The ski industry is small

Resort operators do everything they can to get two strong seasons out of their properties each year and have something left over for shareholders who took extreme risks on their project. After lift tickets and ski rentals, customers spend the next largest amount on private ski guides and instruction. Yet that money doesn’t go to the instructors, who are paid poorly and rely on building relationships with their clients to maximize tips.

Equipment, lodging, and lift tickets are very expensive. The learning curve is slow and long. Snowboarding has peaked. Skiing is on a downhill slope to becoming a retro 20th-century sport for wealthy foreigners.

I believe we can revitalize skiing by changing the way skiing is taught.

Table of contents:

• Introduction

• The Problem with Ski School

• Equipment

• On the Ice

• Day One: Side Slip and Hockey stop

• Day Two: Linked Hockey Stops

• Day Three: Up and Down

• Day Four: Lift the Inside Tail

• Tips and Troubleshooting

• Specialty Clinics

• Fixing Ski School

• Is Global Warming Threatening Skiing?

• Summary

By day five, beginners should be skiing the groomed black runs and be in control anywhere on the mountain.

1. Introduction

Who am I? My name is David Siegel. I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’ve skied about 500 days. Here are my qualifications:

I was never on ski-school staff. I’d rather ski all day and compete on weekends than teach. But I used to clinic with the Snowbird ski school, created and taught by Junior Bonous and Jerry Warren. Those two men taught me what I’m teaching here.

Exciting news: The sweater from that video is now property of the Alf Engen Ski Museum in Park City! I don’t know if they are displaying it, but you can ask to see David Siegel’s sweater and they’ll find it for you.

2. The problem with ski school

Today, ski school is more or less a babysitting service. Group lessons go at the pace of the slowest student, everyone has to be in his/her “comfort zone,” and the nicest teachers get the biggest tips. Nothing to do with skiing! The goal is to stay safe, have fun, and keep them coming back for more lessons.

I can teach a beginner (who has some experience on hockey skates) to ski all blue runs confidently in about three days. Without the skating experience, it takes a day or two longer.

If I went to a ski resort and said I could do that for their clients, they would say “No thanks, that would take away our ski-school revenue and profits.” Instructors would say “What about our relationships with rich people? Some of us consistently get $600 a day in tips alone! You want to take that away from us?”

Yeah, I kinda do. Or, at least I want people to know they have a choice. This web page will take you from beginner to expert skier in just a few days.

Today, on any mountain in the world, you can see the vast majority of people skiing down the hill leaning back:

In this video, we see a large class led by an instructor, and every single person is leaning back. Why? They learn to lean back to stop, to control speed, when things are uncertain, when it’s too steep, etc. That one habit keeps everyone in ski school and creates a cash cow for instructors and resort owners.

The other problem is the bunny hill. No one should learn to ski on the bunny hill. This is where all the bad habits are formed. It is dangerous. Here’s an instructor at an indoor ski hill actually showing how to lean back:

This is what beginner skiing looks like at any resort around the world, at any time in the last 60 years, everyone leaning back:

This is the problem we are here to solve.

I sympathize with instructors who have to teach this method, mostly to avoid law suits and to “keep students safe.” But it doesn’t keep them safe. My goal is to make you ski better so you don’t need me, or any instructor, after the first four days. Here is the theory, if you’re interested:

3. Equipment

Get shorter skis and poles than stores and instructors recommend. Get comfortable boots. If your boots aren’t comfortable and warm, nothing I tell you here will help. This is a video of me explaining the text below with a few props — you can either watch or keep reading.

Skis. Today’s skis are wide. That’s good. Wide is stable. My skis are very short — 150cm. They let me flip around backward while filming and they don’t make me tired. These days, anything between your collar bone and your nose is fine. The faster you go, the longer you want your skis. I recommend buying used skis and selling them later — that saves you from having to adjust bindings to your boots each time you rent.

Beginners should get skis that come up to about the base of their neck. Cheap skis with good bindings are a fine way to start. Don’t forget to wax the bottoms yourself (try Fast Stick) or get a professional hot wax, so you aren’t stuck on flat sections.

Skis today are very good. There isn’t a lot of difference between skis in a particular category. If you’re in the market, I recommend buying a pair of last-season’s high-end skis at half off when retailers are trying to get rid of inventory. The difference between skis that were new 1–4 years ago and new today is negligible.

Don’t save money on bindings! Your bindings should be in very good condition and less than five years old. Saving money on used bindings can be very costly. Spend money on boots and bindings, and move them to your next pair of skis as you improve.

I’m shocked at how little innovation we have in bindings, probably because of insurance and regulation. We used to have dozens of types of bindings, and now we have one. Is this really the optimal design? I used to ski on Burt bindings, which were a completely new idea. Yes, they fell apart, but they also gave me an entirely different range of performance and safety. Have we really exhausted all the ideas and converged on the perfect design? I doubt it.

Poles. The most important thing is to get the right length. Stand in your socks, hold the pole upside down under the basket, and your forearm should be parallel to the floor. Use a screwdriver and remove the straps — you don’t need them and they get in the way. I highly recommend Goode adjustable poles. Using an allen key, you can adjust these poles about 5" up and down to dial in the length you want and lend them to others. Throw the straps in the garbage.

Once you are in your boots and on skis, your forearms will angle down toward your hands when you put your poles into the snow. This is correct. You want to ski with your forearms parallel to the snow, bringing your pole tips off the snow when they are straight under your hands.

Boots. Today’s boots are very very similar. They are all designed around stiff racing boots and race courses, then they are detuned for consumers. This is too bad. They are generally difficult to get in and out of (though that has improved somewhat over the past few years), and they come in different stiffnesses (from around 80 to 140) rather than offering a flex adjustment. Why? If a retailer has to stock many stiffnesses of a boot in different sizes, they won’t be able to carry many brands, so it’s a form of shelf supremacy. In fact, it’s very possible to add flex adjustment to most boot designs.

Almost all boots today have four buckles and a top strap. If you’re racing, you might want the stiff boots and the strap. If you’re not racing, I recommend using a sharp bit to drill the strap out and throw it in the trash. It’s useless for most of us. Also note that there is no standardization, so one company’s 110 is another company’s 100 and yet another company’s 120. Try several different boots to see which fits your foot best.

There is so little innovation in today’s boots. Why are they all 98 percent the same? I believe it’s because all the marketing comes from racing, and racing boots are bound to be very similar. One boot that breaks the mold today is the Apex. You leave the exoskeleton in the skis and walk and drive wearing the inner boots. I’ve them tried in the store — they are not for people who get cold feet. I expect their second generation to be much better (and include a heater).

My boots are the Salomon X Pro 100 Custom Heat. Note that I am a top skier and I’m skiing the 100-flex boots — I like a soft boot that is comfortable and warm. Anything above 120 is for competition. I’m also completely flat footed. These Salomons let me put the shells in the oven, heat them, and then stand in them as they cool, pushing the shell out to fit my foot. I wouldn’t be comfortable in a normal shell, so this is an alternative to working with a bootfitter to punch, stretch, grind, and modify the shell. In this boot, my foot does that, because the plastic is so heat moldable. If you have flat, wide, or hard-to-fit feet, watch this video, which has now had 10k views:

I emailed Salomon before I Purchased. They said that their 100 boot comes with a flex adjuster that takes it to 110. I’ve tried both ways and ski it the firmer way, but I’m not sure there’s a difference. I think the numbers are confusing and don’t help consumers — boots should have flex adjustment like they used to back in the 1980s. They should also be a lot easier to put on and take off.

Here’s a current heated, rear-entry boot from Nordica:

I much prefer a heated boot, but make sure your heated boots can last all day long — that’s a relatively new feature for heated boots. Those of us with 5-year-old boots need to carry an extra USB battery in our pockets to keep our boots going.

If you are hard to fit, I recommend getting boots from either your local bootfitter or from Surefoot — they will make sure your boots fit season after season. One reason to go with Surefoot is that they have stores at many resorts, so you can get same-day attention wherever you go. You may be able to buy used or less expensive boots, but the fit in the store is rarely the fit after a day on the hill, and Surefoot will work with you to make sure your boots are comfortable season after season. I do not receive any compensation from Surefoot, and I think some of their people oversell too many expensive products, but I do trust them and highly recommend getting custom footbeds.

Ideally, you want quite thin socks with a good pair of boots. You shouldn’t need a thick wooly pair of socks. It’s the fit that keeps you warm, not the socks (unless they are heated).

A warm helmet is a good idea. It gives you a great place to mount your GoPro, so you can shoot footage and watch it at night.

Get good googles. I carry both light and dark lenses and can easily snap in a new lens. I think the future is going to be auto-darkening goggles, but I expect them to be much better and more affordable by the mid-2020s. Invest in a good pair of goggles with two lenses in the $100–200 range. Used is fine. eBay often has better prices than Amazon, but my Zionor magnetic goggles are very reasonably priced and they are very high performance.

Wear mittens. I don’t understand why people wear gloves, but my fingers get cold easily. Nothing wrong with mittens if they keep your hands warmer.

4. Start on the ice, not on the snow

Skating on hockey skates builds your foundation for skiing at a fairly low cost, with little driving, and no time wasted at the resort. Ideally you can skate 1–2 times a week and build up your skills to a strong intermediate level before going skiing. I highly recommend buying your own hockey skates — you can’t learn if the rental skates aren’t very good or very sharp, and you’ll be coming back often to learn the basics. Besides, skating is fun!

Good hockey skaters make good skiers. I didn’t say Ice skaters. I said hockey skaters make good skiers. On hockey skates, if you lean back, you’ll soon be sitting on the ice. Hockey skates don’t have toe picks — you stop by doing a hockey stop. Hockey skaters have to master all four edges to be competitive. The hockey stop is the foundation of the parallel turn on snow.

It doesn’t hurt to take some skating lessons. Or watch YouTube videos. You should be comfortable turning on both inside and outside edges. Ideally, you can do a deep, confident hockey stop on both sides before you go to the resort. Learning to flip around and skate backwards also helps build ski skills.

Note: Even if money is not an issue for you, starting on hockey skates will save you a lot of time and effort on the ski hill. I think ski schools should partner with skating rinks to create a new beginner-to-expert progression (but then, they wouldn’t make as much money, because their students would be skiing proficiently very quickly).

5. Day One: Side Slip and Hockey Stop

To control your speed on the hill, you must learn to sideslip — slip the skis against the direction you are going. Go to the steepest beginner slope you can and spend two hours learning to side slip.

For this, you want a slope that is around 20 degrees. Some day, ski resorts will redesign their bunny hills and create the perfect slope for learning to side slip. Until then, you are looking for a blue (not green) run. A friend who is a good skier can help, because the first lift ride and going all the way to the bottom can be intimidating.

The first run will be tiring and frustrating. It’s not your fault — it’s that they design ski resorts so poorly. Look at all your resort choices and find one with a short steep blue run near the bottom where you can start.

Learning to Sideslip
You must never put your skis in a wedge position. Keep your boots together and skis parallel at all times (except when walking forward).

You must build the habit of leaning forward to turn the skis uphill and slow down. You should have a decent feel for this in two runs on a normal intermediate (blue) run with about a 20- to 25-degree slope. The bunny hill (with about a 10-degree slope) will make you very tired, as you can’t use gravity to initiate the sideslip. Stay off the bunny hill!

Why Green Runs are Dangerous

Green (beginner) runs are flat. They often run around the shoulder of the mountain. This is a perfect place to get very tired, as you have to push along with the poles and you aren’t learning anything. People often ski fast here, and there is a lot of traffic. There are times where you have to build some speed to get across a flat section — a dangerous place where it’s easy to get hurt. Many injuries occur on green runs. Avoid them.

To learn to ski, you want short blue runs to start. Look at the map. Find the shortest blue run that is reasonably accessible without having to ski to it. The best beginner run may even be on top of the mountain if there’s a gondola or tram to take you up (example: Park City).

Don’t Forget Your Poles!

Some people will want you to leave your poles at the bottom, but you’re not going to do that. To manage yourself at the top of the blue runs, and to get through the flat sections, and to prevent going into a wedge position, you need to get used to using the poles early. In my videos, I had the boys do two days without poles, then I introduced the poles. If you can handle poles on the first run without being distracted, that’s even better.

Remove the straps from your poles and toss them. I have skied 50 years with no straps — you can do so too. Put your palms on top of your poles to push forward on the flats.

Remember — your poles should be about 2–3" (5–8cm) shorter than what they recommend at the store or rental place. Your shoulders and head should dip down as you push off with short poles.

The Hockey Stop

A good straight hockey stop should be your goal here. You may not get it by the end of day one. You should have it by noon of day two. Don’t forget to do this in both directions. Always run straight downhill, not at an angle.

Here’s a helpful video:

At this point, focus on your hockey stop and keep your poles comfortably out of the way when skiing. Use the poles on the flats and to get into position, but don’t try to use the poles to turn yet. This is a longer video showing how they picked it up over a couple of runs …

I’m not a fan of this kind of competition, but watch the eyes. See how still they are? The body works like a piston to keep the eyes on track. Notice how forward he is. Here is Jennifer Heil, watch her eyes …

Unfortunately, the people who can afford heli-skiing are often exactly the people you don’t want to be skiing with. But a week of 100,000+ vertical feet of steep and deep with good friends and good skiers is unbeatable.

Ice

I’ve mentioned it before. The key on ice is a well made ski with a 70–80mm waist and sharp edges. You can sideslip and set edges down an icy slope and stay completely in control, or you can carve. What you can’t do is lean back. Ever. This is a skill anyone can learn. Learning to ski steep ice is an advanced skill that requires extreme forward lean. I can’t find a good video on this, sorry.

Jumping

You can uncork a helicopter on most runs if you have the skills. A good skier can fly from the top of one mogul and land on the backside of the next. Rocks and cliffs present delicious problems to solve by negative vertical transfer.

A good landing is steep. I am always surprised how many people are happy to jump onto a flat landing. A steep landing is a softer, safer landing. A flat landing is where you get hurt. Jumping isn’t hard — it’s knowing when and where to jump (and not jump) that takes years of experience.

Aerials

Learning to do tricks in the air is a great addition to skiing. Many resorts have foam pit and ramp classes that teach you to safely execute flips and other big-air maneuvers. Note that almost all flips are backflips. Landing a front flip on skis is far more technical, because you can’t see the landing before you land — you’re essentially landing blind. And front flips don’t let you go around as many times — you can do three backflips in the space it would take to do a double front flip. Anyone who can do a solid single front flip layout and land it straight up is one of the best aerialists in any state. But almost no one does that any more. Everyone backflips, so they can spot the landing way ahead of time. Watch the back-flippers — they can easily bend at the waist and adjust their landings. This is what the judges are looking for — the skill to time the jump properly, so you don’t bend at the waist at the last minute. Here’s a perfect one:

Here are five olypmpic jumps. The first one (#5) is perfectly executed with a stuck landing. The last one (#1) is a hard trick with a leaning-back landing. The judges prefer more twists to a perfect landing. I don’t.

Just to show he’s one of the best jumpers in the world, here is Rory Bushfield executing an almost perfect switch double back:

Resort owners will need to build up a mound that is as high as the hill that’s there now but far shorter. This hill might be only 150 yards long and 60 feet higher at the top than at the bottom (for an angle of 21 degrees). It would be a bit steeper on one side and a bit less on the other. It would have a way out for people who freak out and just want to come down (traverse to the side). It would be groomed for sideslipping. It’s not a trivial construction effort — we need to do some research on costs, capacity, lifts, and various tradeoffs to find a good solution.

I would be interested to help draft the initial specifications to give resort owners guidelines for building these new hills. We will need to look at what’s working already, build some test hills, survey resorts, make some financial projections, and educate resort owners. We will need to show results and then convince the industry to adopt the plan. It could be a competitive advantage for a group like Vail Resorts.

I know insurance companies won’t like this, but we have to educate them as well. I believe this method will result in far fewer injuries and people understanding their risks better. Lower insurance premiums should interest resort owners.

Create a Four-Day Program

Make it so people can design their vacations around the four-day program and a one-day refresher course. The program should include the rental skis (see below). You can offer a two-weekend version and a continuous four-day version for holidays.

I would be happy to work with the PSIA on the white paper for this program. I don’t say I have the final answer — everything I present here can certainly be improved. A few pilot projects for a few years would give us good data to understand the problem and solution space better. The funny thing is that they know exactly what to do — this is how they would teach their own children.

Different people will have different amounts of experience on ice. You’ll want to collaborate with ice rinks to get people their first lessons on hockey skates. I am in favor of requiring the skating, so people who don’t have the certificate aren’t eligible for ski school. However, some resorts may be far from a rink, so we will need flexibility.

Not everyone learns the same way. I have only taught a few people this way. We will need to do research to see how people learn best, both on ice and on skis. People do like to earn points and psychological rewards, so it makes sense to create a progression with levels. Could reward them with discounted tickets.

Use video feedback. While you’re redesigning the bunny hill, figure out how to get everyone on video and run the videos down in the restaurant continuously. Use the person’s ski pass to trigger the playing of the video. This is where half of the learning takes place — when people can see themselves and understand what they need to do next time. Their pass should give them access to the day’s videos, so they can review in later seasons. This helps make the pass “sticky” and gives people more reasons to return.

An App would help. Students should be able to track their progress on the ice rink and on the snow. They should be able to access their own videos from the day, so they can review them later or even ask others for comments. New tools could look at the video and tell them when they are sitting back, or help them understand why they fell, etc. The app would help them get back up to speed before the next season by showing them everything they accomplished last season.

We Need New Equipment

Skis for learning have to be shorter to start and get longer each day. I can imagine designing skis for these four days that have much shorter backs and easy-entry bindings. The shorter backs would let people fall down backward if they lean back. They could also beep at you if you lean back. There are a lot of possibilities we’re not considering today.

Skis for good skiers today are very expensive and very good. There are so many choices. I believe we should have special skis for learning, but after four days, people should take advantage of the tremendous variety of skis in the market today. Yes, they are expensive, but today’s skis are excellent.

New kinds of boots— they must be more comfortable, warmer, and easier to get on and off. Apex boots are more user friendly and provide a wider range of comfort. But we can do even better. Boots know when you’re leaning back — why don’t they tell you? Boots are still too hard to put on. They are too cold. We had a Cambrian explosion of boots in the 1980s. I hope we see a new round of innovation to create boots around comfort and fun, not racing. If boots look the same in ten years as they do today, something is very wrong.

Poles have to be shorter. The poles we have are great. They are just too long. We should start recommending shorter poles.

Today’s bindings are pretty good, but people still struggle to get in and out of them. Why are there no new ideas in bindings? What the heck happened to Spademans? Why can’t we just tell our bindings to let us out?

Use Technology Better

In my view, we aren’t teaching students who want to learn, and we aren’t using technology very effectively. Why can’t we talk to the mountain the way we talk to Siri? Using earbuds, you could call for help, ask where lines are shortest, ask which restaurant is least congested, etc. Using data from your boots and your lift pass, your phone should be your primary instructor. It could use data from your boots and talk to your earbuds. Your helmet should be able to help you avoid collisions with others. Everyone should be alerted if someone uphill is going too fast. People could get an alert at 9pm and pay extra for access to powder at 7am the next morning.

Here’s the first product in this category, Carv …

There are probably more by now, though Covid didn’t help. I hope there are more such tools, and they get more and more integrated with our gear.

12: Is Global Warming Threatening Skiing?

There is some press about global warming making it so “kids won’t even know what snow is.” Here are the headlines:

Did it happen? Here are max, min, and average temperatures for Kitzbuhel for the past ten years:

13: Summary

As a business, skiing is too expensive, too inaccessible, and almost everyone is a low-level intermediate skier. Can raising the level of skiing ability make a difference? I think it can. I think it benefits the industry by helping customers get the most out of the sport, preventing frustration drop-outs, reducing the expenses, and increasing mastery, even if it reduces revenues for ski school.

I advocate for some changes to the ski industry, but I believe it will be stronger in the long run. Good instructors will always add value to the experience, but we probably won’t need nearly as many as we have today.

I would be very happy to speak with resort owners, ski teachers, and journalists about these concepts.

I’m David Siegel, and this is solely my opinion. I am responsible for any errors, but I am not responsible for your safety. If you see something I should fix, if you want me to remove a video that isn’t mine, or if you want to hire me to ski behind you all day shouting “Boots together, forward!” just get in touch.