Innisfail middle school teacher featured in national ski magazine for creating student program

That line describes her first experience on skis, which she shared with rdnewsNOW as a pivotal moment in her journey.

At 35 years old, she headed to the Nakiska Ski Area in the Rocky Mountains one day with her husband Curtis, telling him she skied once when she was 12 years old. However, he heard that she had been skiing since she was 12.

Holt said she was stuck at the top of the hill, consumed by fear and tears, until her nerves were soon replaced with awe as she watched skiers fly by, with big smiles and boasts of laughter.

“That could be me,” she thought to herself, adding that moment “created a monster”.

She says she went skiing every weekend that year, and even more the next. By the third year, she skied 58 days, determined to improve.

She says she enjoyed being outside in the powder-covered mountains and the unique personal journey of the sport.

“It just gives me this time in my life where my brain is turned off and I’m just in sync with what my body is doing and where I am, and it just gives you this complete feeling of freedom that I don’t really get anywhere else,” she said.

In 2022, Holt would soon take the ski world by snowstorm.

FREERIDE WORLD TOUR

The Freeride World Tour (FWT) is an international freeride competition for a style of skiing and snowboarding on natural ungroomed terrain.

The FWT was holding a contest for Canadians, offering tickets to the competition in Golden, British Columbia. Holt says she heard about the opportunity the day before the deadline on a podcast and poured her heart and soul into her application, telling the tale of how she started skiing, where it has brought her, the hours of videos she watches for inspiration and the motivation she feels from the female athletes.

Sitting in a school staff meeting, Holt says she jumped out of her chair screaming when she received the email that she had won.

In February 2022, she met two key members of Peak Performance, a ski jacket company and main sponsor of the event: Anders Norrin, who chose her as the winner, and Niklas Lundgren, who later supported her student ski program.

There, she not only built lifelong friendships with people from around the world, but also met Jess Hotter, FWT World Champion that year.

In an effort to share the experience with her students, Holt reached out to Hotter, who was in Fernie, BC, at the time, to see if she would be interested in coming to speak to her class.

The bright young minds were filled with excitement as they prepared a paper crown with the words “World Champs Only” for Hotter, a red carpet, and sprinkled snowflakes on her head from a ladder as the athlete walked through the door.

Crown created by Grade 5 students at Innisfail Middle School for Freeride World Tour champion Jess Hotter. (Supplied)

STUDENT SKI PROGRAM

Holt wanted to find a way to continue paying it forward for students to experience the magic of skiing.

“It’s absolutely surreal to me, as a person who’s fairly new to the ski sport, the people who have scooped me up and mentored me and given me their time. I never in a million years thought I’d be skiing with people who are world champions and Olympians and have ski movies and they’re giving me their time and their energy to help me be a better skier and that just lit a fire in me; how can I pay this back? How can I give this to the people around me,” she said.

She got involved with iSkiHill in Innisfail, the local hill containing six runs, including a little rail park, with tow rope access. Volunteering as a ski instructor with her husband once a week, she says jokingly that she badgered the Board of Directors President Brent Jackson for years to allow her to run a program for her students at the hill.

She joined the Board herself and was soon given the green light for her project, investing hundreds of hours of her time between the responsibilities.

In January 2023, Holt brought roughly 80 Grade 5 students to the ski hill as their two-hour Physical Education class, once a week for three weeks. She was able to negotiate a total cost of $50 per student for equipment rentals, lift tickets and transportation. She then took the students on two daytrips, to Red Deer’s Canyon Ski Resort and to her first love, Nakiska.

Soon, the entire community became involved.

“[We were] very lucky that people saw the value of the vision that I had and the most beautiful part of it was when I would go to work at the ski hill on Wednesday nights, we could stand at the top of that tow rope and it was like every second kid that was coming up was a kid from the Grade 5 ski program and seeing them take this out into their life, getting their families involved,” she said.

During this time, Holt was not only interviewed by Hjertaas for the article in Forecast Ski magazine but photographed at the Lake Louise Ski Resort by well-known ski photographer Dan Evans.

Innisfail Middle School teacher Erin Holt. (Photographed by Dan Evans)

Now in its second year, the program has already grown, with the rest of the school earning the opportunity to ski at the local hill.

As well, Peak Performance has supported the program by donating sponsored merchandise like ski socks, hats, hoodies, and other gear for students.

FUTURE IN THE SPORT

Holt has her eyes set on her future as an athlete.

Coming from a city-family that never skied, she says she is pushing herself out of her comfort zone in preparation for freeride competitions. Not only does she have a personal ski trainer but faces her fear of heights by completing long trail runs and climbing ridgelines in the summer, to ski camps in the winter.

While not one for the attention, Holt says she is very proud of herself for picking up a new sport at a later age and excelling in it.

“Just get out there and do it. There’s so many people who want to support you, especially as a female athlete. The community is so positive; we just want more people like us out there and everyone that I’ve met has just wanted to help me soar to the level that I want to, and I feel that anybody who has that passion and dedication would be received the same way,” she said.

Basically, just send it.

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by Alessia Proietti

Innisfail middle school teacher featured in national ski magazine for creating student program

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