Lookout Pass free ski school fulfills kids, instructors for 77 years

“Controlled chaos” is the term organizers fondly bestow on the Famous Free Ski School at Lookout Pass Ski Area.

Every Saturday for 10 weeks, more than 350 eager youngsters ages 6-17 are showing up at the resort, many traveling on the free ski school shuttle bus from the Silver Valley.

They head out in groups for beginner and intermediate lessons on skis or snowboards. They return later to the lodge another step closer to mastering a lifetime sport.

Approximately 40 adult and 20 junior instructors are volunteers, paid solely in satisfaction for doing a good thing.

The nonprofit school, in its 77th year, operates separately from the ski area management, but resort owner Phil Edholm says he heartily endorses and supports the concept as another way to keep winter outdoor sports available to kids whose interests might otherwise be siphoned off by town activities.

“The Lookout Pass Free Ski School program is our ‘signature’ skills development program for youth,” Edholm said on Tuesday. “It’s our privilege to offer this program. … We have three generations of families that have participated in this program that was first offered in 1942 and has continued every year since.”

The school has made some big improvements in recent years for keeping track of all the youthful enthusiasm on the slopes. Big ribbon flags have been installed to give groups a clear place to assemble and all of the students wear vests that distinguish them in the crowd.

Chris Nusz of Smelterville, who’s been administrating the school for 13 years with his wife, Tammy, started as a junior instructor.

“You get to know everybody’s life story,” he said. “You see families. The parents and grandparents have all taken the school, and some are instructors.”

John Anderson, 68, of Post Falls, is among the instructors who devote 12 weeks a season to the school including two sessions of training with certified ski instructors.

“The kids are amazing,” he said. “That’s why I do it.

“They really want to be there and learn to ski. The excitement on their faces is contagious.”

A 12-year-old student stunned Anderson one year as they shared the chairlift on the first day of lessons. “That’s when he let me know that he’d never skied or been on a lift before,” Anderson said.

Normally rank beginners wouldn’t be taken to the top of the mountain until they had the skills.

“We ask them and their parents multiple times if they’ve been on lifts and could stop and make turns, so when he said that on the way up my life flashed briefly before me. There was only one way down.”

Anderson said he assured the young skier, and himself, that they were going to make it back safely to the bottom of the hill. “And I told him we were going to have fun doing it.

“About halfway down Huckleberry, he was already starting to gain confidence. He got brave enough to ski off the groomed run into powder. He did a face plant, but he came up with a big smile on his face.

“In just two weeks, he moved up from beginner to intermediate.

“I was thrilled,” the veteran skier said. “Everyone with the school can tell you a story like that.”