To crib a line from Shakespeare, a colossus or two has come to bestride the Sierra Nevada.
One would be the combination of the Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows winter resorts under ownership of the KSL Corp., producing an entity that supplies 6,000 skiable acres served by 43 lifts, with the two mountains linked by a free shuttle; the other is Vail Resorts, combining Northstar-at-Tahoe, Heavenly and Kirkwood to present skiers and snowboarders with 10,100 acres on three mountains served by 63 lifts.
 Working as a snowboard instructor is surely about as far from the 9-5 routine as a job gets. But what is life as a snowboard instructor actually like? Does the envious or negative imagery that the job title conjures-up have any grounding in reality?
Dominic Piper, from Perth in Scotland, take a bow. He has been working as a snowboard instructor at Sunshine Village ski resort in Banff, Canada for the past four seasons. Everyone has an opinion on what he does but how do these views compare to Dom’s own account of what it’s really like?   … More