Aspen Sojourner, Midwinter 2012

Picture above:

John Clendenin executing one of his trademark
turns. Notice how his skis are in constant contact
with the snow. Photos by Diego Munita.
Digitally altered by Aspen Sojourner

Story by Michael Miracle, Aspen Sojourner,
Midwinter 2012

Last year, shortly after my fortieth birthday, I had a skiing epiphany. It wasn’t a terrain breakthrough or the sudden grasping of a new technique. Rather, it was the simple acknowledgment of a snow-sliding fact of life: If I wanted to continue skiing the entire mountain, bumps and all, for decades to come, my skiing style would need to become less governed by athleticism and more by subtleties of technique. My body—which is to say, its achiness—was sending me clear messages. High-speed slamming through the moguls, no; slithering through them less impactfully, yes. But how to make the transition?

Luckily for me, about a week after my come-to-Jesus conversation with my knees, a friend invited me to take a clinic with John Clendenin. Winner of the World Freestyle Skiing Championship in 1973 and ’74, Clendenin has been teaching skiing in Aspen for eighteen years. At 64 years old, Johnny C, as his ski school nametag reads, still navigates the bumps as fluidly as mercury poured down the mountain.

Like most branded, boutique ski instruction, the Clendenin Method creates its own vocabulary, assigning names—in this case, the Keys to the Kingdom, the Love Spot, and the Epiphany Pad, to name a few—to parts of the ski turn and a skier’s anatomy. Doing so keeps students mindful of the method’s fundamentals and also creates marketable, and even trademarkable, catchwords.

After three days of instruction, practice, and free skiing, I can summarize the lingo’s effects as follows: Clendenin teaches his pupils to manage their speed while linking turns in any situation on
the mountain. That sounds simple, but if you’ve ever taken two or three turns in the moguls only to find yourself with your weight on your skis’ tails “riding the wild pony,” as Clendenin puts it, you know it’s easier said than done.

Clendenin and his team of coaches moved my fellow students and me toward that go-only-as-fast-as-you-want level of control via baby steps. We started by standing on one ski and then the other on perfectly flat snow, which let us come to terms with our balance. The exercise blew my mind, as it made apparent how critical forward momentum is for me to feel balanced on my skis. I felt as wobbly as a newborn fawn.

From there, we began to learn to use all four of our skis’ edges. Lowspeed drills on low-angle slopes allowed us to detect the subtle distinctions between weighting the big-toe edge of the downhill ski—which is what most skiers do; Clendenin says it’s a survival instinct—and moving more pressure to the outside, little-toe edge of our uphill foot. More drills followed. We
learned to initiate turns by leaning, almost falling, down the hill rather than by stepping into the turn. We got to know the Love Spot in the process. All along the way, Clendenin was granting us the Keys to the Kingdom—the “keys” being skills; the “kingdom,” the whole mountain. Key to the keys was breaking the bad habits that even very good skiers develop over time.

“Our reaction to slipping is to grab hold,” Clendenin explains. “It’s a protective instinctual habit. To become a great skier, you have to break those habits. Skiing is learning to embrace slipping. That’s what gives us the floaty look, versus the hoppy, grabby look.”

And what was the net result? For me, the whole experience was initially humbling. Slowing my skiing down magnified flaws in my technique and made me aware of how much I use speed to create stability. Getting off of my big-toe edge and ceasing to step, or hop, into my turns is a relearning process that continues to this day.

But after three days of Clendeninstyle turns, my mogul skiing became noticeably more fluid and, yes, even a little bit floaty. I was able to keep my skis in constant contact with the snow and avoid the miniimpacts that make my knees squawk. As Clendenin put it, I was skiing “thudlessly.” The morning after the clinic’s third day, my body was hardly sore at all.

The most ringing endorsement of Johnny C’s system, however, was watching his repeat students ski. Skiers in their mid- to late fifties—and one in his early seventies—came through run after run of moguls as elegantly and assuredly as anyone you’ll see sliding on snow. It was a joy to watch. I could feel my knees smiling.

Thanks to Michael Miracle and Aspen Sojourner for permission to include this article.

>>Please comment with your experience in a CSM camp.