{"id":2470724,"date":"2021-04-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/natalie-rines-terry-sugarloaf-instructor\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T14:17:20","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T20:17:20","slug":"natalie-rines-terry-sugarloaf-instructor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/snow-sports\/natalie-rines-terry-sugarloaf-instructor\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Sugarloaf\u2019s Most Beloved Ski Instructor"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a ski lodge basement at Sugarloaf Mountain, Maine, the contents of Natalie Rines Terry\u2019s locker sit exactly as they were left last spring\u00a0after she passed away from natural causes, on April 22, 2020, at 96 years old. There\u2019s a snowflake beanie, a fleece, and a commemorative pin. Not far away, her official gravestone reads \u201cSugarloafer Since 1951, Lifetime Member of PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors of America).\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning in the late 1930s, Rines Terry\u00a0skied with grit through\u00a0a time\u00a0when girls\u2019 school sports didn\u2019t even exist.\u00a0\u201cWay back in the day, being a strong female athlete made her feel a little bit different, but she always found a way to be competitive,\u201d says her daughter Sarah Carlson, who now works as a ski coach. \u201cRines Terry\u00a0taught more students than anyone else in the East,\u201d\u00a0her co-workers and friends told me over and over again. She was Sugarloaf\u2019s most requested instructor in history, teaching tens of thousands of students over the course of her 50-year career.\u00a0In 1996,\u00a0Ski<\/em>\u00a0listed Rines Terry as\u00a0one of North America\u2019s top 100\u00a0ski instructors, and in 2012, she was inducted into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame. But more than all the accolades, she had a genuine love for the sport.<\/p>\n

On a cold day this January, during\u00a0Sugarloaf Mountain\u2019s first-ever ski season\u00a0without Rines Terry, I suit up and skate over to Carlson on the trail named after her mother, Natalie\u2019s Birches. On one side of us is the path to one of Sugarloaf\u2019s earliest condos,\u00a0owned first by Rines Terry and now Carlson. On the other side\u00a0is\u00a0the spot where Rines Terry stepped into her skis every week of the season\u00a0for 50 years. \u201cWe\u2019d see Nat coming over from her condo, a little unsteady with her walking stick, and just as we were about to go help her, with the click of her bindings, all the tightness and instability would disappear. She would flow down the hill,\u201d says her longtime friend Tom Butler, Sugarloaf\u2019s vice president of skier services. Next to the lift at the bottom of her run is a chapel, where her planned funeral service on the mountain never took place\u00a0because of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"Natalie
Natalie Rines Terry and her husband with their two children in 1963.\r\n<\/span> (Courtesy Sarah Carlson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Carlson and I creep up the ropeway, eyeing the trail where it all began 70\u00a0years ago.\u00a0In 1951, long before this chairlift or any other at Sugarloaf existed, Rines Terry stood right there on\u00a0seal skins\u00a0with Sugarloaf founder Amos Winter. They were hiking up what was at the time the only trail cut on the mountain:\u00a0Winter\u2019s Way. Growing up in Waterville, Maine, Rines Terry\u00a0and her friends taught themselves to ski by climbing up a rolling pasture and snowplowing down. By 1939, they were hopping the rope tow as part of the ski club at a local resort, Titcomb Mountain. She had\u00a0been among the lucky ones\u00a0<\/b>to take lessons from\u00a0Austrian Hannes Schneider, one of the pioneers of modern ski instruction.\u00a0Rines Terry was \u201cthe woman who excelled in everything that interested her,\u201d reads a letter from her\u00a0lifelong friend\u00a0Lorrain Norton.\u00a0\u201cThe PSIA exam included a giant slalom. Many of the men failed. Not Nat. She was exultant and we were so proud of her.\u201d She was a housewife in her forties\u00a0by the time then-ski school director Harry Baxter spotted her perfect turns and later, in 1969, hired her to teach.<\/p>\n

About 4,000 feet up, at the top of the Skyline lift, the temperature dips below zero,\u00a0<\/b>but \u201cit\u2019s the perfect day for a Natalie run,\u201d Carlson says. \u201cNothing stopped her.\u201d She was like a diesel engine, fueled by a full slate of students\u00a0even in the nastiest weather. If she saw she wasn\u2019t scheduled to teach a lesson, Butler says, \u201cShe\u2019d be sitting there with her hands on her hips, daring you to go ahead and assign her a student. She loved a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rines
Rines Terry with four generations who followed. From left: Emma Carlson (granddaughter), Natalie Rines Terry, Alice Terry (great-granddaughter), Carter Terry (grandson), Sarah Carlson (daughter).<\/span> (Courtesy Sarah Carlson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rines Terry was a natural athlete\u2014in her younger years, she was\u00a0a champion\u00a0figure skater, competitive diver, swimmer, and later a tennis player and golfer\u2014and she\u00a0could watch a skier make just two turns before pinpointing even the most subtle change to improve their technique.\u00a0<\/strong>But there was more to it than faultless technique. As a customer service expert long before it was seen as standard practice, she genuinely cared about every one of her students. The proof was in the piles of books and folders full of clippings on instruction she left behind: the stacks of journals with meticulous notes on every student she ever taught. Rines Terry kept in touch with them throughout the year, and in the summer, she\u2019d send cards with their lesson plan for the following winter. She also kept detailed records of the weather and snow conditions during those 50 seasons. \u201cYou want to know what the weather was like on March 10, 1981? Natalie could tell you,\u201d Butler says.<\/p>\n

Carlson and I traverse west into the sun like Rines Terry\u2019s husband,\u00a0George \u201cTim\u201d Terry, would have. \u201cDad always worked his way across the mountain to get the best light throughout the day,\u201d Carlson says. Tim was\u00a0involved in the early development of Sugarloaf\u00a0and\u00a0was Rines Terry\u2019s\u00a0rock, even more so after their only son was killed in a cycling accident in 1987 at age 33. Tim also\u00a0saw their family through the unexpected loss of Carlson\u2019s husband in 2002\u00a0and Rines Terry\u2019s own battle with cancer. But\u00a0Tim died from cancer in 2011, and\u00a0afterward,\u00a0Rines Terry\u2019s\u00a0students became even\u00a0more important to her.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s rugged days on the mountain like these, when the winds are blowing sideways and you can\u2019t feel your toes, that Rines Terry was famous for toughing it out. She skied on\u2014simply because she loved to.<\/p>\n

Our final run of the day, on Whiffletree, was the last that Rines Terry ever took,\u00a0in March 2019.\u00a0While I ski down, wishing I could\u2019ve been one of her\u00a0students, at least I can still learn from her approach: to make sure every turn counts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Sugarloaf Mountain\u2019s first-ever season without its beloved ski instructor Natalie Rines Terry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100316,"featured_media":2422462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"uuid":"0ddd23fa12d67d773c24c6abe127d771","footnotes":""},"categories":[2544],"tags":[2747,2960,2734,2835,2853],"byline":[2487],"ad_cat":[],"legacy-category":[],"class_list":["post-2470724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-snow-sports","tag-family","tag-maine","tag-obituary","tag-skiing","tag-winter","byline-anna-fiorentino"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Celebrating Sugarloaf\u2019s Most Beloved Ski Instructor","url":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/snow-sports\/natalie-rines-terry-sugarloaf-instructor\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/snow-sports\/natalie-rines-terry-sugarloaf-instructor\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/16\/natalie-rines-terry-lead2_h.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/16\/natalie-rines-terry-lead2_h.jpg"},"articleSection":"Snow Sports","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"jrellosa"}],"creator":["jrellosa"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online","logo":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/favicon-194x194-1.png"},"keywords":["family","maine","obituary","skiing","winter"],"dateCreated":"2021-04-20T00:00:00Z","datePublished":"2021-04-20T00:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-05-12T20:17:20Z"},"rendered":"