Learn-to-ski, snowboard at hometown hills
Midwest Ski Areas News
 
 
Snowplaces.com/media: Your Resource for Midwestern Snow Fun

Snowplaces.com/media is your total resource for covering Midwestern skiing, snowboarding and snow tubing. We'll be sending you eight timely press releases that you can use as is, customize with your own local information or to spur additional ideas. You can contact your local ski area here and download rights-free photos to illustrate your story here.

1. STORY IDEA
Start Here: Midwest Areas Perfect for Learning to Ski and Snowboard
Rollie Westman started teaching people to ski a full half-century ago because "gliding down a ski slope made me feel like a bird flying and I wanted other people to have that feeling." Tens of thousands of ski lessons and 51 years later, Westman is just as passionate. The 75-year-old's official title is Director of Skiing Services at Wisconsin's Trollhaugen Ski Area, but his nametag says it all: "Director of Fun."

That fun, says Westman, all starts with a lesson at Trollhaugen or one of more than 100 Midwest ski areas that are ideal for first-timers. They are close to home, have trained instructors and offer affordable learn-to programs that will start children and adults on a lifetime of adventure. "It's better to take a lesson to begin with and get the right start and not develop bad habits," says Westman. "If you learn from a friend, you get bad habits and then people come to us and we have to fix the bad habits."

Kathy Scholfield, of Michigan's Apple Mountain, agrees. "If you learn how to ski or snowboard right, you're going to enjoy it so much more because you have that good foundation. We are a hometown hill with a nice, controlled learning environment."

When it comes to learning how to ski or snowboard, smaller is better, and not just the length of your skis or board. "People like learning on a smaller hill where they can see the bottom," says instructor Kevin Dement, who has helped teach more than 10,000 novices at Sundown ski area near Dubuque, Iowa. "When you're out West, you can't see the bottom of the hill and that puts a lot of fear in peoples' heads. In the Midwest, you don't have to worry about that."

For the REST OF THE STORY, go to snowplaces.com/media.

2. MAKE IT LOCAL for your audience.
Contact the spokesperson from your local area.
Names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses for media contacts at more than 90 ski areas are available here at snowplaces.com/media.

3. ILLUSTRATE STORY with rights-free photos you can use.
Snowplaces.com/media has more than 50 rights-free photos.
You can easily download and use these and more than than 50 other high-resolution, rights-free photos here to illustrate your stories.
phone: (651) 484-1818

The Midwest Ski Areas Association is a nonprofit trade organization that promotes skiing, snowboarding and snow tubing at its approximately 90 members.





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