Aaron Weissman

I'm from Great Falls, born in 1971, and my first day at Showdown didn't go so well. I was about six, sometime in the 1970s, and the Poma lift did not treat me well. I ended up stuck at the top of the Bovey Headwall, scared to death, with no lesson and no idea how to get down. We had a high-school girl living with us then, and her boyfriend skied me down the mountain between his legs.

Skiing really got hold of me in high school. I had friends who were good skiers, Brian Rosenbaum and Matt Miller, and by my freshman or sophomore year I was going up with them every weekend on a season pass. There were some years I lived away from Montana and only got up a couple of times a winter, visiting my folks. But I haven't missed a year skiing at Showdown since 1986.

Skiing here goes back a long way in my family. My great-uncle, Leonard Weissman, was a regular on this hill long before I was, and in the early 1950s he was vice president of the Great Falls Ski Club. Our family had a hardware store in Great Falls, Carl Weissman & Sons. In the 1980s the man who taught me to be a hardware salesman there was Jack Throckmorton. He ran our fastener room, every size of every bolt and nut you can imagine, probably sixty thousand dollars' worth of inventory, and that was Jack's baby. I had no idea then what a legend he was. Last year the ski patrol's Northern Division had a history trailer with a whole wall about Jack, with his 1948 National Ski Patrol certificate and his letters back and forth with the national office.

When my kids were in Youth Ski League, I put myself in Jim Gold's Peak Performance class. I really wasn't a great skier before that. I took Jim's class every year for more than ten years, and I wouldn't be a patroller or an instructor if it weren't for him. Jim Gold and Idaho are the ones who really taught me this sport.

I've been on the Great Falls Ski Patrol more than ten years now. I'm on Team 4, which is Stan King's team. It got drilled into me early that you don't go on the mountain without a radio, because you can't respond without one, so I'm hardly ever just a customer anymore. I won a seat on the very first chair of the 2014-15 season with Jake Larson and Jake Rysted. In 2025 the patrol gave me my ten-year service award, and I was one of its Banff Super Stars that year.

About seven years ago, at the Showdown Super Bowl party, I got one of the biggest honors and biggest surprises of my life. The ski school director was leaving partway through the season for Maine, to take care of his dad, and I was sat down and told I was a really good patroller, but they thought I'd be a really good teacher. Would I come work in the ski school? It's become a passion of mine. I absolutely love teaching skiing, and being an instructor at Showdown is one of the real joys of my life.

My children, Max and Sarah, both had their first jobs at Showdown. Sarah started as a cashier in the kitchen and went on to be a ski instructor. Max has been an instructor here the last eleven years. He likes freestyle, and I'm in my fifties, so if you ever see my skis leave the snow, call patrol. Max co-taught with me in Youth Ski League, the purple group, and in a lot of Ski P.E. classes. I can't think of a better feeling than working with my son, the two of us passing this sport on to the next generation. Growing up at Showdown helped make both of them the amazing young adults they are.

This year I'm helping lead the instructor training. We've written a manual, and we're putting our training on paper in a way we haven't before, at least not in a long time. It's a wonderful place run by a wonderful family, and I want to do what I can to keep it that way for another generation or seven.

Stan King's memorial is on Kings Ridge. His ashes are at the base of the tree, and there's a gnome on it. Every class I take that can ski Kings Ridge stops there, and I tell them the story of Stan. The ridge is named for him, he patrolled here more than sixty years, and he worked the Calgary Olympics in 1988. When he died, Mel Carnahan cleaned out his garage, and the memorial bench is made from Stan's own skis. Being one of the few people who's both a patroller and an instructor, I think I can teach more than skiing. I can help teach Showdown's culture, and Showdown's culture is its history.