Its Time For Ski Camp!

So the kids have decided they want to go to the 2014 Winter Olympics and be the next Shaun White or Bode Miller. Well, winter is coming fast so it is time to start taking out the skis and gear and preparing them for the forthcoming season. That is the fun part except for those younger eager beavers of the family, who have those big dreams, have yet to learn how to ski or snowboard. For them, one needs to find a camp that will get them up to speed quickly so the entire family can enjoy the fun.

Camps for skiing and snow boarding abound so do your research first. First and foremost, the camp should stress the safety of all the campers comes first. They should require helmets for every camper and stress the fundamentals of the sport. Until those fundamentals are mastered, no camper should be permitted to advance to the next level.

You will need to know where the camps are and when they start, what levels they support and of course the price. They should have camps for all three levels, beginner, intermediate and advanced, and camps for park, pipe and freestyle skiing so the kids can learn all three if they wish. The camps should enable riders to be grouped by both age and skill level so the individual riders can gain confidence while making new friends and having fun. It would also be helpful for the camp coaches to have video and photography analysis of the skiing and snowboarding so the kids can recognize their mistakes afterward to improve on them the next day. However, a word of caution, beginning freestylers should have a solid foundation in skiing and snowboarding before beginning to learn aerial tricks.

What you should expect from your camp? At least several hours of coaching and freeriding in every lesson, video and picture analysis of that freeriding, at most a 1:8 coach to campers group ratio, and lift and bus tickets. With all this taken care of, one now needs to know the coaches. You will want professionals if not the best. To check that, you will need to check the staff. A staff of professional skiers that not only competes regularly but also enjoys teaching. They are hard to find so look closely and ask. They should be welcoming, friendly, knowledgeable and experienced at teaching kids how to ski and snowboard. Their staff have more than a dozen years of experience teaching these skills in different parts of the world and are so well known in the business that they recruit professional coaches to be on their staff. If you are lucky enough to be in the Toronto area, you may access their services.

Learning to ski should be a fun experience from the first time the little one puts on their first set of skis to the time they are slaloming down their biggest hill. The same applies to snowboarding which requires a completely different set of skills that need to be learned. Balancing on one board as opposed to two sets of skis takes a level of coordination that only comes through practice. It is always best to start that practice early.