FREE!! WEBINAR
Thursday, November 29, 11am (PST)
Total Skiing II: Conditioning for the Slopes
Chris Fellows will present on how mobility, stability, strength and power have a key role in your skiing performance and injury prevention. This will be an in-depth discussion on how to prepare yourself for a successful ski season and not rely on the “ski yourself into shape” method, and how to have longevity within the sport.
REGISTER HERE to participate and listen to the webinar.
Big news of the week is: Squaw and Northstar will be opening this week! The storm that came through this past weekend, gave the resorts a little extra help with snowmaking and more snow is in the forecast for the weekend! Northstar will be spinning their chairs for the public, tomorrow (Wednesday) and Squaw will be opening this Friday! Temperatures have been cold since the storm came through last weekend so we expect the snow surface to be in pretty good shape.
NASTC Dryland Training Kit is now available for purchase on the NASTC Pro Shop. The Dryland Training Kit has everything you need to modify your regular ski conditioning workout to tighten up your performance on the hill. The Dryland Training Kit includes the new NASTC endorsed SkiA trainer and a copy of Total Skiing.
Have you thought about which NASTC ski training camp you will be doing this season? Check out our trip spotlight below.
We really can’t get enough of this place; full of western charm and hospitality that everyone you encounter offers you a heartfelt greeting.
Grand Targhee is often considered as a side trip from a visit to Jackson Hole. We feel Grand Targhee should be a destination all on its own. The resort although tranquil and serene in nature has a rowdy side to it, which you meet when you click on your skis and start exploring. The resort has several slope side lodging properties. The Teewinot where we stay is a quintessential mountain lodge, with log cabin architecture. Each room has stately log furnishing and big beds with fluffy pillows and warm cozy blankets. If you want a true western steak, this is the place to have one; it comes complete with the Targhee logo branded on it.
Powder-choked might be the best adjective to describe this gem of a resort. They get so much of it every year and its champagne-like weight and texture are legendary. The best part is that there are no lift lines so you can lap chairs and keep getting fresh tracks run after run.
Included in the NASTC trip is two days of cat-skiing!!! It might not have that movie-star quality that heli-skiing does but it is certainly a ton of FUN! Imagine ripping turns in the in the some of the lightest snow you have ever skied in, jumping into a warm snow-cat that is waiting to shuttle you up to do it all over again. The camp is four days long and it is broken up into two days of lift accessed skiing and two days of cat-skiing. The course is designed around the central goal of building better off-piste skiing and powder skills. We want you to get more out of your experience on the mountain and conquer those conditions and terrain that challenges you the most. This is not a throw you in the deep-end type of approach, your NASTC coach will work with you to develop the necessary skills and tactics and reinforce them through application in carefully selected terrain. Grand Targhee is an ideal location to buff up your off-piste skiing, you won’t feel any pressure from locals jockeying for fresh tracks and crowd recognition; it’s just you and the beautiful scenery of the Tetons.
Dates: January 12-16. Arrive into Grand Targhee on the 12th and ski from the 13th -16th.
Includes: double occupancy lodging (single upgrades available) in the Teewinot lodge, breakfast daily, 4 days of instruction, lift tickets, two days of cat-skiing, 2 lunches and a group dinner.
Check out all other NASTC ski training camp dates and destinations here. https://skinastc.com/courses-by-type/all-courses
While you are out there taking advantage of those early resort openings, here is a great early season drill to do. In this video, PSIA Alpine Team member & NASTC Coach Nick Herrin and PSIA Alum Katie Fry demonstrate a progression on how to balance better over your outside ski.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSRk9dB8adk&feature=BFa&list=UUr0g1hoBjjQf6cD90hu8hkA
http://avtraining.org/Avalanche-Training-Courses/Choosing-an-Avalanche-Course.html
There’s a lot of avalanche courses out there. How do you decide which one to take? Here’s a few things to consider before you sign up and spend your money:
Know where you are at
Be honest with yourself and don’t try to cut corners. If you’ve never taken a course before or are just starting out, consider a basic course as a beginning rather than trying to cut corners and taking a more advanced course. If you are taking an advanced course, be frank about your prerequisites-you may not get the most out of an advanced course if you don’t have the required background.
A course should have clear goals
An avalanche course should have well defined objectives which describe what you will learn and how you will benefit from taking the course. Without goals, you have no idea what you can expect and no way of knowing if the course was successful for you.
An introductory course should discuss decision making
Many introductory courses are pretty good at giving you information and knowledge but they do not have a way of making that information and knowledge useful to you in the field. Everyone, at all levels, needs to be able to use what they have learned to make an informed decision in the field. Some kind of reasoning process and decision making model is a critical ingredient in making any avalanche course, even an introductory one, useful and relevant once you are on your own in avalanche terrain. Ask the course provider about the decision making component of your course.
Introductory courses should stand alone
A Level 1 or Introductory course should be comprehensive and not force you to take additional courses to provide you with a useable skill set. When you leave an introductory course, you should feel you have enough knowledge and understanding of basic avalanche concepts that you can be more confident in your decision making process at home and in the field.
Advanced courses should not just rehash introductory concepts
A good avalanche training program will offer various courses, each of which deal with specific subjects and issues, and which build on one another. There is no single course that can teach everything you need to know, so research the program you are considering and find out what will be taught in the introductory course compared to the advanced course(s). If the curriculum and subjects look the same for all the courses in the program it’s important to ask what the difference is and how your training and education will progress if you choose to go beyond the introductory level.
What curriculum guidelines and resources are used
A curriculum that has been developed in isolation by an individual or company alone may not be up-to-date or adequate for your needs. There are guidelines for what subjects should be taught on various courses; these guidelines are set by national organizations such as the American Avalanche Association and the Canadian Avalanche Association. Just meeting the guidelines, however, may not be a guarantee of a good course. Specific lesson plans, teaching aids, and student materials are what make or break a course. Look for a course that has invested in resources as well as made a commitment to curriculum guidelines.
What is the scope of the course
Because there are few standards that clearly describe what various types of courses should cover, you may find that taking an introductory course from one provider or instructor may not prepare you for an advanced course at another school. If a variety of instructors and providers in a number of locations around the country offer courses that are based on the same standards, you will have the freedom to take different courses from different instructors in various parts of the country without wondering whether what you learned in your prerequisite course will be applicable to the next level.
Price shopping can hurt you
Like any other product, you generally get what you pay for. If price is your primary consideration when looking for a course you may end up with an inferior course. Before signing up for a cheap, cut-rate course check what you are getting for your money: what venue is being offered, who will teach, what curriculum and resources are being used, what is the student/teacher ratio… these are some of the questions you need to ask when the price of a course looks too good to be true. Finally, think about it this way: how does the cost of an avalanche course compare to a pair of skis or the price of your transceiver, probe, and shovel? Why are you reluctant to spend a little extra for something that lasts a lifetime and will increase the safety of you and your partners?
The American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education is committed to developing a nationally recognized curriculum that can be delivered by qualified instructors and committed course providers across the USA. These courses have clearly defined goals, meet curriculum guidelines set by national and international avalanche associations, use common resources, and provide a clear progression through a series of integrated courses from the introductory Level 1 to the advanced Level 3 stage.
We are an established organization with 65 course providers across the country and deliver a standard that you can trust. We welcome your questions and reccommend you choose and an AIARE course provider when selecting an avalanche training program.
NASTC AIARE AVALANCHE LEVEL I COURSE DATES:
JANUARY 18-20
FEBRUARY 8-10
$425 includes: AIARE fees, course study guide & waterproof field notebook
http://www.teamusa.org/News/2012/November/07/A-Cool-School.aspx
Like many young elite-level skiers and snowboarders, Jess Breda has been doing a balancing act all through high school.
The rising freeskiing star from Massachusetts had been trying to keep up with her studies while homeschooling and, at the same time, trying to train, travel and maintain a competition schedule across the United States.
Sometimes the juggling act seemed impossible.
“It was just really hard to balance it all on your own,” she said.
This year, however, Breda, a 17-year-old senior, is skiing a new course — and taking a load of new courses — at the new TEAM (Total Educational and Athletic Model) Academy of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. She’s one of 22 high school-age athletes enrolled in the first-year program located at two campuses — at the USSA’s Center of Excellence in Park City, Utah, and at the Elite Aerial Development Program at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, N.Y.
Essentially, the TEAM Academy is a high school for performing artists, sort of like The Juilliard School, only these teens do their work on the snowy white canvases of Utah, upstate New York and slopes across the United States while also studying geometry, history and English.
TEAM Academy student-athletes now take a customized curriculum, using a combination of classroom instruction, on-site teachers and online instruction, with time built into their schedules for daily training with their coaches, camps, travel and competition.
For national-team athletes who had been trying to maintain their training and competition schedules while going to a public or private school, there’s no more conflict about missing classes; for homeschooled students, there’s more support.
Breda said being back in a classroom environment with other athletes is an improvement over what she’d been doing back home in Massachusetts.
“Just being able to come to school (is better),” she said. “Even though you may all be working on different things, just doing it all together makes it a lot easier when you have other people motivating you.
“Most of us come from a homeschooling base, so we’re used to sort of doing this by ourselves. But now we have someone sort of on our back and pushing us to do better, and not only academics but athletically. It’s pretty cool.”
Luke Bodensteiner, the USSA’s executive vice president of athletics and a two-time Olympian in cross-country skiing, is the man responsible for getting the TEAM Academy started.
He worked with academic advisers to put together what’s called a “blended” or “hybrid” model of instruction that includes a large online component (that allows athletes to continue their work while traveling), a headmaster responsible for instruction at both venues, physical classrooms and on-site teachers and a traditional school-year schedule that began this year in late August.
The USSA had been discussing the possibility of such a venture for a few years, Bodensteiner said, but a couple of factors prompted its launch.
For one, the adoption in 2011 of five new Olympic sports under the USSA’s umbrella — ski halfpipe and slopestyle, snowboard slopestyle, women’s ski jumping and snowboard parallel special slalom — brought many younger athletes onto the organization’s national teams.
For another, the elite team development programs were reaching “deeper into the pipeline, to younger and younger” athletes, Bodensteiner said.
What Bodensteiner and others knew was that it was hard for those teens to balance school and sport.
“What we saw was, we continued to throw more and more training at them, more travel at them and put up a fairly significant burden on them when it comes to completing high school in a good way,” Bodensteiner said.
“So we saw a lot of these kids struggling to get through either a traditional setting or in some cases private schools.”
The same was true of students getting homeschooled, he said. There was a huge burden on parents and kids to complete academic work while also devoting so much time to their sport.
“When we looked at those cases, we decided none of those are really acceptable,” he said. “If we’re going to put an athlete into these programs and put so much demand on their time for training and competition, et cetera, we’ve got to provide them a solution that helps them get through school in an effective way without compromising their sport.”
That solution is the TEAM Academy.
Though it started small, with the 22 students this year, Bodensteiner said he wouldn’t be surprised to see enrollment double by next year. This year, students are housed with nearby families, and families pay tuition. Providing student housing and paying for the TEAM Academy — taking the burden off families — are two items on the USSA’s long-term wish list, Bodensteiner said.
Students such as Breda say they’ve been happy with the program, and Bodensteiner said the USSA is excited by the results they’ve seen academically and in training.
“By building the school around the athletic program, we don’t compromise the athletic program at all, which is a real benefit,” he said. “And on the flip side, we’ve really adopted the idea that good academics actually enhances athletic performance, and the Academy’s just the beginning of that.”
Bodensteiner said there’s been a side benefit, too, in putting together young men and women from a variety of sports: It is building team chemistry.
“We’re a dozen different sports but we’re really one big team,” he said. “So the interaction that we find both here (at the Center for Excellence in Park City) in training and in the school, where you’ve got skiers mixing with the snowboarders, has really built a special team spirit. And that pays off. I tell you, when Ted Ligety wins the opening race (of the World Cup season recently), everybody feels like it’s their victory. It really puts a lot of energy into the team and makes the team believe in itself.”
Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Doug Williams is a freelance contributor for TeamUSA.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.
Both Julia Mancuso and Lindsey Vonn are choosing to opt out of the Levi Slalom. Their reasoning is that it is just too far to go for one race. After the less than optimal performance in Soelden, they think the smarter decision is to remain in the U.S and continue training at Copper and Vail which have been said to have the best training conditions in the world at this time. Conditions on the glaciers in Europe are not as good as they are at these resorts. The U.S men’s team has also delayed their arrival in Europe due to the better training opportunity at the USSA speed center.
With this storm system, ski season may be at our front door rather than just around the corner! Even though this has been one of the most beautiful autumn season in the Sierras. We’re pumped as this will make conditions just right for our Early Season Jumpstart ski improvement camp. Many years we’ve ran this camp with the barest minimum of snow, but it doesn’t look like it this year. At least we’re hoping after seeing this forecast.
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Truckee&state=CA&site=STO&lat=39.3079&lon=-120.316
Hope everyone had a good Halloween, getting some good treats and pulling a few tricks. We would like to express our heartfelt concern for everyone on the east coast affected by Sandy. We know this is a difficult time and we are thinking of you and sending you much positive energy that you will come out of this catastrophe no worse for the wear.
We received another fresh layer of snow at the upper elevations last night. Resorts are in their final leg of preparations for the official start of the season. This is the time to score pre-season deals and purchase season passes.
Opening Days for North Lake Tahoe Resorts:
Northstar: November 15
Squaw Valley: November 21
Alpine Meadows: December 7
GREAT DEALS at the NASTC PRO SHOP on skis, bindings, touring gear and more!!
NASTC TRIP PROFILE:
St. Anton, Austria. This Tyrolean village in the heart of the Austrian Alps knows how to win over visiting skiers. A week in St. Anton is a week of living the good life. You will ski big vertical, big lines and big days. One of the best things about skiing in St. Anton is the opportunity to ski from village to village. This is a big change from your typical resort experience in the U.S. Envision leaving your own track in fresh powder snow as you descend from up high on the mountain into the heart of one of the neighboring villages. At the end of the day, decompress and warm up with a cup of rich hot cocoa or a glass of traditional gluhwein (mulled wine) at one of St. Anton’s many vibrant après ski spots that include warming huts on the side of the slope to bustling bars and cafés in the village center. After taking your boots off, head for the spa and give your overworked muscles a little tender loving care with a sauna or thermal shower session, stretch and soothe your body in the heated indoor swimming pool and hot tubs. Dinner is always an elegant and civilized affair; it’s a celebration of food with a traditionally continental menu with Tyrolean influences. When you are ready to call it for the night, head upstairs to you cozy room with a modern Alpine aesthetic. Wrap yourself up in the fluffy down comforters and stare at the beautiful winter night scene outside your window as you drift off to sleep.
After a hearty traditional breakfast with selections that include locally cured salami, fresh bread, eggs, cereal, yogurt and more you are energized and ready for another full day of skiing that includes an itinerary of challenging exercises, one-on-one coaching, situational skiing and an off-piste adventure. Take your mid-day break at one of the slope side chalets and refuel with a delicious bowl of spaghetti bolognaise, goulash or the European skier’s favorite bratwurst and fries. Continue on with the rest of the day and your Austrian alpine adventure with your coach and guide leading the way to exciting, off-the-beaten-path terrain that will fill your memory bank with unforgettable experiences and vistas.
NASTC St. Anton Package: $4500, includes: 8nts (dbl occupancy) at the 4-star Valluga Hotel in St. Anton, Breakfast and dinner daily, lift tickets, guide and instruction. Single room upgrades are available. For a full listing of NASTC’s instructional courses and trips please visit our website www.skinastc.com.
NASTC COACH PROFILE: CAROL LEVINE
A former PSIA Alpine Team member and Training Director for the Vail Ski & Snowboard School, Carol has also paved the way for women’s instruction within the industry. Carol served a selector for the 2012 PSIA Alpine Team selection, a very prestigious assignment. She is a divisional trainer and examiner, her passion for skiing and teaching skiing is infectious and her eye for technique and equipment deficiencies is impeccable. Carol is very highly respected amongst ski instruction professionals. Carol will be coaching at the Early Season Jumpstart Course, Dec 5-8.
NEW ITEMS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE PRO SHOP!
Great deals on skis, alpine and backcountry setup. NASTC logo wear and ski improvement educational materials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouQWNvTX2q0
With snow this early in October, is it possible to hope for another winter like this one?
It’s strange to see snow on the ground when the fall foliage is still showcasing it’s dramatic colors. After a season that did everything to deflate our ski stoke, we’re ready for one that will put us on cloud nine. The early snow fall is just adding fuel to the fire. You know the race has started when the resorts have turned on their snow guns, from that point it’s just a matter of weeks till you can make your first turns. We all need some time on the snow, to connect with ourselves and nature, to engage in meditation in motion, we yearn for the mental tranquility and the exhiliration that comes with each turn we make. The mountain alone is such a good educator, it provides the right amount of challenge to test our strength and grow, patience and respect come about almost instinctively.
