Colroado last week

I love being a ski instructor. As a Director, it's an essential component of my work to create for my staff an environment that facilitates their own love of being instructors. Often, that means being the cheerleader-in-chief and this was never more true than during the 2015-16 season, now in its waning days. This season was a serious test of the depths of my enthusiasm reservoir. It’s hard to explain in succinct fashion just how tough it was – little natural snow and any snowfall followed immediately by buckets of rain; digit-numbing cold followed immediately by unseasonably warm weather; beige granular passing for beginner teaching surfaces; mud-crusted rental boots; frozen pond ice that only was skiable by means of divine intervention; and a notable drop in business levels making it tough for our staff to get enough work. And that was just in December and January! My running joke during the December to January holidays was that it was like the plagues upon Egypt and that I was just waiting for the locusts to show up. My job, first and foremost, was to keep the instructors of the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School engaged, focused, enthusiastic, happy and busy. I’m confident that it worked, I’m incredibly proud of our entire staff from top to bottom, but it took an awful lot of effort and it really did wear me out. How on earth does a ski school director recover from all of that? It’s simple: I've just returned from the S.P.I.C.U – the Ski Professional Intensive Care Unit, also known as the PSIA National Academy at Breckenridge!

In the little corner of the universe inhabited by ski and snowboard instructors, PSIA National Academy is a very big deal. It’s basically an intensive training week involving on-hill clinics all day every day, indoor presentations, and plenty of fun, all conducted by a collection of coaches that is simply the best in the business. The coaches come from around the country and the world and include current and former members of the National Teams of the Professional Ski Instructors of America and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors, some international coaches who share our American guest-centered view of teaching, some members of the coaching staff of the U.S. Ski Team, some close friends I hadn’t seen in a long while, and some genuine living legends who’ve had a major impact on the sport (for pros and recreational skiers alike). The participants and the coaches also included some of my favorite people on the planet and several who have had a direct impact on my own career and on my deep-seeded passion for what I do. It helped that Breckenridge really put its best foot forward, that the conditions were terrific and then it snowed two feet. We had plenty of sunshine as only Colorado can deliver it, they served beer, and we were based in a hotel famous for its free chocolate chip cookies. Any questions?

In a season that was a true test of my ability to inspire instructors, being in Breckenridge was a vital reverse of course where I was on the receiving end. Yes, it was professional development. Yes, I trained hard and skied hard, focusing on learning and improving in a way that will allow me to continue my growth as an instructor and as a Director. Yes, it’ll provide ample fodder for me to work with our trainers at Sugarbush to bring our staff of pros to the next level of teaching and skiing. And yes, it saved me. The Academy was like a transfusion that cleared my system and nourished my mind, body and spirit. Can you tell how much I loved it?!

Sugarbush is holding on here. We’ll remain open through this weekend and reopen for the first weekend in May – our normal operating schedule, remarkable in a season that definitely has not been normal. In a season that has been among the worst in the long history of skiing in Vermont, there have been some definitely highlights and there is ample cause for optimism – for our sports, for our profession, and certainly for the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School. Having returned from the S.P.I.C.U., I am in a position to see those highlights with clarity and to look forward to next winter. I’m also reinvigorated enough to be very excited for my next season in this endless winter, and t's coming right up in a little over a month on the other side of the globe. in Wanaka, New Zealand. I can’t wait!

Out of Our Depth, And Into It

This afternoon was a pretty typical one for me on a weekend in between my New Zealand season at Cardrona and my New England season once we’re skiing at Sugarbush. We call it stick season here for a reason - all of the foliage for which Vermont is justly famous sits on the forest floor and the hillsides are barren until the arrival of winter’s snow, hopefully just a short time away. On these weekends, I often walk up to the summit of the mountain behind my home in Ludlow. I walk along Mountain Road, an actual road in summer and a ski trail in winter that winds its way around the peak, making for a gentle but still lengthy jaunt. Getting to the road from my house requires some bush-whacking, which today meant being shin deep in leaves. Being "up to my shins in it" brought to mind some peculiar bits of nomenclature that are particular to those of us committed to a life in the mountains.

Outside the ski industry, being “in deep” doesn’t necessarily have a positive connotation. Before getting “in deep”, we warily “dip a toe in the water” before “wading in”. “I’ve had it up to my neck”, "I’m up to my waist in …”, and being “over your head” are definitely not flattering states of affairs. You get the picture. I’ll rely on linguists and sociologists to analyze why it is that depth became such a bad thing. A bad thing, that is, unless, of course, you’re a skier or snowboarder.

For skiers and snowboarders, anything “boot-top deep” is considered excellent. We use classic East Coast sarcasm to describe small storms as leaving us “edge-deep” or “sidewall deep” in powder. Anything deeper than our boot-tops is truly exceptional. “Knee Deep” works because the  alliteration matches the poetry of the conditions. The feeling of being “up to our guts in it” simply defies description. Being “over your head” is beyond our capacity to dream, but for the presence of YouTube videos that show us what it’s like to actually be over your head in powder (cue the Hokkaido ski videos). I have skied over my head in powder and I just can’t talk about it right now. Hold on, I need a minute to collect myself.

The other, more colorful language that is an essential part of the skiing and snowboarding lexicon but that fails to conform to conventional usage has to do with flu symptoms, bodily functions, and the severity of storms. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have skied all day in the middle of a big storm and to have to explain to someone new to the sport that the fact that it was “absolutely puking” out there is a good thing. “Absolutely puking” is a notch up (in severity, depth and our excitement) from “totally dumping”. Once in a while, we experience storms that are so strong that we describe them as “shiXting on us”, meaning that it was so severe that we couldn’t even ski or ride. That’s “shiXting”, as distinct from “dumping”. “Pissing” is reserved for severe liquid precipitation (I refrain from using the “r” word whenever possible). Oddly enough, “shiXting” also can be used to describe liquid precip that is overwhelmingly drenching. I hope this isn’t offensive, but that’s precisely my point. Around the world, in dozens of languages, in remote mountain huts, tiny alpine villages, and run-down much-loved ski town bars, devoted skiers and snowboarders express how much they can’t wait for it to absolutely puke on us this winter, and that’s not a reference to the results of too much stick season tequila.

Today, I was up to my shins in leaves. Tomorrow, Monday, I’ll be up to my neck in the pre-season work of getting the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School ready for another winter. We all hope that soon we’ll be up to our gills, choking on it, and happy as could possibly be as a result. With any luck, this winter will be "totally sick".

Stone Pie (a/k/a The Yelling of the Pizza)

Fig 1 below is a photo of a slice of pizza. Fig 2 is also a slice of pizza. Fig 3 is located at Pisa. Pictured in Fig 4 are the Pisas. Fig 5 is Alex Polizzi. Fig 6 is the frozen pizza section of my local supermarket in Vermont. Everything in the freezer pictured is pizza.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

 

 

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Even a five-year-old child would understand the difference between each of these photos and that they’re all pizza, Pisa or Polizzi. Still, take that same five-year-old, put a beanie on their head and then shove their head into what was their older sibling’s helmet, put a pair of goggles on their face that schmushes their face a bit, and make sure that they are wearing enough winter clothing so as to make it impossible for them to nod their head without all their base layers coming untucked, then send them down a snowy slope in ski equipment that is not their own and in which they have spent little time, and their ability to discern the difference between each of the foregoing pizza-like things disappears. Completely. They won’t know the difference between Alex Polizzi and Little Caesar’s, and they won’t care.

I get it, I really do. When we create a wedge with our skis they form a shape similar to that of a slice of Neapolitan pizza. And, granted, some of the kids among our clientele in Vermont and in Wanaka actually know and can identify the difference between Neapolitan and Sicilian pizza slices. Especially the kids from New Haven, Connecticut. Still, through all that gear, straight lining an icy slope, careening headlong towards the fence or base area condo, there isn’t a single child on the planet can process the word “pizza” being yelled at them from behind by an agitated adult. They certainly can’t make the analogical leap to the leg turning movements necessary to create a wedge with their skis in order to slow down or stop. Yelling “pizza” simply is not a recipe for success, and it’s not even a recipe for decent pizza, going to Pisa or to the Pisas, or for figuring out when we can watch Alex Polizzi on television. Having said that, after fruitlessly yelling “pizza, pizza” again and again, we may actually succeed in making the skiing child hungry. For that, again, I recommend New Haven.

As a general rule, it takes some time for young children to develop the ability to analogize on their own. My view is that this general rule holds true in the classroom among children who are wearing school clothing and don’t have their beanie-clad senses isolated from the outside world inside their big brother’s ski helmet. Under those circumstances, the ability to analogize freely happens far later in life, and then only fleetingly. Bear in mind also, all kidding aside, that from inside a helmet kids’ sensory awareness is especially limited – young children really can’t process a wide range of sights and sounds from anywhere but immediately in front of them. These are just a few of the reasons that experienced, well-trained ski instructors try their best to always look kids in the face when giving instructions and find success by telling kids specifically what to do, as in what movements to make.

There are a lot of benefits to skiing in a wedge (formerly known as “snowplow”, “chasse neige” to the French). Though some ski schools in the past have played with ‘direct to parallel’ teaching, the wedge remains an integral part of learning to ski for the first time. In the American teaching system, where we focus on the skills of skiing and develop them from a guest’s very first moments on snow, the skills we use to create a wedge, to manipulate its size, and then to make a wedge turn are skills that remain essential through every skiers entire evolution, from the very beginning to Olympic glory. The skill we use is “rotary”, meaning the twisting of the legs inside of our hips. Twisting of the hips is otherwise known as “shaking your money maker”, but that’s another story.

When we stand next to a child, show them how we twist our legs towards each other to make a wedge while standing still (“toes in, heels out”, etc.), and ask them to do it themselves with plenty of repetition, they learn to do it on their own. When we redo the same process again while sliding slowly together on very gentle terrain, one inch at a time at first, focusing on the movements and not the position, we find still more success. We can call the shape made by our skis whatever we want – wedge, slice of cake, pizza, cucumber, home base, dinosaur teeth, Alex Polizzi, anything – but as long as we make clear at the outset that the goal is to make the movements of turning both their legs inward at the same time to create the shape, and that it results in our being able to slow down and stop, kids will understand and be able to replicate those movements. Once they can make these movements, we quickly progress to turning both legs in the same direction at the same time (“aim your skis over here at me”, etc.), making turns and using those turns to control our speed and to stop. The ability to make a wedge but with balance so poor that a skier cannot yet turn results in what we call “The Death Wedge”, also another story altogether.

Obviously, I’m biased in favor of professionals whose training and experience makes them experts at delivering technically valid, achievable, fun, and safe instruction to kids. Communicating with young children in a way that ensures comprehension, provides enough repetition to generate comfort and confidence, all in a fun way that teaches kids to control where they go and how fast requires great skill on the part of instructors. The upside is, when done well, kids realize quickly that they are responsible for their own destiny on skis - the moment when that happens is a biggie! It’s a liberating and exciting experience, for them and for us.  When we don’t simply yell “pizza, pizza” at them, when we understand and appreciate their skills and abilities as kids in a respectful way, when we deliver the skiing goods to them and open the door to all that skiing can bring, they’ll follow us anywhere as long as we live up to the standard of empowerment we’ve already set. It’s amazingly satisfying to those of us who teach skiing for a living. And, as an aside, that’s all equally true for teaching adults, but you don’t often see kids yelling “pizza, pizza” at their beginner parents.

At the end of the day, as I like to tell kids, I love pizza, I really do, but too much pizza gives me a stomach ache. Let’s leave the pizza for eating, or at least make sure we’re understood when we talk about it. Speaking of which, how far is New Haven from here? I just got back from New Zealand and I desperately need a decent slice of stone pie. 

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.