What is a PSIA Level 3 skier?

One thing that kept coming up time and time again is that the hill I’m going to requires patrollers who will be on skis to be at least PSIA Level 3.  So the students with me were asking, “what does that mean exactly…?”  Good?  Really good?  Warren Miller movie star?

When you ask skiers how good they are my experience is that the really good ones usually underestimate their abilities and the not so good ones typically overstate their abilities (sometimes a lot).  So when you ask the people in your class if they are any good you get some interesting responses.

So that brings us back to PSIA Level 3.  As far as I can tell that means a very solid technical advanced skier but you don’t have to be blazing trails through the trees and dropping off cliffs.  Actually from what I can see what defines Level 3 is more good quality technical control (aka textbook turns).

I found this link on Epicski that shows some of the testing skills.  Granted this is from 2004 but i’m guessing it is still probably pretty good even today.  http://www.epicski.com/t/24860/psia-w-level-iii-skiing-tasks-long

There are also lots of video examples on youtube and vimeo.  This link has some cool videos:  http://vimeo.com/channels/l3skiing

After watching these I started wondering however as while I’ve seen some very good patrollers skiing, i’ve also seen a few I would call just a normal average skier so perhaps the strict definition of level 3 is a ballpark guideline???  I guess we will see when we do the ski test on the hill in November!