Adam Jewell – Search & Affiliate Marketing

The 2009 PSIA National Academy is now over. It’s the kind of event you look forward to all year with eager anticipation for the time you touch down in Salt Lake City and the shuttle drops you off at the Cliff Lodge. You are there with the top skiers and ski teachers in the US and sometimes from around the world.

Day 5 of the 2009 PSIA National Academy ended with the final banquet and then a few (to many) drinks at Aerie restaurant & lounge on the 10th floor of the Cliff lodge. Today is was a little rough getting up in the morning. Bruno, my roomate from West Virginia was out the door to catch a flight at 4am and after getting up at 7am or so for the last 5 days, enjoyed getting a little more sleep. Sapporo, tequila shots and Polygamy Porter can combine in such a way as to make the body crave a little more sleep.

A new roomate, Harley moved in as we decided it would be a good way to save a few bucks by spliting the cost of the room. By about noon I was out on the slopes and feeling a little sluggish from the previos nights’ festivities and simply skiing my @ss off the previous 6 days.

I took a few runs in Mineral Basin, tried out the bumps on slopes serviced by the Wilbere chair, had some pizza and a drink at one of the places under the Snowbird tram and called it a day at about 4:00. The snow was really heavy, wet and sticky all over the mountain. This usually makes for great spring bumps. The bumps were ok but the snow was so heavy and thick it took a lot of work to ski the bumps and wade through all the heavy stuff.

After skiing, the happy hour special at the Wildflower Lounge at the Iron Blossom lodge hit the spot. The pizza of the day was pesto with mushrooms and sausage & was delicious. To round out the happy hour dinner a dozen wings were added to the order. A real diner with tax and tip for $15.00 at a ski resort is a great deal and it hit the spot tonight! Following dinner there was time to write but no energy to go out and do anything else. Even with intense daily exercise, 7 straight days of hard skiing in high altitude, low oxygen air takes a toll after a while and leads to exhaustion.

As I write this, the sky is spitting some wet snow at the slopes so tomorow could be an amazing powder day, it could be solid ice everywhere or the same slushy kind of snow today was. In any case it had been another amazing experience at the 2009 PSIA National Academy and there is one more day of free skiing to go before returning to the daily grind of staring at a computer screen 8 hours a day. There has got to be a better way to do something I love and make money at it. If the economy claims my job, it’ll be a great chance to start thinking differently and go do something that does a better job of aligning interests and work.

Now that the 2009 PSIA National Academy is over, we’ll be anxiously awaiting anouncement of the dates and location of the 2010 PSIA National Academy. It’s sure to be one of, it not THE best ski instructor event in the US in 2010! Will it be at Snowbird or overseas somewhere?

The final day of the 2009 PSIA National Academy started of with the usual great breakfast buffet at the Aerie restaraunt on the 10th floor of the Cliff Lodge. My roomate, Bruno was up for the morning exercises at about 6am but that is far to early for me to be getting up. A few minute before 9am I got down to the Snowbird tram and joined the morning clinic group with Andy Docken again. It’s amazing how fast these events just zoom by. I can’t believe it is the last day already.

We took the tram up and skied Mineral basin to start off the day. We skied groomers to start out, did a little ungroomed crud and then hit some bumps. I didn’t use the helmt cam at all today but did have the regular digital camera and got some great pictures. Andy was nice enough to take hte camera and get some great action shots of me and the rest of the group. He actually got some of the best action shots of me skiing that have ever been taken. It’s tough getting good action shots but he did an amazing job.

The afternoon clinic was an intro to Park & Pipe – essentially riding half pipes, rails boxes, jumping and other freestyle skiing techniques. The afternoon sessions are only about 2 – 2.5 hours so it is obviously impossible to cover a whole lot in such an area as large as Park and Pipe. For this clinic we had PSIA Demo Team Member David Oliver. Dave is an awesome guy and a great instructor.

When surveyed, the group was most interested in learning 180′s and helicopters. It seems that the language has changed since I gave freestyle much thought. If you started talking baotu helicopters in a group of young freestyle skiers, they’d probably start looking up in the sky for a helicopter. Now the proper term seems to be a 3 for 360. The other thing we worked on was riding rails except we didn’t have any rails to ride and most in the group probably would have sustained some serious body damage had we jumped right in to trying to ride rails.

Dave had a very simple, yet valuable progression of steps and skills to work on to get to the point of being able to do 180′s, 360′s and riding rails.

The first topic in the clinic was basic safety, how to manage a class so as to minimize the chance of injury and maximize learning. This was a review of safety basics, where to stand, where to have a group meet (off to the side of the trail), be aware of all the surroundings, keep people spaced out when traversing a catwalk or other narrow trail.

Next up was thinking more in terms of freestyle and going with the flow of the snow and terrain in front of you. Ride the bumpy stuff like a dolphin, get a little air here and there, look for terrain and obstacles to get some air, do a little jump and have some fun. Back when I started skiing, the safety patrol would be after you in a second if you actively skied like that and took advantage of terrain to get airborn and do some tricks. Now that freestyle is becoming more and more accepted at resorts and there are more and more pro freestyle events, it is becoming much more accepted to ski and ride in a freestyle manner.

The first specific freestyle more we dabbled with was the helicopter or 360. Natually we didn’t just start jumping in the air and pulling off 360′s but we did start with exercises that would help us learn the movements and progress toward being able to get airborn and pull off a 180 or 360. Whirlybirds were the exercise of choice – simply skiing down the hill and spining around with the skis on the snow. This was first done on a steady grade groomed slope and then on the crest of a ridge where you might actually be able to get enough air to do a 180 or 360 .

With this approach we weren’t able to achieve our goal of being able to do a 360 but we were armed with the progression of steps to take that could lead us to be able to successfully launch and land a 360 while minimizing the chance of major injuries. Keeping a low center of gravity and keeping the skis relatively flat were also emphasized as keys to successfully ripping the first 360.

The next skill was riding a rail. This is where you ski down a hill, jump and turn sideways and ride (what is generally) a metal sideways rail for a short distance. Obviously, there is an inherint danger in riding rails, particularly when just learning the skill. Dave had an ingenius solution to this issue and that was simply to us a couple rubber bands to keep the brakes in the skis restrained and then turn the a ski upsidedown and push it into the snow. Instantly you have a slippery rail that is right in the snow. With the rail right in the snow, its easy to practice riding rails without the danger of actually riding one when you don’t know how to ride them. It is a simply brilliant approach and this ski turned upside down in the snow kept us all busy for at least 20 minutes “playing”. Dave presented very simple, yet immensly valuable things that we could use in our own personal skiing as well is in any freestyle lessons we might teach.

Following the clinics, we hit the hot tub for a while and had a couple beers. I skipped the classroom clinic and never did make it to any of those all week. The classroom clinics were from 5-6 and that was recovery time from skiing hard all day. Had those clinics been after dinner in the same room as the banquets, it would have been much easier to just stay seated there and soak up the information.

As is tradition the last night of the PSIA National Academy, there is a final banquet. The ski groups typically get a card and gift for the weekly clinic leader. There is a collection of videos and still photos shown to the group and people tend to let loose a bit more than on any of the previous nights of the academy.

We all got PSIA National Academy certificates as well as the PSIA National Academy pins. These pins are the same size and look very similar to the Level 3 full certification pins so when people see you on the slopes with the National Academy pins they think you are a big deal (cause they think you are level 3 unless they look at it very carefully).

After the banquet, most everyone headed up to the Aerie for a night cap. The place is an outrageously expensive place to drink but for one night out it was worth it. We all had a blast and drank enough to get a little buzz going. It was a great finish to anoher great event. Sometime around September 2009, we’ll be anxiously awaiting the anouncement for the details of the 2010 PSIA National Academy!

Day 4 of the 2009 PSIA National Academy started out like the previous 3 with bright sunny skies, soft now in Mineral Basin and a morning clinic with Andy Docken of Aspen Highlands resorts. Everyone in the group was holding up well as was the snow considering the almost hot sunny weather.

Mineral Basin softened up before the rest of the mountain in the morning and we stared the day there. Later in the morning session, we bounced back to the Peruvian side, skied the Cirque and a variety of other terrain.

Following another good (and free) lunch thanks to the folks at PSIA National, it was off to the afternoon elective – The Video Session. Another amazing PSIA demo team skier, Nick Herrin Director of the Ski and Ride School at Crested Butte, Colorado. Nick is an amazing skier and did a phenomenal job running and filming the video session. Video sessions typically don’t involve much skiing because it tends to take up so much time actually filming and then going into watch and critique it. For this video session we took about 3 runs and got in some good video.

Nick filmed one run on groomed terrain, one in crud and one in bumps. We were out on the slopes for about 90 minutes and then headed down to the Alpine Room (I think it was) in the Tram Building. We had about 8 people in the group and got some great feedback on each of the different types of terrain we skied. Video is such a useful tool for improving your skiing since you can actually see what the instructor sees and is giving you feedback on.

My biggest takeaway from the video session was timing of the pole plants. My skiing in the bumps looked pretty sharp but on the groomers and in the crud I was forcing the pole plants and making a more abrupt turn than necessary so needed to work on a more smooth turn initiation. The PSIA folks bring their own personal video cameras for the video sessions which is cool. The PSIA National Academy is simply one of the best events in any professional organization and it’s probably bootstrapped more than we know. This year was every bit as good as last year and the national staff who put it all together did an amazing job on absolutely everything from the opening banquet to the skiing sessions to the dinners and banquets.

Tonight there was no banquet so we were on our own for dinner. The Wildflower down at the Iron Blossom lodge had a wing special so I headed down there for 2 dozen wings and a Siera Nevada Pale ale. After letting that settle for a while, I hit the hot tub for about an hour and a half and then headed back to the room and hit the sack.

Next up is Day 5 (the final day) of the 2009 PSIA National Academy In Snowbird Utah!

Today at the 2009 PSIA National Academy, it was a scorcher out in Snowbird. The temps much have topped 60 degrees during the day and there was not a cloud in the sky. The day started out as usual with breakfast at the Aerie at the top of the Cliff lodge and we met once again down at the base of the tram.

The Peruvian Express was closed to day so the only way to get up the hill on the front was the tram. That’s ok if there is nobody at the resort but when you have to wait up to a half an hour to get on the tram, the Peruvian Express chairlift shouldn’t be closed. It’s also nice to have a charilift as an option up the hill becuase on the tram your feet never get a break since you have to stand on the tram.

Once we got up the tram it was off to Mineral Basin. The sun hits Mineral basin first and if you wan to have any chance of skiing something other than bulletproof crud, Mineral Basin is where the odds of good snow are best. We started out over there on some groomers working on controlling the skis, a little edging and turning to sharpen some basic skills.

After several runs on the groomers, it was off to the deep, softening crud also in Mineral Basin. There were some excellent runs in there and no major spills by anyone in the group. Afte that, we hit the Peruvian Basin (front side of Snowbird) and found some different crud and some steeps. Then came lunch. The group had lunch together in the Rendezvous room under the tram again.

In the afternoon, I was schedule to join the “powder and crud” clinic. Seeing as any powder would probably be at least several hundred miles away, crud it was for the full afternoon. This was a lucky afternoon! The clinic group ended up being only 4 people and the clinic leader, Jeb Boyd PSIA Demo Team member from the Eastern Division. Jeb was great and we had a blast while working on more upper body movements to help feel more stable and in control in the crud. We ran the Little Cloud lift for the entire session after waiting in line at the tram for about half an hour to get up initially. Jeb also runs the Arc2Arc Alpine Training Center that offers a variety of coaching, camps, private training and consulting services for recreational through pro athletes.

The Little Cloud area of Snowbird was awesome. It had softened up nicely, wasn’t insanely steep to the point where skiing it is simply no fun and the crowd over there was minimal. The folks in the group were all strong skiers and it was a very interactive session.

Throughout the day I took a few pictures and was able to finally get the helmet cam to work. It’s kind of a pain to take that thing on and off my head all the time but there should be some good video from it. Tomorow I’ll get more footage with it and possibly post anything that comes out well.

We were all on our own for dinner tonight and went down to the Mexican place in the Cliff lodge for some GREAT Mexican food. I went with Jeff Striper, an old bud I used to teach with at 7 Springs back in the good old days. Jeff is a cool guy and always up for an outdoor or travel adventure.

The first day of telemark skiing for me will be tomorrow and tonight I got fitted for boots and skis. The conditions don’t seem to be that good for telemark skiing but I’ll be learning from some of the best instructors in the country so should come away with some new skills.

The night cap was a local band in the Tram Club in the Tram building. It was the first time I’ve ever gone down there for any night life and it was a nice way to kick bck and relax for a little while. It’s now around 11:30pm and time to hit the sack so I’ve got plenty of energy for a full day of telemark skiing tomorrow!