PSIA-AASI

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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