A New Hire
In 1983, I joined Northstar's ski school: first as pupil, then as teacher. A college drop-out, I worked nights as a host at Schaffer's Mill restaurant at the threshold of Northstar Village. My housemate and I car-pooled in my lame little Fiat sedan (don't ask), and since he worked as a lift attendant we'd arrive pretty early. Almost daily, I took the free lessons Northstar offered employees. On the advice of my new mentors, I attended race clinics weekly, bought new skis and boots, and every morning before lessons practiced diligently what they taught. Slowly I progressed.
By the end of the season, racing and tennis teacher Zeke Straw—a fast-skiing, blond ski school supervisor who seemed to embody the athletic young coach—said I was skiing well enough to teach. Just dumb enough to believe him, I bought an expensive "learn to be a ski instructor" clinic with ski school director Mike Iman, a high-level operative in the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA). Soon, like every aspiring instructor, I joined the PSIA too. When Iman hired me the following season, I was ecstatic. I also had almost no idea what I was doing.
Starving, With Style
Teaching seemed like a good gig back then. I looked up to the senior instructors, who enjoyed some status. Credible rumors had top workers earning over $200/day including tips, and some essentially ran their own shows. (Later, at Alta, some earned hundreds more, and I wonder if they still do.) For them, free-skiing in uniform could yield "request privates" at higher pay (when customers admired a teacher enough to book an expensive, individualized lesson). Large classes generated both small bonuses and request privates too. Ski passes were unrestricted. Many instructors were manufacturer "reps" who ran profitable "pro-form" businesses out of their lockers, selling everything ski-related at smart discounts.
We "new guys"—newbies hadn't been invented yet—taught mostly novice kids, usually all-day with lunch included. I can't recall exactly what I made, but it was enough to live on, barely. My second full season (my first as a ski teacher), I rented a studio at the Incline Village Racquet Club for $250/month. Food, clothing and transport were cheap, as were car and medical insurance. One pair of skis was enough, or maybe two if you were a serious NASTAR racer (I wasn't). We worked plenty because the ski school was small and seemingly everybody took lessons. Northstar paid us to attend training clinics: there were lots, some of which had value. I quickly transitioned to a mix of kids, adults and privates.
PSIA guru and ski school director Iman always assured us that he cared and a better future lay ahead. To a 24-year old, it seemed plausible.
Back to School
A very brief and unsuccessful encounter with a tree led to several days in the hospital and the first of three knee surgeries. As PSIA child clinician Paul Mundy urged one evening in the mid-Eighties over apres-ski beer at Schaffer's Mill, I needed to finish college. I took his advice to heart—along with my lesson from the tree—and earned my undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and then a JD from UC Hastings. But I was hooked on skiing, loved to share it through teaching, and managed to stay on at Northstar all the way through law school.
With a year at a now-defunct big law firm in-between, I spent a winter with Vail marketing, taking skier surveys on chairlifts, then moved to Utah. I bought a pass at Snowbird my first season (around $1,200 at the time), where I scared myself silly. Then I taught at Park City and free-skied at Alta for five incredible winters. Like practically everyone else there, I learned deep powder and got addicted to it. During summers, I did contract work for other lawyers (and before that, spent two summers as a musician on cruise ships). It wasn't profitable—props to my big brother for putting me up (and putting up with me) in Salt Lake City—but it was a good life nonetheless.
Certifiable
By 1995 I'd developed enough skill and experience to attain Full Certification with PSIA, a coveted accomplishment they'd oddly renamed "Level III." As a ski teacher, I'd finally arrived. Yet even back then, it was clear that something in the ski teaching world had gone badly awry. Contrary to Iman's always-soothing speeches, we not only weren't better off, we were much worse. More importantly, so were our students and the larger public. Though I went on to teach for several more years, the problem nagged at me.
The whole experience led me to study the PSIA: it's history, documents, structure, policies, and how they relate to all I've observed since 1983. The problem, I've learned, is not what experienced skiers (or even teachers) might conjure. Specifically, it's neither that PSIA students invariably get stuck in movements like the also oddly-renamed "wedge christie" (they do), nor even that PSIA nonsense belies its real goals (it does). While these are substantial issues for enthusiasts, they are only symptoms of a more pernicious reality.
So what's up with the PSIA? Soon I hope to have a website devoted to it, but meanwhile, that's the focus of this series of posts, dedicated to my colleagues and students of the last few decades.
Best wishes,
Joseph Bochner