I led a clinic today with about a dozen other instructors. The focus was on the PSIA milestone called basic parallel turn. Just in case you don’t know the milestones, they are wedge, wedge cristi, basic parallel turn, and dynamic paralell turn. It was very obvious to me that we can focus on a specific…

Mostly I’ve been getting private lessons this year. I’m almost up to 25 hours worth of request privates. After 25 hours I’ll get a significant pay increase. Most of my request privates are coming from relationships that I’ve developed in past years. People from Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and lots of locals are requesting me. They’re…

Sorry I’ve been so busy teaching and skiing that it is hard to find time to sit and blog. Monarch has been great this year. The snow is awesome, from powder to beautiful packed powder bumps. It’s all good. I got some new skis that I really couldn’t afford. But hey, the ski shop, Mountain…

Ran across this article about PSIA today. It describes PSIA really well. Here is just one of the questions from the interview: “Do instructors have to spend a certain amount of time in each classification level before advancing?” “Yes, there are certain requirements involving time between levels and number of hours taught, although very few…

Matt and his family took a Family Private from me last year. They’re from Texas and the elevation really took its toll on Matt and he had to bow out of the lesson early. Matt’s wife Jennifer, two sons, Parker and Madison, and daughter Abby all went on to become pretty good skiers able to…

Man, for about the past week I’ve been fighting a wicked cold and fevor. I think I just wore myself out during the first week or so of skiing and lowered my resistance. Today I’m feeling much better. It’s really hard to teach skiing when your head is all clogged up and your nose is…

I’ve had Laura for a student for years. She’s been in the Mountaineers program and I’ve had private lessons with her a number of times. One of the things that I was always trying to do was get her to flex her ankles. When I first met her a few years ago she had rear…

I intend to write more about these two lessons, but for now I’m just posting a couple of pictures and first names. I’ll add more to this entry later. Right now I’ve got to get ready for work. These guys are from Salida Middle School: Evan, Garret, Cody, Christian, Luke, Issac. They are 7th and…

This is going to be tough. Blogging during the ski season is going to require discipline. I’ve been having a great time at Monarch, skiing and teaching. My body is starting to get used to the routine of getting up early each day to catch the employee bus up to the mountain, getting ready for…

I just finished scanning in this old Monarch map. There’s no date on it, but my research suggests that it is probably from around 1963. The map mentions W.R. Berry as the ski area manager. From obituary information, I found, “BERRY, William Ray 1900 – 9 Jun 1964 (Marker; Cem. Rec: 13 Jun 1964, Sec. D,…