I thought I should update this thread. I had my first private lesson with
@Mark Downing . He truly is great. I also think, sometimes things happen for a reason.
The mountain was really challenging. Even getting to the mountain was hard. We (my son and I) barely made it to the lesson, buckled up last minute, I forgot to put my googles over the glasses so when I tried they would fog up, wet snow all over the place, etc. Not a blue sky day. But also, neither my son or I, ever skied powder. Luckily, we had powder friendly Dynastar PT's.
Long story short, we had our first "powder" day in really heavy, deep, wet slush, and thank Lord, Mark was there. I tripped more times in one hour than in the whole season last year. But Mark would explain what I was doing wrong (transferring all the weight to the outside ski in the wrong conditions), and show me ways of overcoming that. He had no issues keeping an eye on both of us and instructing us in parallel. My son skis beautifully and does much better in poor conditions, where it matters. I love mini-me.
Back to Mark: I really like his
positive attitude. That's how I coach (other sports). This isn't just
nice. It builds confidence much faster. Almost every instruction you can imagine can be put either in a positive or negative way, with very different results.
The other thing I like is that he'll explain
why. I remember this was pointed out by many forum members in different threads. Sometimes, a coach/instructor will tell you what to do, and that's that. You don't take it personally, but it doesn't help much. Why is that? Because you want to teach a person how to fish. If you are telling them "this is the problem you are solving by doing this", now they own the problem and their goal is to solve it.
Anyways, thank you
@bud heishman for the recommendation, and now I can wholeheartedly second that, for anybody visiting Mt Rose.
