Years working for Rookie Academy?
- 1
How many seasons have you taught skiing?
- 25 years, more than that number of seasons.
Where have you taught skiing/riding?
- I grew up at a local ski hill in Gatineau, Quebec Canada and learned to snowboard as soon as I could—it made my little slopes fun again! I learned on both a race board and a regular snowboard, and raced SBX at the provincial level. I started teaching at my home hill and continued as a CASI evaluator through university. Snowboard instruction carried me west to Banff Alberta; then winternationally to Mt Buller Australia, back to Canada in BC, Colorado USA, Andorra in Europe, Niseko and Hakuba in Japan, and of course New Zealand. I live on the side of a mountain in BC, steps from the lifts, and work as a CASI Evaluator across Canada: from chilly east to western mountains, from the parks of southern Ontario to the chilly darkness of the Canadian Arctic. I have also been to Chile, Argentina, Africa, indoor snow dome in the UK. Big mountain or tiny slope, if there is snowboarding — I want to go.
What are your Top 5 favourite places to ski?
1. Steep natural gullies
2. Deep powder between the trees
3. Wherever I'm snowboarding now
4. Wherever I'm snowboarding next
5. Wherever I was snowboarding before
Qualifications & professional achievements
CASI Level 4
CASI Level 4 Evaluator
9-year member of the CASI National Technical Team
CASI Demo Team member - Interski 2015
CASI National Evaluator of the Year 2014
Why I love Treble Cone
- Consistent, uninterrupted fall-line steeps, and incredible gullies. Challenging off-piste as well as terrain that is idea for learning and progression.
Why I love working for the Rookie Academy
- Such a supportive, talented and passionate team; working with International pros who truly care about their students and their success: both in snowboarding and in life.
What’s one piece of advice to anyone trying to improve their skiing?
- Be nice to yourself! Improvement takes time and positivity.
What keeps you motivated to keep pushing your skiing?
- Technical mastery, the search of the repeatable perfect rhythm of short turns. Recently I've also been inspired by Korean and Japanese carving, and there is always something truly special about the training days with my fellow CASI Level 4 Evaluators. I am a snowboard pro, and I believe in continual PROgression.
What’s one of your memorable skiing experiences?
- Dropping in to this bottomless, untouched expanse of powder while catskiing in the Monashee mountains in BC. It had snowed 1m overnight: dry and fluffy as clouds. The snowcat brought us to the top of an area recently burned in a forest fire: nothing left but charred trunks reaching up the white sky. Both sky above and snow beneath felt infinite, soft, and washed over me in waves—obscuring my vision but not my senses.
What type of gear do you ski on and why?
- I love my Endeavor snowboards. Endeavor is a Canadian company that makes fun, playful and performance boards in unisex sizing. They also support sustainability both of the environment and the sport of snowboarding, supporting Canadian indigenous youth programming to increase diversity and inclusion in snowboarding.
I ride:
Endeavor Ranger 144, 17" stance +24/-6
Endeavor Archetype 146, 17" stance +24/+9
Endeavor Patrol Split with skins
with Burton Lexa EST and Burton boots.