Ricky Boucher

I was asked to place a link to a site here. The site is called TalkSkiing and can be found at http://www.talkskiing.co.uk/. The site’s focus: “The site is mostly aimed at helping the beginners and those who aren’t sure which skiing resort is for them. We are in the process of reviewing every major skiing resort…

Looks like I’m going to be working more than 90 days at Monarch again this year. We had to fill in our schedule at our recent employee re-hire meeting on Saturday. I basically tried to give myself two days off a week. During the middle of the season I switch to Thursdays and Fridays off…

Monarch Ski and Ride School is holding it’s employee re-hire orientation today. It will be held up on the mountain in the “bubble.” It should be interesting to see who all shows up again this year. It should also be interesting to see new faces, or perhaps people that took a few years off and…

Turned in my paperwork for Monarch Mountain employment for the ’08-’09 season the other day. The deadline was something like November 1st. I applied for full-time, 90-days (probably means actually working more than 100 days). Monarch Ski and Ride School has 90, 70, 50, 30, 18, and 10 day commitments. The more committed you are…

Wondering how other instructors in the snowsports industry get ready for the next season. Do they look over all the materials they’ve gathered over the years? Review online materials from their respective associations (PSIA, AASI, etc.)? How many keep notes from the previous season? I once heard an  instructor say in a clinic that she…

I received a comment on my last post about being sorry for not keeping up with this blog from Off-Piste. He tells me to keep trying and says it is good to hear what other instructors are doing. His words are encouraging to me. It’s nice to know you’re not alone. Actually one of the…

I’m very much looking forward to the coming season. Many reasons. Perhaps I should post ’em here. Last year I got so busy that I didn’t post anything during the actual season. Very sorry. Should I try again?

The Mountaineers Program started yesterday. I’ve been assigned the advanced students. So far there are four youngsters in my class. All of them are back from last year. Two of them were with me before and the other two were with Brad. Parker, 13, and Jake, 12, were with me last year and Jack, 9,…

After 17 days of waiting past the scheduled opening date, Monarch opened yesterday. We went from zero percent open trails to enough snow for 100 percent open trails all at once. We got so much snow it was ridicules. I believe yesterday we were reporting over 60 inches at mid-mountain. That’s five feet! The level…

Well we still do not have enough snow to open. I’m kinda bumming. I should have been working since the day before Thanksgiving. Our ski school wants us to reschedule our days to add days later in the season, of course during busy times, to make up for the days we’re missing now. If we…

A heckler called out “Have you seen Epci Ski? They got Bob Barnes over there.” This was during my talk in front of about 100 Monarch instructors about the MyMonarchSpace (here I go mentioning MMS again). Needless to say that I had to check it out for myself. She was right, over at http://www.epicski.com/ there…