Ski Instructor
40+ years on the Central Division Education Staff of the Professional Ski Instructors of America. Hire me for private or small group lessons at the area of your choice, or ask for me at Wilmot Mt - a Vail Resort - in southern Wisconsin.
I grew up skiing in New England, and took my first lessons at Mt. Cranmore in North Conway, New Hampshire. Most weekends during the winter, my father would wake me at 4am and we'd drive north to one resort or another in New Hampshire, Vermont or Maine, sometimes western Massachussetts. Sometimes for just a day. Sometimes two, with an overnight in a cheap hostel.
I joined a ski club early on and eagerly awaited the annual mid-October screenings of Warren Miller, John Jay and Dick Barrymore films back when the filmmakers provided live voice overs—adding to the excitement.
The club lead to racing, and racing led to teaching when I began college and needed a way to feed my ski habit. I taught nights and weekends at various areas in the Catskills, but really got my start at Mt Attitash in New Hampshire under the guidance of Steve Sherlock, a pioneering Ski School Director and early PSIA advocate, who took pity on me. He not only hired me for the big vacation weeks, but he trained me, and his wife Ann hired me to babysit their two little children.
When I moved to the midwest, I found a kindred spirit to Steve in Helmut Teichner, Ski School Director at Wilmot Mt. in southern Wisconsin, where I began my journey through the ranks. Helmut had established a true teaching academy and Wilmot was one of the five or six best known ski schools in the country by the early 1970s.
Testimonials:
I met Peter in 1994 through our shared passion of alpine skiing. Over the past 24 years, as we worked together at the highest levels of ski instruction, I have come to learn and understand that Peter is not just a great communicator, teacher, coach and skier, but rather an intelligent, compassionate, morally and ethically true individual with creative, communicative and leadership skills that are unparalleled. Peter can still tear up the corduroy and dance through a mogul field with the best in the industry, but where he really shines is teaching at a high level and transferring to students concepts that are difficult for even the best athletes to understand and execute.
Through our shared experiences Peter has shown how truly creative he is with the spoken and written word. However, one of the most memorable experiences as a teacher, Peter taught a high level education clinic to several certified instructors, all without saying one word, just using modeling and non-verbal communication skills.
Whatever the task, objective or endeavor, Peter has the skill and intelligence to bring the project home with creativity and precision.
—Mike Moenning PSIA-C Education Staff, Examiner and former President of PSIA-C
(To see more testimonials from other skiing professionals, click here.)
Skiing is unique, as both a sport and a form of self-expression. You can compete with others — racing, for example, or freestyle. You can challenge mother nature, trying to find a safe way down a dangerous piste or a roller-coaster ride through a mogul field. You can seek peace floating through waist-deep powder, finding a rhythm you can't find any other way. You can do things things alone, or with others.
You can share the exhilaration during — and after — the experience itself, and realize that you are part of a family of like-minded explorers, whether you are a casual, occasional weekend or vacation skier who stays on the groomed blues, or a 60+ days a season hardcore adrenaline junkie, looking for the perfect turn or the ultimate never-been-skied-before run of a lifetime.
GS turns are the most fun! Speed and grace, easing on and off edges, skis bending just the right amount, without any harsh measures. Sinewy and elegant. You can often find a rhythm that matches your natural breathing. No extra effort, just the body moving naturally through space, building up energy, and releasing it. Breathing in. Breathing out.