My name is Hugh Finerty.  In this 2016-2017 ski season, I enter my 47th year of skiing and my 42nd year of ski instructing. My ski career has included gaining certification with the Professional Ski Instructors Association at the age of 15; serving as Asst. Director of the Children’s Ski School at Crested Butte, Colorado where I trained and managed the instructors and exclusively taught private and semi-private lessons to adults and children; coaching USSA Midwest Race Teams, and currently teach part-time at Vail Resorts and training instructors, developing programs and teaching at the Mt Crescent Ski School.

You may find this statement hard to believe, but it is actually easier and less strenuous to do expert skiing than it is to do intermediate skiing. With the advent of the new “shaped” skis, making a turn with expert movements is as close to effortless as one can get.

You may have noticed that I used the words “expert movements”.  When you read these words, you likely thought to yourself that these expert movements must be learned and developed only after years of skiing and only by a select few.  The good news is that these expert movements are actually learned during your very first lesson!  But, instead of using them on the blue or black slopes of the ski area and rushing down the mountain, they are learned on the safety and comfort of the flat or only slightly angled slopes in the designated “learning areas” of the ski resort.

During my years of teaching, I have found that each person who comes to me for instruction is unique in their motivations for learning, unique in the pace at which they wish to learn and unique in the physical abilities they bring to the slopes that day. I teach these expert level maneuvers on day 1 to those who have never skied before. Also, I have many who come to me who have been “stuck” at intermediate level for years and I show them the movements that are the key to finally release them onto their journey to expert skiing.

Also, I work with intermediate skiers who are frustrated with progress in their parallel turns and want to advance toward the expert level of skiing. We know that a properly executed parallel turn is the key to being more relaxed on the runs, the key to less fatigue and the key to accessing a wider variety of terrain at the mountain resorts, including the blues, the blacks and double black diamond runs.

A proper parallel turn consists of a few well defined movements that start at the feet and result in the skis carving a beautiful arc in the snow. All this with little effort.

If you would like to reserve a lesson, please email me at: hughpf3@gmail.com or call 402-871-6234