“To the eye, you can look confident, but inside there is constant negative chatter,” said Jillian Vogtli to a room full of women. “Your brain is telling you to be scared, and all those negative things, but you need to say, ‘Okay, I hear you, now be quiet. I’ve got this.’”
There were about 12 of us in a room inside the Deer Valley ski lodge and we were suiting up to head out to the mountain where Vogtli, a two-time Olympian, would be leading us through a day of drills and exercises designed to boost our confidence on the slopes. Despite skiing for more than 20 years, I understood what she meant. I turn into a scared, anxious puddle on the slopes, despite always managing to get myself down the mountain in one piece.
As a kid growing up in Maryland, my parents did their best to take me skiing every winter. With four kids in our family, we couldn’t go very far, and we all learned to ski in Pennsylvania. While the mountains weren’t crazy high, the weather conditions were often hazardous, and instead of the powdery snow of the Rockies, patches of ice were the norm. Even through my college years in New England, where I skied some of Vermont’s best mountains, the snow was still icy and crunchy. I never took a bad spill, but I watched many others tumble and skid, gaining various injuries.
The result of skiing this terrain for so many years was that I became a very tense skier. The fear of slipping on ice made me so apprehensive that my body and mind knotted in anxiety anytime I was on a mountain. I even stopped skiing for several years because it had stopped being enjoyable.
When my oldest son was around four, I wanted to give him the opportunity of learning to ski—but I decided he had to learn on the West Coast so he would only know powdery snow. He and I have had the privilege of skiing in places like Aspen, Big Sky, and most recently Deer Valley. When I’ve skied the Rockies these last few years, I immediately notice the difference in the snow. It’s soft and forgiving, and allows you to swish right through it. Still, I felt my body tensing on every turn—I curled my toes, steeled my hips, and squeezed my poles. I knew there was no ice, but I wasn’t been able to undo nearly 40 years of moving a certain way. I wasn’t able to fully give myself over to the fun part of skiing, because my fear of falling was clouding my brain. As my son learned to ski and was clearly enjoying it, I found myself wanting to recapture the joy of skiing I felt as a worry-free kid.
Last fall, I found myself searching for a class or instructor that could help with my skiing anxiety and overall form. In the process, I discovered a program at Deer Valley geared specifically toward women. It was an all-day ski clinic, for women only, taught by former Olympian Jillian Vogtli. Not only has Vogtli competed in the Olympics twice and was a 13-year member of the US Ski Team and US Cycling Team, but she is also a certified fitness and wellness coach, engaging clients in a holistic way and working with their subconscious to identify and change patterns and imbalances. Vogtli had led her first few women’s ski clinic at Deer Valley in 2023 after years of private lessons, and the 2024 season would be her second round. I signed up for her February 2024 one-day clinic, and counted down the days.
Deer Valley isn’t the only ski resort offering women’s clinics (there will be three 2025 clinics led by Vogtli), and these days, more resorts than not are offering women’s only camps or lessons. In fact, Aspen Snowmass has been offering a women’s clinic—Women’s Edge—for more than 30 years. At Snowbasin in Western Utah, there’s Women On Snow, a women-only multiweek ski and snowboard workshop offered in two sessions, each four weeks long with a four-hour lesson with a female instructor each week, including one-hour early lift access that morning.
Jackson Hole in Wyoming offers several multi-day women’s camps, including the four-day Lady Shred Ski Snowboard Camp, the two-day Mammut Women’s Beyond the Boundaries Backcountry Camp, and the four-day Elevate Women’s Ski Camp. At Telluride in Colorado women can join a three- or five-day camp each winter led by a female instructor.
At Deer Valley, I was nervous I’d be the worst skier, holding the whole group back. The class description mentioned that skiers had to be at an intermediate to advanced level, and I immediately began questioning my ability. As I dropped my son off at ski school, I tried to play it cool, but he knew I was nervous.
“Don’t worry mom, you’ll be great,” he said as he glided off to join his peers. Surely I could do what an eight-year-old boy could, right?
When I arrived at the lodge, 12 women of varying ages picked at the breakfast offerings or sat nervously at a table. As we introduced ourselves, many of us had a similar story: We were anxious on the slopes and wanted to be able to keep up with our partners or kids, or just have fun instead of feeling nervous. Some women were returning to the slopes for the first time post-injury, while others had given up for several years for no reason at all, and others had been trudging along but barely enjoying ourselves. It was quickly apparent that we all lacked one thing: confidence. But just being around other women going through a similar thing immediately put me at ease. I knew if there were men there I would have felt uncomfortable and intimidated. Instead, I felt relaxed and even excited to get on the slopes.
Before we put our skis on, Jillian started us off with some meditation exercises and had us consider the lies we tell ourselves, our biggest fears, and our goals for the day, ensuring our mindset was in the right place as much as our bodies.
When we finally got on the mountain, Jillian continued to work on our thought process as much as our physical form and technique. We ran drills and purposeful exercises as we made our way down various terrain, and with each run, I felt my body loosening along with my mind. I discovered my form was entirely wrong as we went back to the basics and I focused on tucking my pelvis and posturing myself properly for a woman’s body to go down the mountain not only with speed but the proper balance and precision that magically allowed me to fill my mind with confidence instead of anxiety: I knew I was in control.
By the end of the day, our group had bonded over our sore muscles and vast improvement in the key areas of stance, steering, and edging. In all my years on the slopes, I had never felt this way skiing: There was pure joy, which before had always been tinged with fear. Skiing was fun again—and I couldn’t wait to get back out there.
