PSIA-AASI

10.28.2011

Team Training Update: Downhill Hitchhiking with the Nordic Team

I spent Sunday, October 23rd, skiing with the PSIA Nordic Team at Copper Mountain, and we stayed so late on the hill that we had to get a ride down to the base in the back of a truck.

It was the first day of Team Training, and everyone was excited to get back on snow together, making turns and talking about all of the ideas and insights that they had spent the summer turning over in their heads.

The Snowboard Team was discussing what experiences, topics, and ideas they wanted to pass along to the next team, and how they could most effectively share their messages with the membership. The Alpine Team was talking about the tenets of good skiing, from racing to freeskiing to moguls to powder, comparing what basics they shared, and if and where they split. And the Adaptive Team’s Bill Bowness and Geoff Krill were filming in the flats, then carving down the early season hardpack to build content for the Movement Matrix.

For their part, the Nordic Team was busy addressing the growing split between cross-country skiing and telemark. Long united by their free-heel familiarity, rapid changes in technology, such as rockered skis and alpine-styled plastic boots, have moved tele ever-increasingly inbounds, while the ski-anywhere-it-snows simplicity of cross-country skiing is recognizing new opportunities in urban areas, clubs, and city parks.

“When we look at where cross-country skiing is growing right now, and the opportunities for reaching kids and people who might not otherwise be exposed to snowsports, we see this tremendous thirst for information and need for resources,” said Nordic Team member David Lawrence.

Whether it’s how to teach or what to teach—and when to teach it—or addressing all of the cross-country variables of skate skiing, classic skiing, double pole planting, waxable or fish scale skis, Lawrence said he sees a new generation of coaches and teachers ready to benefit from the exact kind of information and training that PSIA-AASI does best.

To that end, and even though present Nordic Team members spend as much time cross-country skiing and skating as they do carving telemark turns down the fall line, Lawrence said plans for the next team include positions for telemark and cross-country specialists, to help specifically target the sport’s diverging tracks.

Helping to tap into those emerging opportunities, Reese Brown, SnowSports Industries America’s new nordic director, spent the morning skiing with the Nordic Team, discussing how instructors, manufacturers, and retailers might combine their skills to everyone’s benefit.

Maybe that was why no one seemed to notice where the time went. Or because of the blue sky, or the big views, or the sensation of skimming across the earth. But by the time the team members had gathered all of their gear to head to the base for afternoon meetings, the download chair had stopped. And if it weren’t for the mountain operations crew with the beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog, then everyone might have had to hike down the snowgun-covered lower faces in their boots.

But they were only too happy to pile the whole team into the back of their truck, easing down the access roads as the conversation continued, and the sun sparkled through the trees, and everywhere in the air, there was the anticipation for the season about to start.

—Peter Kray