Long-time director of Sundance Mountain Resort retires

SUNDANCE— Sundance Mountain Resort recently announced the retirement of its tenured Director of Mountain Operations, Jerry Warren.

Warren has been skiing on Sundance Mountain Resort’s slopes since 1968. 

He taught himself to make it down the mountain wearing his sister’s boots that were too small and skis that were too big.

Once he learned more skiing fundamentals (and had the right size of equipment), Warren became a world-renowned professional ski instructor.

Teaching the three principles of skiing

The principles and curriculum that Warren developed at the resort have been used to teach millions of skiers and hundreds of ski instructors around the world. 

He joined the Professional Ski Instructors of America‘s (PSIA) National Team in 1974. With the team, he began to travel around the world teaching the simple and unique principles he had learned on Sundance Mountain’s slopes.

“The principles that you use to learn how to ski can be transferred to leadership skills or life skills,” Warren says. 

His main teaching principles revolve around a “cycle of learning”, which includes:

• Seeing: We need to see whatever we want to improve in our skiing (and in our life).
• Feeling: We must feel what we are doing and recognize what it is we are feeling.
• Understanding: Once we understand what we are feeling, we can know what we are doing right and what we need to change.

Warren explains, “as you see it, feel it, and understand it, then you just cycle back and do it over, and over, and over again. And each time you cycle through those three learning principles your ability to capture all aspects of your life expand and get greater.”

He used these principles to co-author the organization’s two teaching manuals and is the primary author of PSIA’s alpine ski manuals. These manuals are still prominently used today.

He has also written for many leading ski publications including SKI, Snow Country, Powder magazine, and has been featured in many skiing films including Warren Miller’s “The Color of Skiing.”

Retirement from Sundance Mountain Resort

Sundance President Chad Linebaugh reminisces on the impact Jerry has made for the resort and in his life personally.

“There’s almost no one I’d rather ski with than going out with Jerry where you can have a really great conversation as a friend, but you’re without a doubt coming off that mountain a better skier than when you went on the mountain.”

The nationally recognized ski instructor says he has enjoyed every second he has had with the resort.

“I love the passion that the leadership at Sundance has had. And so, that is why I have remained at Sundance all these years,” Warren says. “It was an area and a laboratory to just take a passion for skiing and expand it into everything I do in life.” 

Warren says the reason he is retiring now is to spend more time with his wife and his family, and to develop his other passions and talents. However, even though he won’t be holding his full-time position anymore, he will be hitting the Sundance slopes the same amount (and likely more).

Devin Oldroyd contributed to this story.