Image of Photo and Caption

Cool picture of me appeared in The Mountain Mail yesterday. The powder has been awesome at Monarch. Eric Ramsey has been taking pictures and I'm very happy to go along. This one ended up on 9 News and in the local paper. I think he likes how I can ski right at him without hitting him and the plastic things on my fingers that define my gloves. Actually this wasn't better powder than yesterday. This picture was taken about four days ago. The powder has been getting better and better everyday!

It's hard to teach lessons on the beginner hill when there is so much great powder on the mountain. But it's all good. Those of us who have been around awhile know where the great powder stashes are even after the 9 am crowd mashes up the hill.

The tree skiiing is gettin' really good these days at Monarch. I'll tell you about the Mirage trees and the Zipper cliffs, but if you really want to know where the great stashes are you'll just have to try and keep up. Then there's the Cat Skiing and Mirkwood. Mirkwood is really great if you can get a ride up. I'm getting lazy these days where I don't like to hike so much when the powder is so awesome inbounds.

Look me up. I'll show you where to go.

I'm In An Article!

Last week I was asked to teach a lesson for marketing purposes. Our marketing director had arranged the lesson for a writer that writes for the Rocky Mountain News. Here is a link to the article as it appeard in an online journal called Real Vail. Click here.

I really enjoyed meeting Luis and Patrina. I know I had fun.

New Terminology

I had a returning student (Steven Owen) a few days ago that asked me to help him find an "imperceptible trigger." I thought that was so cool. I hope to use these words in future lessons. I think what he was seeing was the smoothness of good skiers and wants to emulate how good they look going from one turn to the next, the "imperceptible trigger." 

When he told me that he was looking for the imperceptible trigger it made me think of using the feet and legs to start a turn. Steve was using old school hopping, rotary push-off kinds of moves with the initial turning force coming from his upper body. Can you see it?

I told him that I was once in a clinic with Bob Barnes (Encylopidia of Skiing Barnes) where he told me that the worst movement you can do with your feet in skiing is better than the best movement you can do in skiing with your upper body. I suggested that even though movements in your feet are small (imperceptible) they have a huge affect on the rest of the movements that happen throughout the turn. Boot technology helps to make it so. They are designed to respond to movements we do with our feet and legs.

During the lesson we worked on ankle flexion/extension, rolling the feet to the edges and the flat place between the turns, and steering the feet/legs/thighs in the direction of the turns. These were the "imperceptible triggers" that we worked on. 

I thanked him for the cool words and hope to ski with him again someday.