What pushes me to ski (Part 2)

The R&D job I got at Odo, in Morez, north of Geneva, Switzerland, never blossomed into a professional passion. I quit after 3 months or so, and since I had one year free before I’d have to report to the French conscription, I managed to get a job teaching Paris’ primary school kids that came for a month of “Classes de neige” (On-snow tuition) at all French ski resorts. 

These kids received a half-day of regular school courses and the other half was spent on-snow where they learned how to ski. Their stay lasted one month and at the end they took a ski test that earned them a pin called “étoile” that sanctioned their proficiency either at mastering the wedge or the stem-turn.

Because demand was high, I was able to get the job without any formal certification. I was delighted by the work that gave me free access to all lifts, equipment at Pro prices and a host of other perks. 

The following fall I was enrolled into the French Air Force and that would mean a long 16 month without much skiing. During that time I brushed up my school English and wrote to ski schools in America, including Aspen’s where Curt Chase turned me down, but Whistler’s Jim McConkey offered me a ski instructor job. 

I could have taken it but I had no certification and was on my way to the first exam when we crashed in my friend Michel Duret’s car, and this put and end to that dream. 

This led me to join the Avoriaz ski school and to discover a form of skiing bliss that lasted till 1974. 

At that point I joined Look ski bindings and this new career, while smack into the ski industry would deprive me of skiing for about 9 more years until I moved to Park City, Utah and rejoined my beloved mountains and their snow. 

Since that time, which is half of my lifetime, I have seriously caught up with my skiing since my total vertical skied just in Utah represents more than 83% of my lifetime vertical. 

This said, I can say that skiing is under my skin and has seeped into my DNA in an irreversible way! 6 mars 2019