Snow sports: Plenty goes into instructing skiers on the slopes

The foundation of the sport of skiing is the unheralded ski instructor.

Laboring in the background largely with “never-evers,” (as in never skied) novices and intermediates, ski and snowboard instructors don’t make much money, work often in tough weather conditions and shoulder demanding physical tasks such as being on their feet for many hours and bending and lifting.

Furthering the sport

Instructors are responsible for bringing most skiers and riders into the sport and culture (well, maybe not to après-ski bars).

They impart time-tested techniques that have been developed over the past 80 years and distilled along with advances in equipment and knowledge. This technical knowledge is critical for teaching safe, fun and skillful skiing and riding.

For Richard Phelps of West Boylston, a ski instructor and instructor trainer at Wachusett Mountain, instructing is a way of life during ski season, when he works full time during the week on the slopes, shepherding new and inexperienced skiers into the sport.

Two seasons ago, Phelps, 61, earned a coveted and hard-to-achieve Level 2 certification from the Professional Ski Instructors of America, the main governing body for ski instructors in the U.S. That enabled him to become a ski instructor trainer at Wachusett, plus get a few extra bucks.

The all-day exam is arduous, to say the least.

Tough teachers

Veteran PSIA examiners are notorious for failing people for, well, not perfectly executing the suite of fundamental maneuvers — based on national standards — that instructors are expected to model with students, including the wedge (the old snowplow), wedge christie (the old stem christie) and “railroad track,” or carved, turns.

“It's not easy to do, even though technically, when you talk about level two, you're talking about being certified to teach intermediate skiers,” Phelps said. “It doesn’t sound like it’s difficult, but it is.”

The test comes at the annual PSIA Snow Pro Jam on the fourth day of a five-day series of “colleges,” or all-day coaching and training sessions, held annually at larger ski areas across the country.

The first part of the week is focused on teaching and learning.

“People are really driven during the first three days to get coached by these awesome examiners and work on their techniques and get all prepared to take the exam,” Phelps said. “And then the examiners’ personalities change dramatically.”

“At first, they’re your buddies, and then on day four, they go silent,” he added. “Suddenly, you're on stage, and they're not going to hold your hand anymore.”

Ski fundamentals

Much of the instructor’s task is imparting “dynamic balance,” the art of skiing safely and in control in a variety of weather and trail conditions, whether on steep inclines, narrow or crowded trails or variable snow.

Undergirding dynamic balance are technical criteria that collectively go by the acronym BERP: balance, edging control, rotation control and pressure control.

“But we don't talk about these fundamentals when we're teaching customers because truly you will lose their interest if you talk to them in this kind of, ski instructor-speak,” Phelps said. “But we need to understand it and apply it and find ways to communicate it to them that they will understand and that they will feel kinesthetically.”

This year’s Snow Pro Jam was held Dec. 13-17 at Killington in Vermont and drew up about 400 ski, snowboard, adaptive and telemark instructors from across the East and even a few from the West — a few less than usual because of the pandemic.

Cheryl Holland of Westminster, wife of Wachusett Ski & Snowboard School director Thom Norton and head of the ski area’s Polar Kids program, was the only Wachusett instructor to earn a Level 2 rating at the December 2021 Snow Pro Jam.

Phelps said he went this time around (the event was canceled last season) to further refine his skills and meet up with old colleagues.

“Besides picking up new bags of tricks to improve your own skiing, it’s about learning things that you can share with others, your customers, to improve their skiing and make it more interesting for them and more fun,” he said. “You always want to build fun in because without fun people aren't going learn, and they're certainly not going to want to come back if they're not having fun.”

Ski family

Phelps grew up in a recreational skiing family in Clifton Park, New York, near Albany, and moved to Central Massachusetts in the 1980s after college to help his brother run a Ski Market shop at Wachusett before Wachusett opened its modern day MTNside Ski and Ride shop in the ski area base lodge.

Since 1985, Tom Phelps has owned and operated the Crossed Sabers Ski & Board shop in Raynham and is now handing over the shop to his son, Tyler.

As for Richard Phelps, when ski season is over, he returns to his marketing and sales manager job at ValueCalendars.com in Gardner. Before that job, Phelps spent 17 years doing marketing and communications for the College of the Holy Cross. He’s in his sixth season ski instructing at Wachusett.

Snowmaking guns fire

Anyone who’s skied at Wachusett during the recent and welcome cold snap has witnessed the Princeton ski magnet’s massive fleet of energy efficient snow guns spewing out huge amounts of machine-made snow.

Wachusett isn’t afraid to let the guns rip even after the traditional early season snowmaking run in November and December. As a result, the ski area is improbably nearly 100 percent open even after a spate of rain over the holidays.

Ski Ward in Shrewsbury is open for business and also has been manufacturing plenty of snow under the expert snowmaking guidance of owner John LaCroix.

Berkshire East in Charlemont also has had its guns roaring in recent days and re-opened this week after a two-day break to resurface.

Up north, as reported by Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast author Stuart Winchester, Pats Peak in Henniker, New Hampshire, has been doing the same.

Most areas, ranging from Mount Snow in southern Vermont to Attitash in northern New Hampshire, have also been making a lot of snow to try to compensate for this season’s unusually dry and mostly warm weather.

But larger resorts, with their more ample acreage, aren’t close to opening as much terrain as places like Wachusett and Pats Peak.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Plenty goes into instructing skiers on the slopes