‘Age doesn’t make a difference:’ 88-year-old skier continues to teach at Kelly Canyon
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RIRIE — Eighty-eight-year-old Bob Carlson can ski with anybody, and when he isn’t practicing his carving on the slopes, he’s teaching inexperienced skiers how to gain their footing at Kelly Canyon.
“Age doesn’t make a difference, as you could tell,” Carlson told EastIdahoNews.com. “I could ski with anybody out there.”
Carlson said over the years, he’s done everything. He’s been a truck driver, sorted potatoes in a warehouse, made cinderblocks and concrete pipes, worked at a service station pumping gas, learned to fly an airplane, and worked as a grease monkey and mechanic. The longest he worked anywhere was for a grocery store for 35 years.
“My father-in-law owned a grocery store, and I swore up and down all my teenage years that I wouldn’t go to work at a store,” Carlson said. “But I did, and it’s probably one of the most satisfying things — other than this — that I have done.”
Carlson said he’s been a ski instructor for over 40 years. It all started in the late 1970s, a year or so after the Teton Dam collapse. At the time, Carlson said he was a part of the Madison Community Council, which convinced the school district it needed a ski program.
In its first year, they gave them a school bus to take sixth graders to Targhee on four Saturdays each month. The program was a success, and with the help of a new principal who was a certified ski instructor, it would grow and last many years.
“For 20 years, every student in Madison School District from third grade on up through high school had the opportunity to learn to ski,” Carlson said.
Carlson was one of about 200 people who volunteered for the program, and that was where he started teaching skiing. When that program ended 23 years ago, Carlson was asked if he wanted to teach at Kelly Canyon.
“When we started to do that, I thought I was a pretty good skier, and I came up here and started skiing with these guys, and I didn’t know nothing,” Carlson said.
Kelly Canyon first opened when Carlson was 20 years old. He said it’s changed a lot since the days of the old rope tows and T-bar lifts, but he welcomes it.
“The biggest improvement that has been made in the whole 68 years that we’ve been here is that magic carpet,” Carlson said.
John Hawke has been a snowboarding and skiing instructor at Kelly Canyon for about nine years. He said he’s known Carlson the entire time, and he is an inspiration to everyone there.
“He skis almost as much as I snowboard,” Hawke said.
Carlson said he still teaches three days a week. He has a vision problem, so he doesn’t teach regular classes anymore. Whenever someone is struggling a little more, Carlson will take them under his wing.
“If I see somebody in a class that’s struggling to keep up with the rest of the class, I will take that person out and work one-on-one with them,” Carlson said.
“They’re always giving him the hard kids,” Hawke joked.
And when Carlson isn’t teaching, he’s still out training.
“I’m practicing whatever it is I’m doing,” Carlson said. “I’ll stop sometime, and I’ll practice my side slips down the hill. Today, I’m just up there — and I love to carve — so I’m there trying to do that.”
Kelly Canyon’s season passes went on sale Friday, and he welcomes everyone in the area to join him on the slopes. Even with the strangely warm winter, he said they’ve been able to keep Skier’s Lane well groomed with man-made snow.
“I hope to keep snowboarding and skiing with (Carlson) for a long time,” Hawke said.