Why Women Skiers Need a Woman Ski Instructor

It’s my fault, really. I didn’t have to go and marry a very, very talented skier. I could have married a fantasy-football-playing couch potato whose idea of adventure is hitting up the Costco on Sunday to buy too many rolls of toilet paper.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I married the kind of dude who climbs mountains on skis and then barrels down them like a bullet train running off the rails.

Because I am a perfectly comfortable intermediate skier, I needed to find a way to keep up. I spent all of last winter trying to get better, skiing with professionals, Olympians and even the odd snow patroller. I got a lot better, but none of it completely clicked until I met Kim Reichhelm this past week in Aspen, Colorado.

This is me getting ready to hit the slopes in Aspen, Colorado. Jacket: Eddie Bauer. Ski pants: Aether (Photo: Nick Aster)

What’s the difference?

Kim is a woman.

Reichhelm, a technical advisor for K2 Sports, raced for 16 years with the U.S. Ski Team, the University of Colorado and the Women’s Pro Tour. She is a two-time World Extreme Skiing Champion and the only extreme skier to win the North American, South American, and World Extreme Skiing titles in one season.

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In 1989, she founded Women’s Ski Adventures and since then she has taught thousands of women how to have more fun on the slopes, boost their confidence, and become better skiers.

Of course, Kim trains more advanced skiers too, and often in a coed setting for her steep slope camps. But when it comes to instructing beginner and intermediate women, she believes that having a single-sex environment often yields better results.

Group size for each ski clinic is limited, so that each skier gets plenty of one-on-one attention. (Photo: SkiWithKim)

The majority of the ski instructors I worked with over the last year were dudes. They were incredible skiers and very competent instructors. But there is something nice about having a fellow lady helping you to build your confidence on the slopes.

Skiing, after all, is a confidence game, and with Reichhelm I was finally able to put a lot of my fears of the mountain behind me.

Kim’s intermediate and beginner clients come to her with a focus on just getting better and having more fun. Maybe they’re tired of chasing the boys around the mountain. Maybe they married an alpha skier, like I did, or maybe they’re moms whose kids have begun to outpace them on the slopes.

“Having your husband teach you to ski is not the recipe,” Kim informed me when we rode the Silver Queen gondola up Aspen mountain together. It was one of those beautiful bluebird days that makes you thank God that skiing even exists. The small ski town was busy and buzzy with excitement over the impending holiday and the Audi-sponsored snow polo tournament happening over the weekend.

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“But my husband wants to teach me to ski.” Our gondola climbed up and over the ridge of the mountain; wide groomed runs stretched in front of us. …

Kim just shook her head. She was right. Men and women learn to ski differently. It’s just a fact, not something that is good or bad. I am sure there are some women who learn to ski like men and some men who learn to ski like women, but it isn’t the norm.

Kim conducts camps all over the world. You can check her website, SkiWithKim.com for dates for Colorado, Utah, Chile, and Iceland adventures. (Photo: SkiWithKim)

For women, having a female instructor just makes things easier. Here’s why:

They don’t over-instruct. The male instructors I have had want to correct every wrong thing I am doing all at once. With Kim, I found her suggesting that I improve one thing at a time. We then practiced it and we practiced it again.

They give positive reinforcement. Kim never told me that something I was doing was wrong; rather, she praised what I had done right, and told me to maybe try something different. It was such a different approach from one chain-smoking, quick-talking instructor I had in France last year who loved telling me, in between lighting up Marlboro Reds, that I skied as poorly as a newborn monkey. “I don’t tell people what they are doing wrong. I tell them what they can do to improve,” Kim said.

Speed isn’t an issue. “Men love speed,” Kim told me. Kim loves speed too. She’s a gazelle flying down the mountain, but she knows that beginner-to-intermediate women don’t always like to go as fast as humanly possible. “And all the beginner and intermediate men want to do is go as fast as humanly possible,” she added. I have been left in the dust by male ski instructors who think a student will learn speed by following them at a wild clip down the mountain. Kim was fast, but we went at a pace I could handle.

When it comes to learning how to ski, a female ski instructor might just get you more. (Photo: Adie Bush/Corbis)

They know what you’re afraid of. “Women have different fears than men. They just do. Women are the ones who give life. They’re the ones who nurture and protect. They tend to be more cautious than men. But how do you explain this to a man?” Kim asked me. Then she answered her own question. “You can’t.”

“Women ski instructors might be more comfortable for women who are learning to ski, because they are more likely to understand other women’s fears,” explained clinical psychologist Laurie Sanford. “They are also more likely to understand another woman’s body, and how to understand how the strengths and vulnerabilities in a woman’s body might differ from a man’s.”

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If you’re afraid that you are going to fall, then there is no way you are going to push yourself out of your comfort zone. It is as simple as that. Kim was fine doing the same run over and over again until I was as confident as a Kardashian walking into a Sears. “Once you know the terrain and you know you won’t encounter anything unexpected, you will be much more likely to push yourself,” Kim told me. “I am never going to make anyone feel like a loser, and we are always going to take our time.”

They know what you want. “A lot of the women I teach want three things: They want to be in control, they want to look pretty when they ski, and they want to have fun. Control. Pretty. Fun,” Kim said. Those are the three things I want on the ski slopes and in my life.

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