The Great Ski-Off

By Carson Bennett, 2-21-08

	Caption: Taos Ski Instructors facilitate the ski-off

It is a sunny Sunday morning in the Taos Ski Valley. I buy my special January Ski Week ticket for $75 at the Ski School office, park my skis in a rack at the base of the mountain, and walk inside Tenderfoot Katie’s Cafeteria to put on my ski boots. I’m not sure what to expect today, and I’m nervous. Will I be stuck with a group of ski school students who timidly snowplow their way down the groomers? Will I be struggling to keep up to an instructor who leaves his/her students behind? Will the instructor be a hard-ass or a cheerleader?

The last time I took a skiing lesson I think I was ten years old, and no matter how many times I caught an edge or was tossed in the back seat by a mogul, the instructor applauded and told me I was doing great. I wasn’t doing great. It frustrated the hell out of me.

The ski week students line up at chair five, an older, slower, smaller chair only a few yards to the left of chair one, the main chair lift on the front side. All the times I’ve been to Taos, I have never seen chair five running. I didn’t even know it worked. I say as much to the guy sitting next to me on the lift. “Oh, so you’ve never been to ski week before,” he says. I shake my head. “They only use chair five on the first day of ski week, just to get everybody up for the ski-off.”

“The what?”

I haven’t heard of the ski-off, but as the chair continues on, past Al’s Run and the top of lift one and to the top of a short hill I have never seen before, I figure it out. At the top of chair five the first of three processes for dividing all ski week participants by skill level begins. A sign asks us to turn left if we’re comfortable on expert runs, turn right if we’re not. Simple enough. When the chair reaches the top of the hill, I turn left.

Fifty or sixty people jockey for position at the top of the short run. A Taos ski instructor, clad in the signature sunshine yellow Taos Ski School jacket, stands at the front of the mob. He has just finished shouting instructions to the crowd. I haven’t heard a word, but no one else is asking questions, so I ski to the back of the line and pretend to adjust my bindings.

“Alrighty!” the instructor finally shouts. “First of all, you are on the expert side. This means that you WILL be spending your week on the bumps and steeps. You WILL be in the trees. You WILL NOT be cruising the groomers. Does everyone understand?” Most of us nod. I let out a half-hearted “woo-hoo!” and then pretend to adjust my bindings again.

“Okay! So here’s how this works,” he continues. One by one I will ask you to ski down to the instructors below. When you get to the bottom, the instructors will divide you up into groups. Any questions?” No questions. “Let’s go.”

Standing at the top of the hill, I’m even more nervous. This is the second method for paring separating participants into groups. I didn’t realize I would have to try out for ski school. I haven’t taken a warm-up run. Sure, I’ve skied a half a dozen times already this season, sure, this is a mere fifty yards or so at a low angle on a groomer, what could be easier? But still, I don’t feel ready. All of a sudden, it’s my turn. I try to look confident. “Go!” I push off, make one mediocre and three solid turns, and another instructor at the bottom shouts “Eight!” as I ski by. Eight? By this time, instructors and students have congregated in small packs all over the base of the run. Another instructor to my right hears the first and waves at me. I ski over to him.

“Have you skied Taos before?”

“Yes.”

“What’re your favorite runs?”

“Blitz, Reforma, Longhorn…”

“Okay, go stand over there.” He points to a small cluster of skiers and then turns back to watch the last few students make their turns in the ski-off. I realize that was the third step in the process. First, we divide ourselves. Second, they divide us by watching us make a few turns. Third, a short and sweet interview, and they place us in our ski week group.

My group has only seven people in it. The largest group I see only has eight. I’m surprised that I’m the youngest skier among them. Three of the students in my group are easily over fifty, and I realize that most people in ski week are much older than the “typical” skiers I see at mountains like Arapahoe Basin, Wolf Creek, Purgatory, and only three of us have never taken a ski week before. I feel like I’ve just joined a club.

Our instructor’s name is “Dano” (most of the instructors seem to go by nicknames—I saw “Mugsey,” the guy who hosted the clinic in Albuquerque, helping with the ski-off). Dano has been an instructor at Taos for 15 years, and he has that kind of effortless confidence in his skis and the snow and the mountain that all great skiers have. After he introduces himself to us, and us to him, he tells us the plan for the day while skiing backwards toward chair two.

First, he says, he just wants to watch us ski. So we ski. We do a few laps on Bambi and Upper Powderhorn. At first, Dano gives minimal feedback but watches us closely. Then we do a few exercises I’ve never heard of or seen before, like the two-pole turn. The two-pole turn is like rowing a canoe. At the beginning of the turn, instead of planting one pole on the inside, we touch the snow with both poles, which forces us to lean to the inside, rather than forcing the ski to turn by turning our ankles, or by weighting and un-weighting the inside ski. Suddenly, after one exercise, I am carving more smoothly than I ever have before.

Any doubts I had in my mind evaporate. I am going to learn a lot this week.