PSIA-NW Winter Blast

This was one of my favorite clinics of all time. I ended up with the top group or the more advanced group. We had three days and the first day we focused on the end of the turn or how we get out of the turn. We did a lot of hockey stops. The second day we focused on how we get into the turn. We did a lot of wedge christie twisties or drift turns into the turn. The third day we put it all together.

The terrain at Crystal is amazing. They did not have the most amount of snow, but we still had fun. I convinced the group to traverse for some powder. One gentleman smoked a rock. Woops. The next day we hiked to something called silver basin. The snow had piled into this area and it was some of the best turns we had the whole trip.

One participant, Michael Drake, was in my first ever National Academy group where he and I were both participants. This was 2009. He was in my group now in 2024. He loves skiing and is a student of the sport. He took a lot of notes and later he asked me to sign his notebook. It was so cool. I was honored. I feel like I succeeded in this clinic more than others because I set up an environment of play and experimentation. We all were trying things and it was so fun.