Special Training Edition!
plus, a lot of important changes to tell you about.
This season for Wintergreen Adaptive Sports will be filled with challenges. For starters, the pandemic hasn't let up. By many measures it is getting worse, and a vaccine likely won't be available for all of us until after the snow has melted. And, many of the students we teach could be particularly vulnerable to this virus.
But we made a commitment that if Wintergreen Resort will be open, then so will we. However, as you might have guessed, we've had to make some big changes.
If you've been to the magical place we affectionately call "The Hut," you already know it can be a bit cramped and chaotic. Because of that, we will be able to host only a fraction of the normal number of lessons. We'll also stagger arrival times and lesson times to minimize the number of people in small spaces. And to the greatest extent possible, we'll be moving most of our operation -- including meet-and-greet and equipment fitting -- outdoors.
And every instructor will acknowledge, every single day, that they have reviewed our health protocols and are safe to come to work. We'll routinely sanitize equipment (and ourselves) to do all we can to enjoy a fun and safe season on the mountain.
As always, Wintergreen Resort will let us use the ski-school lines for our lessons, and that will minimize contact with crowds. And the resort itself has enacted a number of new policies to keep guests safe as well.
We firmly believe that being outdoors in the chill will be a safe activity for our staff, our volunteers and our students, and we are taking every extra precaution to make sure all stay healthy.
In the midst of all the anxiety about how to have a safe season, the one thing we didn't have to worry about was the availability of snow for on-snow training. The weather was spectacular and Wintergreen's amazing snowmaking had delivered perfect conditions. Our training program is designed to not only get veteran instructors reacquainted with their snow legs, but also to teach new instructors about the myriad adaptive equipment and techniques we use to teach a wide variety of students.
In a short couple of weekends, we throw a lot at our instructors. Our veterans spend the offseason learning about new directions and equipment in adaptive teaching, and pass that on to the rest. The new instructors and the junior instructors get hands-on experience with our adaptive equipment.
On any given training day, we'll work on tethering bi-skis ...
Practice boot tethering ...
Learn about the trust needed to guide visually impaired students ...
Learn about "three-track" and "four-track" lessons to help a student whose leg or legs might need additional support ...
Understanding how to provide just the right amount of assistance to a bi-skier who is heading towards independence ...
Learning to gently guide a snow slider ...
And, of course, the all-important skill of daisy-chaining our dozens of tether sets.
Well, that's it for our first edition of the 2020-2021 Totally Awesome Newsletter! Hope you enjoyed it. We recognize that for both students and instructors, this won't be the season we were hoping for, but we're pretty stoked that we can have a season at all. And we'll do all in our power to make sure everyone in our care remains safe and healthy.
If you have any questions about the season or the protocols we have in place, drop an email to Caroline the Scheduling Fairy, info@skiwas.org. She's the glue that holds all this together.
Hope to see you on the snow soon! And happy holidays from Wintergreen Adaptive Sports!
-- Mike Mather, editor
Credits:
All photos by Mike Mather