Ski Lesson 4 Me

A When you spend much of you ski time teaching other people how to ski, when I get a chance to go out with one of the top level instructors for a day it is a special day for me. One of my best friend Heidi is not only on the cover of our trail map again this year, she is on the Western Demonstration Team for Ski Instructors of America. This is the highest honor you can achieve in our division and in April she will be trying out for a spot on the National Demonstration Team. Heidi also does double winters by going to Australia in the summer to teach and ski. I first met Heidi when she came to Heavenly as a first time instructor. I helped her up the ranks in our certification process and now the tables are turned she is my coach. On Saturday we were both at Boulder and got off in the afternoon and went out for a spin around the mountain. She shared with me all the latest buss words being use in upper level skiing and showed me though some great demos exactly what she was talking about. Skiing has changed so much with the development of shape skies we are making new moves and to keep up with these top dogs you have to be able to adapt your old school to the new school technique. After some diagnosis and tips we played a game of cat and mouse. That is when the leader goes and that would be Heidi and I would follow her turn for turn and make the turn at the exact same time she is mimicking her body movements. You have to trust the person behind you because if you want to stop you signal them by raising your pole into the air and we move apart. I try to say as close as I can. What a blast. Even better I got to ski on her Speedmachine Moc 3 and at then end of the day she sold them to me. It was a deal I could not pass up. I have been testing new skis and these are outstanding, very stable and can make great short turns. They are not as forgiving as I may like but I love the stability and great for teaching on. It is so great to be back in action again and able to ski with the best of the best in our sport.