realskiers

I've been following the Welsh Village and Whistler/Blackcomb PMTS ski school development on the PMTS forum. It's great to see some traction for Harald in lieu of traditional ski schools. My read is that Welsh Village came to PMTS via the racing program first and then into the ski school. At my little mountain, the racing program and the traditional teaching programs are different entities, and, the "holy wars" exist between the groups. I can understand racing coaches becoming excited about the material in "Essentials of Skiing" as there is little good material on the subject. I have vivid memories of Helluvaskier ranting that as a junior he was frustrated at lack of good race coaching. At season's end, it would be of interest to see the improvement records of the Welsh Village junior racers.

I've mused about how PMTS movements are introduced to a brand new skier and how they develop without the stability of a basic wedge turn. Presumably, the movements are those shown in his Expert Skier I book. It seems the movement progressions would take a lot of time and require very gentle terrain. Friends who teach at my home mountain have expressed concern about turning new skiers into guided missiles (skiing parallel), and, that's one, safety-based argument for a wedge system. (not trying to start any holy wars here ).

I look forward to a season's end summary from Whistler as several very high level Canadian instructors participated in the training. Can "lift and tip" be something we hear a lot more on the slopes?

Josh or Epic,
Could you comment on how the racing teams at Stowe are trained as differentiated from the ski school.