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Get your own Free Home PageRon Mumma and I decided to go for the weekend of instruction 8 – 11 January. The weather was partially cooperative. By dark on Thursday the 8th I still had one mountain to cross and it was snowing hard, which made me wish I had left two hours earlier as the driving was not easy. It snowed all night and stopped at daybreak. It was cold and 4 to 6 inches of freshly groomed snow provided great skiing for Friday. It warmed up over Friday night, but the skiing Saturday morning was still good. BUT --- as the morning class was ending at noon, a few drops of rain fell. By the time I finished eating lunch, it was raining steadily. I do not ski in the rain. It was raining when I went to bed at 11:00, but when I awoke at 5:30 it was snowing sideways. At 7:00 when I got up nothing was falling and it was cold again. I joined the Sunday morning class and found the slopes not bad. The snow was very hardpacked, but not really icy and my class skied until noon.
Now for the ski instruction. There were about 40 folks on this trip, of which 16 were certified ski instructors, so that gave us classes of 3 or fewer. The lessons lasted about 3 hours each morning and were outstanding. The instructors were personable and it was almost like private ski lessons. They are teaching something a bit different from instructions I have had in the past. That has been to plant your pole, set your edges, and make your turn. Now they are teaching that you keep your poles up and kind of slide into the turn by leaning into the turn. I don’t quite understand all of what they are telling me, but they had a number of exercises to work on. During the week at Keystone, I will attempt to develop some of their techniques. They said that the people instructing the instructors are teaching the technique used by the World Cup racers.
We stayed at the only lodging there, Canaan Valley Resort, which is within 5 miles of both Canaan Ski Area and Timberline. The main lodge is very nice with a huge dining room. We were in the adjoining extensions, which were two-story motel-type rooms. The trip leader arranged for a bus to take us to dinner. Friday evening we went to the White Grass Ski CafÈ, which is an old, rustic, one-room with informal, but adequate service. It is located in the middle of nowhere, but they had a young, foursome who entertained us with bluegrass and folk music. Our Saturday bus ride took us to Mountain State Brewery, just beyond downtown Davis (three blocks long). They had a long bar and a large room with three small tables, one sofa, two easy chairs to accommodate our 40 hungry skiers. They are not a restaurant and I don’t think they serve food often. Our trip leader had negotiated with them for “Mexican” food and the cook wanted to be sure we were coming because he would have to go out and buy food. He provided the ingredients to make burritos. The food was terrible! For entertainment there was a man with a guitar who played and sang folk and blues music. Many folks had fun with a bean bag toss game. One instructor showed videos he had taken of us skiing, analyzed what we were doing, and made suggestions for improvement.
The weekend was a great bargain. For $380 we got three nights lodging, three full breakfasts, three days of lift tickets, and nine hours of professional ski instruction. SDWDC has another Ski School weekend at Snowshoe 26 February to 1 March and the cost is $651, including bus transportation. The Timberline trip was get there on your own.
In conclusion, this was a worthwhile trip. The trip was well run, the people were friendly and ranged on age from about 30 to 75. The three-person classes provided excellent instruction and you should consider doing it.
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