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Were it not a late spring weekend, with other sports and obligations keeping more families in their hometowns elsewhere in the Northeast, it would be easier to spot the Mountaineering Blazers, as there are typically 11 of them total. John Atkinson, a long-time coach, explains that the program grew out of Adventure Blazers, and was started by legendary John egan, a world-famous extreme skier who is head of Sugarbush’s Adventure learning Center. “We had kids who had mastered Adventure Blazers and wanted even more,” says Atkinson. So while Adventure Blazers takes kids all over the mountain, Mountaineering Blazers teaches kids to go even further in the backcountry with emphasis on survival skills like navigation, avalanche awareness, and endurance training. Signing your kids up for soccer is one thing; but signing them up for a winter of snowbound challenges that teach survival skills? For parents such as Alessandra Bianchi of Marblehead, Massachusetts, mom to 10-year-old Jake and 12-year-old Adam herman, that was exactly the point. “it’s much more unpredictable than other programs, in a good way,” says Bianchi, who expresses utmost confidence in – and admiration for – hale and Daigle. “They’re both fabulous people:
giving me a taste of Sugarbush’s unique Mountaineering Blazers program. unlike traditional ski schools, where students follow instructors in carefully carved s’s down groomed slopes, the Mountaineering Blazers is a wild ride of backcountry touring, winter camping, skinning, telemarking, and tree skiing. The season-long program is designed to teach kids ages 9 to 17 to safely ski all of Sugarbush’s 4,000 acres, while also instilling them with lifelong skills. Parents call Mountaineering Blazers “amazing” and “groundbreaking.” Kids just call it “fun,” “crazy,” and “exhausting.” “We ski the woods, and a lot can go wrong in there,” says Rick hale, one of the two Mountaineering coaches and also one of the best all-around skiers in the Mad River Valley. “But this helps their confidence and self-esteem, and they’re a close-knit group.” So close, in fact, that i can’t keep up with them in the eden glade. The four, along with hale and fellow coach Brian “Diggity” Daigle (another incredible athlete, voted Sugarbush’s best skier in 2008 by fellow employees), disappear among the branches, where i lose sight of them now and again.
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(Group) Sandy MacyS; (Student) rick hale
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