“You’re comfortable with chaos,” my instructor Weems Westfeldt said after I had face-planted trying to negotiate the steep, icy bumps under the Deep Temerity Lift at Aspen Highlands. “That’s a good thing.”
That was enough to motivate me to wipe the sweat off my brow, ignore the profuse sweat that had my long underwear stuck to my chest and try again. Weems had taught me to “stay perpendicular to my vehicle,” which meant driving my body down the fall line in order to keep my weight over the tips of my skis for maximum control. He also taught me to look at each mogul like a halfpipe or a wave, to look for the soft snowy banks where I could execute slow, controlled turns instead of slipping into the jaws of the zip line trough.
I told him I thought it was counterintuitive to throw my body downhill, especially when the slope in question was steep and riddled with obstacles as far as the eye could see, but it’s his job to convince me otherwise.
Westfeldt has some experience with that. He has been an instructor for more than 40 seasons, teaching and managing ski schools all over the world. The former director of operations for Ski & Snowboard Schools of Aspen/Snowmass and an examiner for Professional Ski Instructors of America, he has been in Aspen since 1986, where he has raised his triplet boys, groomed an entire school of instructors and become a fixture of the Aspen landscape both on the hill and off.
“I don’t know if it’s the coffee I had at lunch or what, but I’m feeling a little shaky,” I said. “And I’m sweating – a lot.”
He just smiled at me, his snow-white teeth gleaming through his snow-white beard like some kind of fairy-tale creature, the red ski instructor’s jacket only enhancing that image. Watching him ski, he’s more like Huck Finn meets Santa Claus, a spirited, ageless wise man with a wide grin and rosy cheeks who floats down the mountain with grace and ease that’s simply not common among mere mortals.
One day at lunch, he proudly displayed a tattoo he had recently gotten on his ankle, the letters “DNR” he thought were necessary in case of a motorcycle accident. I wasn’t sure if it was a testament to mortality or a way to shake his fist against it, but I didn’t ask.
I hadn’t taken a ski lesson since I was 10 years old, back when it was more like a day camp, a place my parents could dump me off and go ski on their own. Kid’s ski school is different, though. I always imagined adult ski school to be kind of lame. I hate the idea of dissecting a sport that’s supposed to be fun and viewed it as this anal-retentive way to turn a recreational sport into something that feels more like work.
That wasn’t the case with Weems’ signature “Diamond Sessions,” an all-day private lesson program he developed based on his trademark coaching philosophy called “The Sports Diamond,” a multifaceted approach that integrates four distinct teaching techniques led by a hand-picked crew of top-level Aspen “pros,” as they call them (as far as I know, the only ski resort to do so – very country club, reminiscent of tennis or golf – but it works).
It was more like having a mountain guide than an instructor, someone to choose the terrain and escort me through it. Sure, he gave me pointers, explained different techniques and corrected my mistakes, but what made him different than other instructors was that he skied like it was his last day on earth, flying down groomed runs, catching air over rollers and sailing through the bumps like they weren’t even there. I wanted to follow him and do what he did for no other reason than it looked like fun.
I’ll admit it was my idea to hit the double blacks off Deep Temerity, but only because Weems had progressed me more in one morning than most people are able to over the course of a season. Within a few runs, he had broken me of some of my old race habits such as throwing my poles across my body and putting all my weight on my downhill ski. He corrected some of my snowboarding habits, too, such as teaching me to stand tall with my hips pushed forward instead of crouching with my butt sticking out (though that would explain where those overdeveloped glutes come from).
I heard my neck crack three or four times upon impact when my tips crossed and I went face-first over the handle bars and crashed chest-first into a mogul. I managed to get up and try again, enjoying the adrenaline of fear now that I was armed with some ways to combat it.
Who’s comfortable with chaos? In some ways, a good teacher is one who knows how to figure out the obvious.
Check out Westfeldt’s e-book “Brilliant Skiing, Every Day” online at www.edgechange.com.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
