The Ski Instructor Podcast

Welcome to episode 85 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Charlie Brooksbank of Pure Powder. Pure Powder is a tour operator and they organise heli and cat skiing tours and holidays.  This interview is a slight departure from our usual interviews of ski instructors and ski school directors and gives a different perspective on life in the ski industry and how ski instrcutors and guide...

Welcome to episode 84 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this month featuring part 2 of my interview with Mark Shaxted who has been ski teaching for over 25 years and is an IASI Educator and CSIA Course Conductor. Our conversation continues and touches on how to get better at skiing and teaching whilst you're working on a daily basis, how to make a year round living from skiing, knee injury recovery,...

Welcome to episode 83 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this month featuring Mark Shaxted who has been ski teaching for over 25 years and is an IASI Educator and CSIA Course Conductor. I had a great chat with Mark, taking about his back story in skiing and we soon went off on a tangent into topics such as how not to become a cynical ski instructor, how a ski turn actually works and snowplough deniers...

Welcome to episode 82 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring part 2 of the interview with Billy Clark from Billski. Billski is a ski school that works on the French side of the Portes du Soleil in Morzine, Avoriaz and Les Gets.  I see Bill often on the mountain during the winter but this podcast was recorded in his house in Morzine in the summer. Bill was one of the youngest BASI quali...

Welcome to episode 81 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Billy Clark from Billski. Billski is a ski school that works on the French side of the Portes du Soleil in Morzine, Avoriaz and Les Gets.  I see Bill often on the mountain during the winter but this podcast was recorded in his house in Morzine in the summer. Bill was one of the youngest BASI qualified full cert instructors at...

Happy Christmas to you all and welcome to part 2 and episode 80 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, featuring Joe Dunn, a ski instructor at Deer Valley but you might know him better from his amazing YouTube channel, Ski Dad TV. In this episode we talk about Joe's back story and how he came to be a ski instructor at Deer Valley, wedge christie and PSIA chat, keeping teaching simple and how he started hi...

Welcome to part 1  of episode 79 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Joe Dunn, a ski instructor at Deer Valley but you might know him better from his amazing YouTube channel, Ski Dad TV. We jump immediately into an in-depth chat about technical skiing, how to introduce people to carving and an in-depth discussion on width of ski.  It's a great interview full of good energy. You can...

Welcome to episode 78 of the podcast, this week featuring Jason Hendy. I worked with Jason this winter at a race we were running in Les Crosets and we started a really interesting chat about ski boots but we didn't get a chance to finish it and that is what this podcast is. It's very much a follow up to episode 77 with Tom Gellie and we touch on a lot of the same topics about boots and this episod...

Welcome to episode 77 of The Ski Instructor Podcast this week featuring Tom Gellie of Big Picture Skiing. This podcast was prompted by a recent viral Facebook post that Tom put together based on his recent experience of skiing in rental boots at Ski Dubai. We talk extensively about the reasons why rental boots are like they are, what the purpose of them are and how quickly you need to get out of t...

Welcome to episode 76 of the Ski Instructor Podcast, featuring Anna Norlin Berg and Joel Baudin. Anna and Joel are the hosts of the popular Swedish ski instructor podcast 'Skidlärarpodden'.  When they aren't doing that, Joel and Anna are working ski instructors.   Joel runs the ski school in Kittelfjäll and is an instructor and course leader within Friluftsfrämjandet (The Swedish Outdoor Organizat...

Welcome to episode 75 of the Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Max Colvin, who you would have heard of me talk about on the podcast previously and who is the SnowPros Ski School Director of Snowsports. Max holds the Valasian Patente and looks after the team here at SnowPros. I find Max to be an incredibly interesting guy who thinks deeply about skiing and everything else and I just had t...

Welcome to episode 74 of the Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Donna Clarke who is the President of the Regional Performance Centre for the Ski Team Dents du Midi here in Calais, Switzerland. The Dents du Midi is the local region around where I live and Donna is responsible for the structure bringing young skiers through and then onto Ski Valais and then the regional Swiss age group team...

Welcome to episode 73 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Alec and Max Allcock.  This is part 2 of a 2 part episode. Alec and Max are the hosts of The Snowboard Instructor Podcast, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-snowboard-instructor-podcast/id1536803884 https://open.spotify.com/show/4ZtzwBFqrdQlOtbonKZxPp?si=SHI0R19fRymK6_Sk-88_xA https://thesnowboardinstructorpodcas.buzz...

Welcome to episode 72 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Alec and Max Allcock.  This is part 1 of a 2 part episode. Alec and Max are the hosts of The Snowboard Instructor Podcast, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-snowboard-instructor-podcast/id1536803884 https://open.spotify.com/show/4ZtzwBFqrdQlOtbonKZxPp?si=SHI0R19fRymK6_Sk-88_xA https://thesnowboardinstructorpodcas.buzz...

Welcome to episode 71 of the Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Steve Hindman. This interview was made on a hot sunny day in Geneva and part 2 of this episode is Steve and myself chatting more technically about the similarities and differences between nordic, cross country and alpine skiing.  We also touch on teaching styles, teaching terrains, PSIA chat and being an American in Switzerla...

Welcome to episode 70 (!) of the Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Steve Hindman. This interview was made on a hot sunny day in Geneva and part 1 of this episode is Steve and myself chatting about his skiing journey through life, differences between US and European skiing and a bunch of other tangents. Steve is a former US Demo team for nordic and cross country skiing as well as a telema...

Welcome to episode 69 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this episode featuring Warren Jobbitt. This interview I think is one of my best and I had an engaging and enlightening conversation with Warren across a wide variety of subjects. We started off talking about skiing in Chile and his recent induction (for the second time) into the CSIA Hall of Fame. We moved on to chat about technical skiing and t...

Welcome to episode 68 of the Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Scott Hammond. Scott is the technical director at Hafjell Ski School in Norway and is an IASI educator for both Alpine and Telemark. I had a great chat with Scott about the roundabout way he ended up in Norway, what it is like to ski and teach there, his work with IASI, instagram skiers and much more. You can find Scott at th...

Welcome to episode 67 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Jamie Kagan.  Jamie was on the pod recently with Derek Tate talking about the Professional Ski Instructors of Europe. This episode we chat about his ski school, training centre and retail shop based in Nendaz. We talked about Jamie's long and winding journey to making a life in Switzerland, building his various businesses, tr...

Welcome to episode 66 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Ali Gibb and Rachel Kerr of the Women's Mountain Club. The Women's Mountain Club is a year round club for women doing all sorts of mountain activities.  It originally started with skiing but has expanded in recent years to include hiking, biking, climbing and a bunch of other stuff too. I talk to Ali and Rach about their jour...

Welcome to episode 65 of the Ski Instructor Podcast from a rainy Val-d'Illiez. This weeks episode features Stefano Carlin from Ski Zenit.  Ski Zenit aren't a traditional ski school in that they do a mix of normal ski school stuff in Saas Fee and Zinal in Valais, Switzerland, but they also do race coaching and camps over the summer in Saas Fee as well as ski coaching in more exotic places like Chin...

Welcome to episode 64 of The Ski Instructor Podcast. One of my big regrets of all of the previous episodes that I have recorded was the poor sound quality on the original Tom Gellie episode.  So I got back in touch with Tom to have another long chat about skiing and the latest development and direction that he has gone with his business, Big Picture Skiing.  This is part 2 of a 2 part conversation...

Welcome to episode 63 of The Ski Instructor Podcast, this week featuring Jamie Kagan and Derek Tate of the Professional Ski Instructors of Europe (PSIE). The PSIE is a sister organisation of the PSIC, Professional Ski Instructors of Canada and shares much of the same pathway and framework as that organisation.  There will be tweaks to the pathway for the PSIE that will make it compatible with Euro...

Welcome to episode 62 of The Ski Instructor Podcast. One of my big regrets of all of the previous episodes that I have recorded was the poor sound quality on the original Tom Gellie episode.  So I got back in touch with Tom to have another long chat about skiing and the latest development and direction that he has gone with his business, Big Picture Skiing. This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation...

Welcome to Episode 61 of The Ski Instructor Podcast. This week my guest probably needs no introduction as you will have all seen Deb's YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/@DebArmstrongSkiStrong but you probably haven't read her bio on what an extraordinary athlete she was in the 70's and 80's, culminating in her greatest success, the GS women's gold medal in the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo in 1...