P. I. E.

NWSCC has developed an educational and informational outreach program to inform member clubs on topics related to winter sports. We aim to help NWSCC members clubs to become more Prepared, more Informed, and act more Ecological, and thus we have dubbed this P.I.E.

What to expect

We will "serve up" pieces of P.I.E. through short informational statements and more in-depth educational modules in this section of our website.  Educational modules may be downloaded by clubs for their own educational purposes, or NWSCC can provide speakers for club meetings and other ski events who can provide a much more in-depth look at the relevant topic.

NWSCC hopes that all its Club Members and their membership strive to be:

  • Prepared (in body, spirit and mind),
  • Informed (by assessing, reducing and appropriately addressing risks), and
  • Ecological (to minimize ecological fallout and reduce human suffering).

And to promote these three lifelong goals, we decided to use the sounding board we have as the Council to reach out to our member Clubs and their membership with information about a wide variety of topics having to do with winter sports.

Ski clubs can no longer stumble from adventure to adventure without some attention to the fundamentals, whether that be organizational preparedness, individual preparedness, or just a common sense approach to the health of our environment. As the poster to the right concludes, baking and eating a pie is easy, as is our penchant for skiing fun, but a pie in the face is never fun. So let's, together, find ways to be prepared, be informed, be ecological, and eat our pie, too!

Serving up the first two pieces of PIE are Richard Rizk and John Jessen. Richard is the NWSCC Vice President, and the VP of Cascade Ski Club, as well as an insurance lawyer working in the Portland area. John is NWSCC's director of education and outreach, and is responsible for the content of this program. Richard and John offer the following respectively:

What's to follow? Several modules have been suggested, including:

  • Safety (the case for fitness)
  • Ski Trip Planning (tips, tricks, and gotchas)
  • Very High Altitude Skiing (what us lowlanders need to think about)
  • Riding Safety (how to avoid silly accidents)
  • Avalanche (what's the best knowledge out there)
  • Insurance Advice for Clubs and Riders (it's the world we live in)
  • Equipment Maintenance (tips for riding longer on what you have)
  • Skiing for the Whole Family (how to get everyone involved)
  • International Travel (getting there and back tips and tricks)
  • Skiing Green (how can we help preserve what we have)

Any one of our Clubs or club members can suggest a topic to the Council. We will do our best to develop an educational module on that topic in a timely manner, should the Council decide it is relevant and something within our scope.

All modules are reviewed by individuals who are known experts in the field. After the review, the module is posted in this section of the NWSCC website and announced in the NWSCC Newsletter. The modules might be presented as a video, as a slide presentation, as a simple text entry here or on the home page of the website and in the Newsletter, or some combination. Our goal is to make each module a standalone product, so the Clubs can use them as they wish, as can individual members.

We will also provide a means for members to add their own expertise to a topic, and for those who disagree with certain statements or conclusions, these can be aired through our newsletter, with a note referring to the disagreement included in the module.