Skiing

As a Dane working in the Austrian Alps as a Ski instructor and –guide is very unusual, but I got in to it 16 years ago.
After spending the first season as a so called “ski bum” I decided to take the first part of the ski instructor course, also called the “Anwärter” so I could start teaching kids and beginners. Already before the next season started I finished the “Landeslehrer” so that I could start to teach intermitted skiers and also start taking them off-piste. That was when my passion for the area outside the groomed runs really started growing, so I started spending all my available time not teaching, improving my skiing techniques so that I could eventually pass the entry exam for the “Staatlicher”, which is a prerequisite for entering the skiing part of the Austrian Mountain guide education. So when I finally passed that back in the spring of 2001 my path was laid, now being able to spend as much time as possible in the backcountry area of the Arlberg region of Austria.
So now, I have done that full time for 8 seasons, I can say that I pretty much know every small corner of this vast off-piste arena, there are though still places that I like to explore a bit more, which I do on a regular basis when possible.
My career as a Ski instructor also brought me to Australia. Yes they do have mountains and snow down-under, so I spent 5 winter seasons (northern summers) in a resort called Mt. Hotham, this eventually brought my attention in to scuba-diving on the Great Barrier Reef up in Queensland so…..

Scuba-diving

Taking the PADI Open Water course at the Great Barrier Reef outside Townsville in Queensland, really opened up my mind to Scuba Diving, before that I thought it was something: very expensive, taking very long time to learn and just done in cold waters with zero visibility – but I was wrong, very wrong.
I then spent some holidays taking the next PADI levels, as a Advanced Open Water diver and in 2003 it brought me to the small island of Koh Tao in the gulf of Thailand, where I did my PADI Rescue Diver course, at the then pretty small resort of Crystal Dive.
Well I don’t have to mention, that one thing led to another, and now I am here today in 2009, having tough scuba diving under the PADI organization and at Crystal Dive Resort, for the last 4 years, when I’m not spending my time in St. Anton, Austria doing all the backcountry guiding.
At the moment I’m holding the instructor level of PADI IDC Staff Instructor, but hoping to being able to apply for the next level as a Master Instructor toward the end of 2009. This means that I’m not only teaches all levels of recreational scuba diving, including a wide variety of specialty courses, but also all the professional levels from Divemaster, over Assistant Instructor up to assisting on the Instructor courses.
As a special and noteworthy thing, I’m teaching in Danish, German and English, if you’re from Sweden or Norway doesn’t make much of a difference either.