Storm Skiing 9/26/2026: Fixing America’s Broken Ski School Model with Snow Schoolers’ Brian Bensch

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast thinks that yelling “PIZZA!” and “FRENCH FRY!” at a 2-year-old superman straightlining down a green slope is a highly effective ski instruction technique. If you agree, please sign up for my newsletter:WhoBrian Bensch, founder of Snow SchoolersDate recordedSeptember 24, 2026About Snow SchoolersSnow Schoolers, per its website, is an “independent ski school program” that teaches lessons “at any mountain where we’ve established a revenue-sharing partnership with the ski area.” Skiers sign up for lessons on their Pet Rectangles, like this:Why I interviewed himThat sounds pretty neat, right? Let me go see if Snow Schoolers teaches at my favorite mountain. Snow Schoolers probably does not teach at your favorite mountain. Unless your favorite mountain is 222-vertical-foot Granlibakken, which is about five feet away from 6,000-acre Palisades Tahoe, or 100 vertical-foot Frisco Adventure Park, tucked off highway 9, after 1.5 million-ish skiers exit I-70 on their way to nearby Breckenridge.That is not an indictment of small ski areas, which I love, or Snow Schoolers’ business model, which I also love. Rather, it’s my way of saying that the only way to sign up for ski school at Palisades Tahoe or Breckenridge is through Palisades Tahoe or Breckenridge. With the strange, grandfathered-in exception of the strange, cobbled-together ski bazaar that is Summit at Snoqualmie in Washington, all major American ski areas (so far as I know) operate with a monopoly over ski school operations on their property. In ways subtle and aggressive, they police and ban rogue instructors who would offer discounted lessons on resort property.There are probably ways to break this system, either through the courts or legislative amendment of the Forest Service leases that 125 U.S. ski areas operate on. Such change sounds radical only in an American context - most European ski areas already operate with multiple independent competing ski schools onsite. Over the past 20 years, technology has challenged monopolies across American commerce. Sports and concert tickets and taxi rides offer two prime examples of power shifting from one central operator to many operators, with benefits and drawbacks for the consumer. Perhaps we will get there with ski school. For now, I see a more practical path for an asset-light, app-based, independent ski school like Snow Schoolers - as the costs of labor, utilities, infrastructure, and insurance pile up, perhaps outsourcing the operation of a ski school is more practical for many smaller, independent ski areas than establishing and maintaining one of their own. That is what you get at Granlibakken and Frisco: Snow Schoolers pays the ski areas a share of each lesson, essentially as rent for the right to operate a ski school on their property. And Granlibakken and Friso don’t have to worry about hiring instructors and organizing lessons. There are probably 100 under-resourced ski areas in America where this model could work tomorrow. Brian and I discuss why Snow Schoolers works where it does, and why the model has been slow to spread.TranscriptsThere are two transcripts. Both are generated by robots. Both are helpful and defective in their own unique ways. I do not proofread either of them.Transcript 1: Click the “transcript” button at the top of this article. You can only see this transcript on a computer. Because I don’t know why exactly but everything is getting better and dumber all at once it seems. Anyway, this is the transcript that the robots create when I upload the podcast to the internet. The cool thing about it is that you can click on any block of text and the audio will teleport there instantly. The uncool thing about this transcript is that it does not indicate who is talking at any given moment.Transcript 2: You can read this below. This is the transcript that Zoom creates as we record the podcast. The cool thing about this transcript is that it indicates who is talking at any given moment. The uncool thing about this transcript is that the timestamps do not match the audio. Also, you cannot click on this text to move to the associated point in the audio.ZoomStuart Winchester: My guest today founded Snowschoolers in 2014 with the mission to make skiing and riding affordable and accessible for average Americans.00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:11.000Stuart Winchester: and to pay snow sports pros a sustainable living wage.00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:19.000Stuart Winchester: Today, Snowschoolers operates at Grand Lebakken in Lake Tahoe, and Frisco Adventure Park in Colorado, two small ski areas.00:16