Ryan Portello is leaving no stone un-skied in his quest to improve.
The 15-year-old Cochrane freestyle moguls skier, who won gold at the Alberta Winter Games in February, was in Zermatt, Switzerland, recently training with the Alberta Freestyle ski team.
His October Alps experience definitely left an impression on the Grade 10 Cochrane High School student.
“It was great,” he says. “The mountains are a lot different (than the Rockies).”
The optional three-week Alberta team camp kept him busy with a three-day training cycle followed by one day off in between.
“We get up, do a quick warmup and then about a five-minute walk to the gondola,” he recalls. “From the gondola we take two trams up to the glacier. Then we ski all day on the glacier on a course that was already made. At the end of the day we do some dry-land training like road hockey and yoga.”
The team was skiing on the Matterhorn Glacier, 12,740 feet above sea level.
“It definitely affects your training,” Portello says of the altitude. “At the end of a run, there’s not a lot of air up there, so it’s hard to breathe.”
And, while the glacier isn’t located right on the world-renowned mountain of the same name, the views are spectacular.
“You have that giant Matterhorn there that is enormous,” he says. “It’s really cool to see that.”
Sight-seeing aside, there was work to be done. There was a lot of fresh snow and the skiing conditions were excellent.
“I was really happy with what I did. I felt I improved a lot. It was a really good camp to go to. I’m glad I went.”
But he also covets time away from competition to get some free-skiing in at mountains closer to home like Sunshine Village, Fernie and Red Mountain in Rossland, B.C. And he switches out the Hart skis he uses in competition for hand-crafted rails made right in town.
“For free-skiing, for fun, I’m skiing on SnoDay skis,” he says. “When I do have time to ski on my own I like to kind of take a break from moguls and try and ski powder, trees and jumps and everything.”
