By Katherine Fuller, PSIA-AASI Director of Marketing and Communications

It was my first snowsports lesson in nearly a decade. Not teaching—participating.

On the second lift ride of the first day, after Eldora Mountain’s instructors observed and sorted the 40 or so women attending its five-week intermediate lesson program, I felt an overwhelming sense of calm wash over my body.

That is notable for me, someone with gripping acrophobia who usually buries her face behind a Buff on lift rides to hide the (panicked) deep breathing. Yet there I was, floating through the air as relaxed as could be.

For years, I have been chased by the shadow of mediocrity on the hill. I started working in snowsports industry marketing in 2019, but I did not grow up on or anywhere near snow. Instead, I learned to snowboard in my 20s and ski in my 30s.

I went on to only ever ski with people far more talented and faster than I, and over time the constant comparison I subjected myself to wrecked my confidence. I quickly plateaued, entrenched bad habits, and found myself skiing with fear and doubt.

I couldn’t just be an anonymous, trepidatious, intermediate skier. Being a less-than-expert skier working at a ski area meant I never felt that I belonged. I loved the job, but I felt like a fraud.

Needless to say, I did not tell anyone in the lesson program that I work for PSIA-AASI (I also paid for the program, myself). In that group, I was simply a random person with a vague marketing job too boring to discuss, committed to improving “just because.”

Since I was carefully paired with similarly skilled skiers, I found myself—for the first time—on a mountain with peers. I never could have anticipated what a huge relief that turned out to be.

Over the next 15 hours spread across five days, I would not need to prove anything. I would not need to manage my own fear, my own expectations, and my own improvement alone. I could hand some of that over to a professional instructor and be present enough to learn.

I could think of no finer way to spend a Wednesday morning.

My Aha Moment

Halfway through the program, one tap of a ski pole and three words were all it took to completely transform my skiing.

My instructor was a 26-year-old Alpine Level II, youth freestyle coach, graduate student, fiction author, and an extremely patient human named Lindsey.

What struck me was how little she talked at us, and how much she encouraged us to talk to each other. Every piece of feedback was targeted and productive. No pontificating; no over-explaining—she kept us moving as much as possible.

My little pod of five had been deemed “intermediate plus”: four of us had respectable technique and speed. Then there was me. I was the fastest in the group but also the most erratic. I skied scared.

There wasn’t much to say about my form, which has historically crumbled at the first sight of ice because, yes, I am the prototypical spoiled Rocky Mountain skier. I was either frozen by fear or just wanted to GO rather than move methodically through proper motions.

I knew my skiing needed work; I just didn’t know what, exactly.

On day three, Lindsey lined us up along the side of a groomer and doled out individual instructions. She tapped my boot with her pole and said, “Widen your stance.”

“Huh?”

“Widen your stance.”

On to the next person.

As my entire approach to the lesson program was to abandon my ego and any and all preconceived notions and simply listen-ski-repeat, I tamped down my instinct to ask a bunch of questions and did as I was told. I widened my stance.

The first two turns felt awkward and then, for the first time perhaps ever, I felt stable. I felt in control. I pushed harder and tasted the elusive flow state—that meditative trance that mountain biking taught me to love and to crave. I admittedly thought I’d never be good enough to find it on skis.

Later, when I was not in a position to get lost in details, Lindsey explained why she made the suggestion, and how it had built on the previous lessons. For example, I wasn’t giving myself enough space to fully tip onto the edges of my 90mm-underfoot skis. I wasn’t allowing my hips to move freely.

Widening my stance in that moment changed my skiing.

A Certified Instructor Makes a Difference

Lindsey proved her high level of skill in homing in on exactly the right one or two tips for each of us at the right moments, giving us as much or as little explanation as was helpful, and encouraging us to play and experiment with our new pieces of knowledge.

After the program wrapped up, I cracked open our reference materials out of curiosity (I should clarify that I’m not an instructor, if that is not already obvious.) How much of Lindsey’s teaching technique could I readily identify?

All of it, as it turned out.

The PSIA-AASI Teaching Skills fundamentals are:

• Collaborate on long-term goals and short-term objectives.
• Manage information, activities, terrain selection, and pacing.
• Promote play, experimentation, and exploration.
• Facilitate the learner’s ability to reflect upon experiences and sensations.
• Adapt to the changing needs of the learner.
• Manage emotional and physical risk.

Lindsey excelled in simplifying and applying the fundamentals without ever saying so directly. So much of what she did was reduce uncertainty and fear and instill confidence, allowing us to be more open to what we were learning.

And not all of it had to do with purely technical skiing, which she spent very little time talking about. Remarkably, she occasionally refused to explain something in depth even when asked. That made a few participants anxious at first, but we realized Lindsey did not want to overwhelm us.

Giving us one tip to work on and then piling on a bunch of extraneous, distracting details was going to mean we couldn’t focus on what we were supposed to be practicing.

Using yoga references familiar to our group, she also trained us to be more observant of and in tune with our bodies and our positions in space, without having to directly tell us that’s what she was doing.

One of the helpful tips Lindsey provided—particularly in a season when Colorado experienced less-than-stellar snow conditions—was narrating her terrain choices.

You could feel every single person in the group relax a little when she said things like, “I checked with patrol this morning and X run is thin and icy after grooming, so we’re going to skip it today.” She knew the mountain so well that she could tell us what side of each run to explore, depending on what kind of snow conditions we wanted to experience.

I never would have thought to request it, but not having to think about whether we were headed into terrain appropriate for our skill level and preferences was a huge weight lifted off our shoulders. We didn’t need freedom of choice in those moments; we needed a competent guide looking out for us.

A New Relationship with Skiing

Guests may say “thank you” at the end of a lesson. They may say they had fun, or that something finally clicked, or that they want to return. But I’ve been told that instructors rarely get detailed feedback.

I came into the program wanting to be “better,” but I didn’t know what that meant. Truthfully, I felt a deep sense of desperation; I “needed” to get better because I was tired of being a middling skier who works in the ski industry.

I grew up playing semi-competitive softball and soccer and expected the lesson program to resemble a practice focused on technical drills—all orange cones and nuanced maneuvers and constant feedback from the coach. Instead, it was more like a scrimmage: Here are a couple of pointers to keep in mind, now get out there and simulate the real thing.

For me, it was not actually just the stance adjustment, though that changed my skiing immediately. It was the way Lindsey helped me develop a foundation of both trust and technical skills that enabled me to go for it.

After five classes, what I left with was a different relationship with skiing, which is even more valuable than being able to check some skill boxes. For an intermediate, 40-year-old skier carrying years of fear and self-consciousness, one well-timed cue that fit perfectly into a bigger picture, given by a skilled instructor, did more than improve my turns.

What I got was access to feelings I had been chasing for years, particularly the sense that I belong on skis. And, I started having way more fun.

A month later, during National Academy at Copper Mountain, I skied with a couple board members down a run on which I’ve experienced unpleasant and unpredictable conditions. With my newfound, grounded-in-reality confidence, I trusted myself to handle it. Luckily, the snow was better than it looked, with just the right amount of grip to really give it.

So, I flew. I felt free. I loved it.

At the bottom, one board member looked up at me and yelled, “Oh! You’re a giggler!”

Apparently, I’d been laughing the whole way down, and he—a longtime instructor and ski resort executive—was beaming, deeply pleased by my expression of joy.

A week after Academy, I went back to the ski area where I used to work. Because it was late spring, very little terrain was available, but, crucially, a run I had long feared was still open. So, I skied it. My first thought at the top was, “Oh, this IS steep.” And then I just did it.

I want you to know how not like me that is, and therefore how much good instruction can mean to a person. Even if you cannot comprehend a person’s fears on the mountain, they are still very real. They still have to be addressed.

Lindsey nailed it. Her compassion wasn’t gushing and saccharine. Nor did she dismiss me with exhortations that I had nothing to be afraid of. She simply accepted me and my situation and worked with it.

When that work is done well, it goes beyond teaching someone how to make good turns; it changes their whole perspective.

Thanks, Lindsey.