Austrian Camp - European PMTS training

[Colin]

This post comes in two parts:

1) How good a skier do you have to be before attending the Austrian camp? Will there ever be the equivalent of a beginners (green?) camp in Europe?

2) My wife and I are fairly new to skiing (started last year in Switzerland) but are impressed with our attempts to put PMTS into practice. Trying things out on a dry slope (all we really have where we live) works, but it's very slow learning from books and DVDs.

We're going to France (Val Thorens) next week, to try out PMTS on proper snow. We've got some traditional lessons booked (well, it'll give us a guide round the mountain, if nothing else), as it seems impossible to get PMTS training here. We just don't want to learn all the wrong things, just to unlearn them later when we good enough to go to Hintertux. Any advice/tips welcome.

[tommy]

Hi Colin, and welcome to the forum!

1) How good a skier do you have to be before attending the Austrian camp? Will there ever be the equivalent of a beginners (green?) camp in Europe?

I'd say that if you can manage to ski (not necessarily with grace or style - more of getting down without fear) blue/dark blue slopes, you'll be doing fine in H-tux.

Wrt. your second question: unfortunately, all non-pmts lessons I've taken thru the years, in many resorts, several countries, will teach you "stuff" that you will have to unlearn if you want to learn to ski PMTS-style. Obviously, you might be lucky and get an instructor that teaches some sort of direct parallel, but chances are high that you will not.

My recommendation (lacking PMTS-instructor) would be to give the books and DVD's your full attention before and during your stay, and skipping the resorts ski school. But again, that's me, making recommendations on my previous experience.

Good Luck!

--T

[Colin]

Hi Tommy. Thanks for the advice. I recon we'll be ok for next year then.

BTW, we went down a red in Switzerland (with a lot of side-slipping), on our second lesson last year - it wasn't too frightening. I get a little confused by the US blue/dark blue standards though. (And I note that europeans reds are harder in France than Switzerland). What is the equivalent euro standard?

[john heath]

Colin,
i went last year and will be there this year. last year there were some folks who were pretty much beginners (at skiing in general). in fact, the less you've skied the fewer the bad habits i'd say. maybe give harald a ring to check on this year's intake, but it sounds like you'd be fine.