Sounds good Irwin, but you're a couple of weeks late for me to try the breathing. Just finished a trip to park City. I'll try some of it on the new tipping board I've just built. Another USA trip in March is on the cards too, so I'll test it out then.
It was first time for me to Utah, family certainly enjoyed it, Park City a bit too crowded for my liking but we had good snow and any ski day I get is always a good day, regardless of where it is. The proximity of Salt Lake City being 25 minutes away is the obvious crowd problem. Good old Loveland CO is about as crowded as I like ski resorts to be! Actually Big Sky is the best for consistent no crowds at a great mountain that I've skied, except for the tram on a powder day.
Aussies are flocking to all the Vail Resorts Co ski areas this year after Vail bought an Australian ski resort (Perisher) last year, so we now get an EPIC pass giving skiing both in Oz & USA. Hopefully they buy some Canadian resorts too! The exchange rate to the Loonie C$ is much better!
We can now virtually ski 12 months of the year on the one pass!!! A Basin can be open by mid October and doesn't close until June. Oz ski season goes from mid/end of June to the first weekend in October. A couple of weeks in Hawaii on change over would make for a ski bum's paradise
The list of possible USA ski areas at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breck, Keystone, A Basin in CO, Heavenly, Northstar & Kirkwood in CA, Park City & Canyons in UT, a few in the east as well, is pretty impressive. Perisher in Oz is big in acreage but not very tall, (350m) 1150ft vertical.
My trip to PC was made even more enjoyable by coaching a fellow Aussie friend who'd only had about 20 days on snow, 7 of which were up at your hill Irwin at Whistler. Pity they weren't spent learning from you Irwin rather than CSIA. They'd produced another 10 day a year (crap) skier, hopefully happy to hand over a grand or two every year on lessons for next to no progress.
Despite my friend's intelligence with an engineering back ground, plus a Harvard business school MBA, he couldn't describe what he was doing to make his turns. Unfortunately the Whistler ski school L4 instructor had given the guy sweet FA after a whole week of lessons. Reminded me of my (pre PMTS) Yr2000 trip attending a Whistler camp with L4 instructor, all I took away from that week was the mantra to get my feet hip to shoulder width apart. Fortunately my friend suffered from my inability to keep my mouth shut. After a couple of days I told him he was on a skiing plateaux he'd likely never get off from. We made remarkable instant progress starting with PM, it was fantastic to see such immediate results. Within a day he was making better turns than 90%+ of all the skiers on the green/blue runs. The thing he appreciated the most was gaining the theoretical understanding of the basic movements of the turn. (Steering by comparison means what exactly?) As an engineer with analytical thought processes the PM and one foot balance, narrow stance etc, it all made sense.
Thanks too goes to Diana and her staring role in the new series of eVideos I downloaded to help base our teaching drills on. They are absolutely great learning tools. Given I didn't take books on the trip, the eBooks I also downloaded are great easy at hand references.
The other great learning tool for many of us of course is this forum and its vast quantity of information going back more than a decade. Harald, Jay, Max, HS, JB & Geoffda and others have written brilliantly over the years to create many classic threads. It can't possibly be lost!!!!!!!
My vote for another Essential was the same as a previous poster - boot fitting/alignment. Evidenced for me when just a half degree tweak Diana made on snow to my original alignment set up made an enormous difference to the balance on my left side. I don't think it can be overstated what a detrimental effect poor boot fit and alignment can have on one's skiing.