PSIA-AASI

8.27.2010

SnowPro Update: Learn a Snowsport Month, Helmet Laws & More

With August coming quickly to a close (anybody turn on the heat yet?), and the first ski and snowboard magazines of the season hitting the streets with their annual gear reviews, it is starting to feel like winter is just around the corner. This season, one of the things we’re most excited about here at PSIA-AASI is the building momentum around January’s Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month.

A golden opportunity to drive lessons to the SnowPros on the frontlines of snowsports, we will be publishing regular updates right here on the blog with announcements and initiatives leading up to the event.

Here are just a few of the latest scoops from the ever upbeat Jen Butson at Ski Vermont:

Vermont will celebrate “learn to ski and snowboard month” with unique programs/promotions throughout the entire month of January.
 
FREE WEEK PROMOTION-January 3-9, 2011-Learn to Ski and Snowboard for Free Adult and children 8 years and older. Free beginner/first timer package includes beginner lift ticket or trail pass, group lesson and rental equipment at participating Ski Vermont alpine and Nordic resorts. Pre-registration required via skivermont.com.
 
BRING A FRIEND PROMOTION-Month long excluding MLK weekend blackout dates-Participating Ski Vermont resorts are encouraging skiers and snowboarders who love their time on the slopes to bring a friend and introduce them to alpine skiing and/or snowboarding for free. Skiers or snowboarders who purchase a full day, full price adult lift ticket will receive a free beginner package for their buddy or family member pre-registration for the beginner package is required via skivermont.com.
 
TWO FOR ONE “Share the Love of Winter” Program- Also month long at participating Ski Vermont resorts, this program is a learn-with-a-pal package. Two first timers connect to share their first day on the slopes learning to alpine ski or snowboard together for the price of one beginner package. Includes beginner lift ticket, group lesson and rental equipment for the full day. MLK holiday weekend blackout dates in effect.

WINTER TRAILS-January 8, 2011-A free day devoted to Nordic skiing and snowshoeing at Ski Vermont participating resorts and ski areas with tips on getting started, free Nordic skiing lessons, rental equipment discounts and free trail pass enabling adults and children to explore winter in Vermont.

Helmets Required?

According to First Tracks Online (www.firsttracksonline.com), the potential for mandatory helmet use for kids under the age of 18 is heating up from coast to coast. As First Tracks reports, “As a bill requiring helmet use while skiing and snowboarding is currently pending in the California legislature, a similar bill passed the New Jersey Senate this week and is heading for a vote in the Assembly.

Senate bill 130, co-sponsored by State Senators Anthony Bucco and Joe Pennacchio, would require skiers under the age of 18 to wear helmets on the slopes. It passed a vote in the New Jersey Senate on Monday by an overwhelming 33-2 vote.

“Skiing is an inherently dangerous sport,” Bucco states. “It is necessary to mandate the use of helmets on the slopes by young people because of their relative lack of experience and the high speeds involved.””

California Heli Operation to Launch

Lake Tahoe, Calif.-And here’s a little fun news for all of us who are already dreaming of the deepest, softest snow this season: Pacific Crest Heli-Guides in partnership with HeliTahoe has announced plans to offer helicopter skiing and snowboarding in Lake Tahoe for the upcoming 2010-11 winter season. The operation will be based out of the Truckee Airport and access more than 100,000 acres of privately owned lands located along the spine of the Pacific Crest. By comparison, the combined total skiable acreage at all 14 ski resorts surrounding Lake Tahoe is less than 25,000 acres.
 
Besides a few small heliskiing enterprises in the early 1970’s, this will be the first full-fledged helicopter skiing operation launched in the Lake Tahoe region or in the entirety of the Sierra Nevada for that matter. The ambitious undertaking will include a number of year-round recreational options accessed by helicopter such as sight-seeing, mountain biking, fishing and hiking.
 
“To say this is a dream come true is an understatement. More accurately it is a culmination of my lifelong passion for skiing powder, my extensive experience within the ski industry and good timing,” said Dave Rintala, owner/operator of Pacific Crest Heli-Guides. “I can’t wait for the season to start given the prospect of skiing first descents on a daily basis, naming new runs and exploring fresh terrain with clients.”

8.20.2010

The 50/50 Blog: Dreaming of a Chairlift

On my short list of favorite ski hero memories, I have been lucky enough to ski with Scot Schmidt and Franz Klammer, and to shake the hands of two of the late great patron saints of glisse, President Gerald Ford and alpine icon Dick Durrance.

It took more than 30 years to meet those four men. Yet just a couple weeks ago, in a single day in Salt Lake City I met two of the giants of snowsports instruction.  On the morning of August 6th, I sat down with Jerry Warren for an interview in the lobby of the Little America hotel, and then was invited up to see Alan Engen at his house later that afternoon.

Warren, who received the PSIA National Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, and was inducted into the PSIA Intermountain Hall of Fame in 2010, is the director of mountain operations at Robert Redford’s—“Bob,” as Jerry calls him—Sundance Resort. He also served as the chair of the PSIA National Steering Committee and the National Vice President of Education. He is probably best known as the primary author of the “Center Line,” and its supporting skills connection approach to ski instruction.

As we sat talking about Interski, the Skills Concept, snowboards, Snowbird and a lifetime of Utah powder, somehow that old adage “You have to know the rules before you can break them,” came up, and
Warren broke into a big grin and said, “That’s it! That’s center line.”

He had driven down from the mountains to meet me, on his way to see the new gear at Outdoor Retailer Summer Market. And I got to escape the 90+ degree Salt Lake City heat by driving back up into the foothills of the Wasatch to meet Alan Engen.

“I was pretty much born into the sport. Of course my father was already a very famous skier when I was just a little guy,” Engen said, noting of his father, Alf, “I was fortunate to have one of the finest teachers that anyone could have in him.”

I typed five pages of notes while we were talking, nodding at all the famous names he spoke, and in wonder at the idea of skiing Alta for a living. But what I remembered most was the story he told at the door as I was leaving.

One season he had gone out to visit Olympic medalist and former director of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Ski School Pepi Stiegler, himself a member of the Intermountain Hall of Fame, as are Alf and Alan Engen. And Alan said that Pepi took them right to Corbet’s Couloir—which was roped off that day—where Pepi proceeded to jump in anyway, and wait in the mouth of the couloir for Alan. When Alan followed, he said Pepi just smiled, and said, “OK. Now we go skiing.”

Driving back to my hotel, it was that phrase that made me wish it was winter. That the August heat wave would suddenly freeze into a December-sized snowstorm. Just for the chance to share a chairlift with any one of them.

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8.13.2010

SnowPro Update: Mtn Surf Market Blows Up

At Outdoor Retailer Summer Market in Salt Lake City last week, hot gear innovations, mountain dogs, and environmental initiatives were all part of the warm sports summit mix.

For gear, stylishly sustainable water bottles from Bamboo Bottle; solar powered cellphone, camera, and GPS rechargers from Brunton; a cool new Colorado pack company named Mile High Mountaineering; and Active Boomers; an apparel company whose tagline is: “Aging…the Ultimate Extreme Sport,” were just a few of the dozens of product highlights.

On the environmental front, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar stopped by to talk outdoor jobs and open space. Teva unveiled its ‘Pair for a Foot’ clean water campaign in partnership with Waterkeeper Alliance. And Patagonia discussed its decision to pay the way for 10 employees to travel to Louisiana for a week for a firsthand look at the BP Oil Spill aftermath.

As for the mountain dogs, they’re allowed on the show floor at Outdoor Retailer, and the aisles were filled with lots of Labradors, “Swissies,” and Blue Heeler pups.

But the biggest news—the tsunami of excitement—was reserved for how successfully Stand Up Paddleboarding, or SUP (think canoeing on a surfboard), is penetrating the outdoor market. With only brands like Hobie and Surftech attending the show as recently as four years ago, there were nearly a dozen brands at this year’s Summer Market. And the surf-meets-mountain-culture scene was fun to see on the north end of the floor, where big wave legends like Laird Hamilton and Mickey Munoz were signing autographs.

Paddle carrying surfboarders may still be resisted on the ocean waves, where they are being met by a traditionalist backlash. But on inland rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, the sport is blowing up. Surftech sales manager Ty Zulim said he paddelboarded the Chicago River the week before the show, and that he is selling boards from Alaska to Texas.

“The stand up paddle category has grown exponentially over the past few years and appears to be continuing the trend,” said Hobie Designs Marketing Director Sean Douglas, adding that Hobie is already building boards for categories as diverse as surf, touring, whitewater, fishing, and race.

If you haven’t tried it, it’s a blast. And a great summer way to work on your balance, motion, and stoke. If you’re already incorporating paddleboarding into your off-snow program, or even providing instruction—The Stand-Up Paddleboard Instructor’s Association (SPIA)??!!—we’d love to hear about it.

Drop us a line at:

7.28.2010

The 50/50 Blog: Teaching & Technique

Timeless piece of safety advice: “The expert is the man who does not fall and the man who does not fall does not get hurt.”

Published more than 20 years ago, in 1987 and again in 1989 by the Eastern Professional Ski Instructors Association, E. John B. Allen’s Teaching & Technique: A History of American Ski Instruction can all too easily be considered a snapshot of a single era, with little relevance to modern snowsports.

After all, snowboards, shaped skis, high-speed chairlifts, rocker, and halfpipes are all still lurking beyond the last page, as sure and game-changingly inevitable as cellphones and the internet. And Allen, an academic who published the exhaustively researched The Culture and Sport of Skiing in 2007, doesn’t aim for the half-engaged reader, with his extensive use of period quotes and precise footnotes.

Which is why it’s all the more remarkable how well the book does read, with vivid portraits of the history of instruction in the U.S., and also timeless observations and sometimes surprising wit.

Allen makes his own argument for knowing one’s history in the preface, noting, “It seems ever more important that before instructors begin to teach others how to ski, they should know the techniques and teaching attitudes of the past; it is from the foundation of historical understanding that present problems and future prospects may be better analyzed.”

He then proceeds—in only 58 pages of actual text!—to race from the first professional ski instructor’s certification exam in 1938, to 1982, when snowsports instructional icon Horst Abraham was just preparing to publish his own masterpiece of winter learning, Skiing Right. Along the way, he takes us from Norway in the 1700s to St. Anton in the 1900s, when Hannes Schneider began to teach Austrian troops what would become known as the Arlberg Technique.

Back in the U.S., Allen explores Schneider’s long lasting impact on American skiing, including his memorable quote: “I am going to put speed into everyone’s skiing, and I am going to make it reasonably safe. It’s speed, not touring, that is the lure.”

As Allen notes, “He was right.”

Of course, there were also the Swiss, the Scandinavian telemark, and French-based “parallel technique.” There was jumping, herring-boning, and the seemingly wide-held belief that you couldn’t possibly be capable of teaching skiing without the benefit of a thick European accent.

But, as has been stated before on this blog, and is also clearly spelled out in the book, America is the melting pot. And that melting of styles and techniques into a pure, simple, direct concept of instruction is what is at the heart of Allen’s story. From Peckett’s Inn at Sugar Hill, to Alta to that famed day in Whitefish, Mt., in 1961 when PSIA was finally officially formed, Allen makes good copy out of all of the ideas, innovations, and politics that stir the conversation around U.S. snowsports.

He invokes the names of PSIA legends such as Abraham and Bill Lash, as well as celebrity cheerleaders for the sport like Lowell Thomas. He also remembers perhaps slightly lesser known luminaries like Dorothy Hoyt Nebel, the Eastern Downhill and Slalom Champion in 1940 and 1941 who said all the European techniques couldn’t merge here at first, because, “We had no American technique into which they could be melted.”

Of particular pleasure to this reader, Allen also continually unearths the minutiae of skiing, recounting gymnasiums full of skiers in the 1930s tuning up for the slopes to piano accompaniment, avalanche safety awareness and telemark turns being required for early certification classes, and this timeless piece of safety advice: “The expert is the man who does not fall and the man who does not fall does not get hurt.”

Hopefully you’ve got a good friend who may still have a copy of this book to loan out for a quick read on a fall night. I just tracked down a single copy on Amazon.com, retailing for $80 bucks. Many thanks to former PSIA-AASI Board President Ray Allard for loaning me his copy—Ray, I promise to give it back!

-Peter Kray

7.16.2010

SnowPro Update: Horst to CO Ski Hall, Lindsey Vonn, Shaun White + Learn a Snowsport News

Horst Abraham headed to Colorado Ski Hall. Lindsey Vonn, Shaun White Score Big at the ESPYs. Plus Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month News!

Vail, Colo. (PSIA-AASI) - Ski instruction legend Horst Abraham will be among the six new inductees honored by the Colorado Ski &  Snowboard Hall of Fame on November 6.

The six new members—Horst Abraham, Jake Burton Carpenter, Ernst Constam, Harry Frampton, Trygve Myhren, and Sandy Treat—will join a select group of snowsports visionaries who have made significant contributions to snowsports in Colorado. They will be honored during the 34th annual Colorado Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame Induction Gala on November 6, 2010, at the Westin Westminster in Westminster, CO.
 
Here’s the official release: Horst Abraham is recognized as a sport builder and inspirational individual. He was born in Vienna, Austria in 1941, where he learned to ski on handcrafted wooden skis. Horst returned to Vienna after the war and began to re-write the script for ski teaching. Throughout the 1960’s, Horst’s work in the domain of ski methodology and technical thinking was beginning to be nationally recognized, and he assembled a group of experts to form the American Teaching Method (ATM). This was recognized as a major breakthrough in the field of ski instruction in the 1980’s. Since then, Horst has written Skiing Right, the official PSIA handbook of its time, published in 1983.
 
Burton Snowboards founder Jake Burton Carpenter is recognized as a sport builder. Constam, inventor of the overhead cable ski tow, is recognized as a pioneer. Frampton is recognized as a sport builder. A current managing partner of East West Partners, from 1982 to 1986, Frampton was instrumental in bringing both the 1989 and 1999 World Alpine Ski Championships to Vail and Beaver Creek.
 
Myhren was instrumental in making Paralympic skiing the first adaptive sport to be fully integrated into the Olympic programs. Treat volunteered for the 10th Mountain Division, the famed soldiers on skis who fought in World War II, and trained and instructed fellow troops at Camp Hale.

Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month

Lakewood, Colo. (PSIA-AASI) - Cultivator Advertising and Design has developed a new graphic look and messaging for Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month 2011, it was announced today by initiative organizers. Cultivator is based in Denver and is the agency of record for the Professional Ski Instructors of America-American Association of Snowboard Instructors (PSIA-AASI).  Other clients include Keystone Resort in Colorado, Boa Technology, and New Belgium Brewing Company.
 
The agency created a new Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month logo and ads that will appear in numerous snowsports and general consumer magazines this winter. Design elements will be included in banner ads, buttons, and other collateral for use by initiative partners—including including resort associations, individual resorts, and other industry businesses participating in Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month. Industry trade media is supporting the initiative by running ads gratis in magazines and on websites. A Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month website will launch soon.
 
Using the theme, “Humans Were Never Meant to Hibernate,” the January promotion encourages children and adults to take ski and snowboard lessons. The campaign also reaches out to current participants who can “bring a friend” to try skiing and snowboarding or enhance their own skills through lessons from a professional instructor.

Lindsey Vonn, Shaun White Score Big at the ESPYs

Los Angeles (PSIA-AASI) - From the US Ski Team news desk: Three-time Audi FIS World Cup overall champion Lindsey Vonn (Vail, CO) was a big winner at the 18th annual ESPYS in Los Angeles Wednesday evening. The Olympic champion was named Best Female Athlete and Best Olympic Female Athlete.

Vonn was joined by Olympic teammate Shaun White (Carlsbad, CA) who also won two top prizes as Best Olympic Male Athlete  and Best Male Action Sports Athlete, the fourth time he’s taken the action sports crown.

7.7.2010

The 50/50 Blog: What Story Do You Have to Tell?

It always amazes me how clearly I remember some of the ski instructors I had as a kid – the girls who I thought were snow goddesses and the guys who I thought were cool. And how they seamlessly led me and an ever-shifting pack of fuzzy mittened ankle-biters around the mountain, squealing like pups in the snow.

I have the same clear memories of when I started working as an instructor myself. Of some of the faces and names and friendships that, if it weren’t for teaching, I never would have known.

But I must admit, it surprised me at first how almost every other ski instructor I have ever met has those same memories, too – of the first people who inspired them, those first cold mornings in the new uniform, and those first students experiencing a smiling breakthrough.

Especially when those instructors reliving their memories are some of the giants of the profession – like PSIA Founding President (and founding father) Bill Lash, Innovator (and soon to be member of the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame) Horst Abraham, and Robert “Hak” Hakkinnen, who first earned his certification in the Central Division in 1962.

“I loved that feeling at the beginning,” says Hak, of Minnesota, “When everything we did felt like it was brand new.”

Those are the very same memories that we would like to hear about from you. What was your introduction to snowboarding? Who is your personal ski guru? And what did it feel like when your first student started skate skiing like a pro?

Please, feel free to answer any and all of the questions below, and send your reply to us at so that we can post your story right here, too.

What Story Do You Have to Tell

What’s Your Favorite First Memory of Being on Snow?

Who is Your Favorite First Instructor?

Who is Your On-Snow Guru?

What is Your Favorite Thing about Teaching Right Now?

Why is Your Region so Important to You?

What’s the Best Part about Going out on the Mountain with Your Friends, or just by Yourself?

What Else Makes You Smile (Getting Certified? Wearing Your Pin? Meeting Other Instructors from Around the World?)

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6.17.2010

SnowPro Update: Ski Pipe Gold, CO Instruction Initiative & RIP Arne Backstrom

Antalya, Turkey (PSIA-AASI) - Holy ski style, Snow Pros, we could be watching ski halfpipe as a full medal Winter Games event by February 2014 when the Sochi Olympics hit.

According to U.S. Ski Team, “A U.S. and French proposal to submit ski halfpipe to the International Olympic Committee for consideration as early as 2014 was approved without dissent as the International Ski Federation concluded its biennial FIS Congress Friday in Antalya, Turkey.”
 
But don’t hand the gold to Tanner Hall or Simon Dumont just yet. We’re still waiting on a vote from the IOC, which could be made as early as 2011. What is sure bet is that at the same congress, “snowboard slopestyle and team snowboard cross were also unanimously adopted on the program of the FIS Snowboard World Championships.”
 
Ski halfpipe has been included in FIS World Championships since 2005 and is already on the program for the 2012 Youth Olympics in Innsbruck.
 
Colorado’s Instruction Initiative
 
Denver (PSIA-AASI) - In very hopeful news on the kids instruction front, Colorado Ski Country USA (CSCUSA) announced the addition of a major new component to its popular 5th grade passport program: one complementary ski lesson, including rental equipment, for 5th grade passport holders who are new to the sport.
 
Lessons will be provided during the month of January as part of January Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month. Parents of 5th graders signed up for the Colorado Ski Country Passport will be provided with information about the opportunity for their child to learn to ski and can choose from among Colorado Ski Country USA member resorts where to have their introductory experience on snow.
 
“Now kids who grow up in Colorado will not only enjoy free skiing when they are in 5th grade, but for kids who haven’t learned to ski or ride by this age—Colorado Ski Country resorts will teach you how,” says CSCUSA President Melanie Mills.
 
Skier Down: RIP Arne Backstrom
 
Peru (PSIA-AASI) - More terrible news from the big mountain freeskiing world as yet one more young man has fallen in his prime. Arne Backstrom, reigning Canadian Freeskiing Champion and recent film star in ski segments for Warren Miller Entertainment and Matchstick Productions, died in a fall in Peru while reportedly training for a descent of Artesanraju, a 5,999-meter peak in the region. He was 29.
 
Backstrom’s parents are ski patrollers at Crystal Mountain in Washington, where he grew up skiing. He is the brother of freeski star Ingrid Backstrom, and had recently moved to Tahoe, California, to ski Squaw with her and their brother, Ralph, a snowboarder.
 
Arne’s death adds to the terrible cycle of loss that the community has felt in a little more than a year with the deaths of local freeskiing legends Shane McConkey and CR Johnson. Backstrom was filming with up-and-coming snow film company Sweetgrass Productions at the time of his death. You can click here for the poignant blog about the accident and the immediate reaction: http://sweetgrass-productions.com/blog/

6.9.2010

The 50/50 Blog: The Friendliest Sport in the World

We all love to talk about technique, the weather, snow conditions and the latest innovations in gear. But most of all we love to talk to each other, and to hear the echo of the passion that we all share.

That sense of community is the one aspect of American snowsports instruction that impresses me most – the fact that the entire system is based on how each and every student is best wired to learn. It supports a structure in which the best teachers are the best students, because they are constantly looking for clues to how others see, hear, and feel.

It’s also why in the first few weeks of reaching out to members of the snow pro community, I’ve been looking forward more and more to each new call – because, of course, the best listeners are typically the best conversationalists as well.

One topic that keeps coming up in those conversations is the camaraderie that’s at the heart of snowsports, and especially our snowsports schools. Or, as Craig Albright, managing director of the Mammoth Mountain Ski and Snowboard School, put it, “If you go out surfing and say ‘hi’ to someone in a surf lineup, you might get your butt kicked. But if go up to a chairlift and yell, ‘single,’ a complete stranger will step up to ride the chair with you. And it might very well be some single, attractive person, too.”

Here are a couple other quotes on that theme from recent interviews:

“When I go through this movie reel of the past, what stands out is how every face has a smile on it. From the very start I felt this sense of belonging from sleeping in a lodge and going to ski school, and there has only been that great sense of being a part of it all.”
-    Earl Saline, PSIA-AASI Education Manager

“Ski school locker rooms have this incredible social outlet with a full cast of characters, including moms and dads cleaning up after all the younger instructors, and kids running in and out, guys and girls getting next-to-naked next to each other, the locker room romances, and the kegs of beer and Thanksgiving dinners together at the ski area. It’s this community that we all share.”
-    Michael Rogan, PSIA Alpine Team Captain

“My best memories of teaching in the ’70s are of this big group of people that are passionate about skiing and this fun existence they’re living that seems like nothing else in the world. I remember how we’d all get together at Donovan’s Bar at the end of the day, and it felt like we were on the edge of the frontier.”
-    Don Welch, former Vail Ski Instructor

In the next 50/50 post – ‘What Story Do You Have to Tell?’

- by Peter Kray

6.2.2010

SnowPro Snowbiz Update: This Season Isn’t Over + SKI News & Helmet Use

As plenty of PSIA-AASI Snow Pros like PSIA Alpine Team Captain Mike Rogan prepare to jet down to South America, Australia or New Zealand for the “second season,” it’s worth noting that North America hasn’t quite finished with its own ski season just yet.

Here we are heading into June, and several ski areas are still turning the lifts. According to Scotland-based Snow Hunter Patrick Thorne of http://www.skiinfo.co.uk, “There are four areas still open in the US, all on the Western side of the country.  Mammoth Mountain in California has a 7.5 – 12 foot (2.3 – 3.6m) base and reports a fresh dusting of snow in the past few days. The near-year-round Timberline ski area on Mt Hood in Oregon has a 148 inch (4.5m) base.  Arapahoe Basin in Colorado is looking good with about half of its lifts and terrain open with a 45 inch (112cm) base and yet another three inches (7cm) of new snow in the past few days.”

Add to that list Snowbird, which announced that a recent late May storm put the area over the 600-inch mark. The new scheduled closing date is June 20th.

Changes at SKI, Skiing

Boulder, Colo. - SKI and Skiing Magazine parent Bonnier Corp. announced that it is moving five of its luxury and lifestyle brands under a new publishing unit in an effort to leverage the products collectively to marketers. The new group will include Saveur, Ski, Skiing, Snow and Garden Design.

Saveur publisher Merri Lee Kingsly will lead the new group as vice president of publishing. There is no word yet on any additional editorial changes, though it has been reported that former publisher Mike Federle and Skiing Editor Jake Bogoch have already moved on.
 
According to a release from Bonnier, “Through the first half, Saveur saw advertising pages jump 22.6 percent compared to the same period in 2009, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures. Ski, however, saw pages fall 16.8 percent, and Skiing’s pages tumbled 41 percent.”

The new unit will also include Warren Miller Entertainment and NASTAR.

NSAA Says Helmet Use Jumps
 
Lakewood, Colo. - According to preliminary findings of the 2009/10 NSAA National Demographic Study, 57 percent of skiers and snowboarders wear helmets while enjoying the slopes at U.S. ski areas.

Helmet usage among those interviewed nationwide increased 19 percent over the 2008/09 season, when 48 percent of those interviewed were wearing helmets. In comparison, only 25 percent of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets during the 2002/03 season. The annual Demographic Study is compiled from more than 130,000 interviews of skiers and snowboarders nationwide. The study also showed that:
 
* 87 percent of children 9 years old or younger wear ski/snowboard helmets;
* 75 percent of children between 10 and 14 wear ski/snowboard helmets;
* 70 percent of adults over the age of 65 wear ski/snowboard helmets;
* Skiers and snowboarders aged 18 to 24 have traditionally represented the lowest percentage of helmet use among all age groups. This year, 43 percent of all 18 to 24 year olds interviewed wore helmets, representing a 139 percent increase in usage for this age group since the 2002/03 season, when only 18 percent wore helmets. FOMO, check out http://www.nsaa.org.

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5.24.2010

The PSIA-AASI 50th Anniversary Project Blog: Passion in the Archives

Lakewood, Colo. (PSIA-AASI) - Last week, I drove up to Colorado looking for history. Diving into the immense archives, bookshelves, newspaper clippings, Super-8 and 16mm films, videos, DVDs, and heavy binders at PSIA-AASI’s offices in Lakewood, Colorado. Eating hot ribs at Efrain’s in Boulder. Listening to the trees sag under a wet mid-May snowstorm that snapped lilacs in the night.

Which all seemed appropriate, going back into the story of winter in America the way I was. Going back to that moment in 1961, in Whitefish, Montana, where PSIA was officially formed and American skiing issued its own Declaration of Independence.

It was at that moment that PSIA’s original board of directors – including Curt Chase, Max Dercum, Jimmy Johnson, Bill Lash, Doug Pfieffer, Don Rhinehart and Paul Valar – agreed to set the national standards for the promotion and certification of ski instruction in the United States. And in so doing, signaled that decades after the Austrian, Italian, Norwegian, Swiss, French, and German influences that first brought skiing to America had been assimilated, it had become apparent that the amalgamation of so many skills had created a brand new style of skiing: The American Ski Technique.

The infusion of so many cultures resulted in a mountain-based melting pot of alpine expatriation that mirrored the creation of America itself. On snow, that melting pot of styles boiled down to a clarity of methods and movement. Which is what the “Founding Fathers” of the PSIA set out to establish – a new standard of instruction that could be successfully applied from Alaska to Vermont, and would work whether you were skiing powder, moguls, or ice.

What they got was so flexible it also allowed for the easy assimilation of snowboard, nordic, and adaptive techniques. It encompassed terrain parks and tow ropes, and is just as relevant to beginners on boardwalk-buffed snow as it is in the backcountry, atop the wildest, windblown peaks.

Which made me wonder, looking at all those archival black and white photos in SKIING and the Salt Lake Tribune, if those early visionaries could have had any idea just how encompassing and complete their vision would become. Or, when I found the photo from the ‘70s of nearly 40 ski school directors from across the country – including Don Welch, my father’s good friend from Vail, or Pepi Stiegler, whom I worked for in Jackson Hole – how many American skiers and snowboarders would see the history of PSIA-AASI, and realize that they were really reading a story about themselves.

For more on the PSIA-AASI 50-50 Celebration, click here.

- by Peter Kray