GLENWOOD SPRINGS - Part way down a beginner's run at Sunlight Mountain Resort, Cary Thompson turns his skis against the hill and raises his arm like a handshake.

"This is the fundamental motion of Ski in Harmony," Thompson says, "and this is the motion that got me fired from SkiCo."

Thompson, 61, had been an Aspen Highlands ski instructor since December 1992, starting in the last days former owner Whip Jones ran it as an independent, low-frills ski resort. Over the years as a full-time ski instructor with the Aspen Skiing Co., Thompson developed his own approach to instructing that he dubbed Ski in Harmony, which can be applied to both alpine and telemark skiing, even snowboarding. He taught the approach as a boutique method for years, but last month, after 16 years on the slope, the SkiCo fired him for teaching methods that strayed from ski instructor orthodoxy.

"I was run off for not towing the party line," Thompson said.

A SkiCo refugee, Thompson has taken his unorthodox approach to the slopes of Sunlight, where General Manager Tom Jankovsky has given him rare permission to teach his method independently, outside of the mountain's own ski school.

"It's a departure from the usual policy and it's not something the ski school really likes," Jankovsky admitted. "But I've just known Cary for a long time."

In describing his method, Thompson can range from lecturing on Greek art to American Indian religion to Zen, but the heart of the approach is simple. If you want to turn left, raise your left hand. If you want to turn right, raise your right hand. The skis naturally turn toward the higher hand, he says.

He insists his simple approach can boost beginner skiers to levels they'd never expect to reach so quickly, and that it reduces the risk of ACL injuries.

Thompson isn't the only one to teach similar methods, but the approach runs contrary to accepted Professional Ski Instructor Association techniques. But Thompson says the PSIA approach, followed by SkiCo and many other ski resorts, creates an artificial separation between the upper and lower body that makes it harder to ski.

"They're sort of the flat earth society in scientific thinking and athletics," he said.

His approach has won him recent write-ups in Denver magazine and Four Seasons, but it ran afoul of SkiCo, which fired him after it became aware that his method had strayed beyond the PSIA guidelines. He appealed, but the appeal was rejected by a peer council.

"He didn't want to adopt his program to fit our school," SkiCo spokesman Jeff Hanle said. "It's nothing personal."

Thompson wasn't alone in teaching his own particular approach to ski instruction. Thomas Crum specializes in his Magic of Skiing approach, a mind-body technique that draws on Aikido. John Clendenin offers his personal Ski Doctors method. Programs are aimed at women and at mogul skiing. But those other instructors still conform to PSIA guidelines, Hanle said.

"He was not willing to do that, but that's what we base our whole school on," he said.

Thompson has trademarked some of his key slogans: Ski in Harmony, Ride in Harmony, and What Animal Are You?, part of a visualization approach he sometimes uses. He also has seven patents pending on a variety of ski and binding designs.

In a black cap, white jacket, corduroy ski pants and telemark skis, Thompson, a former owner of several Waffle House restaurants who only learned to ski himself when he was in his 40s, glides through the runs at Sunlight, doing pirouettes down the slope as his skis follow his raised hand.

"We need to focus, but not much," he says. "What are the three questions? Where are you? Where are you going? What animal are you?"

Thompson has a weathered face and short-cropped silver hair. Although he went to high school in Colorado Springs, he was partly raised in the South, and he speaks with an easygoing accent, whether he's talking about ski techniques, film history or etymology.

The core of his method comes down to simply raising the arm, what he calls the "Zen reduction of the pole swing."

"As the hand moves forward, it creates a twist in the body," he says. "The rest of the body follows behind it."

This "contrapposta" position, common to quarterbacks, Qigong and ancient Olympians, is key, Thompson said. He said it caught his eye when he noticed how similar ski legend Stein Eriksen looked in an old photo at the Sundeck to Michelangelo's rendering of a pointing God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Kerry Cesspooch, of Fort Duchesne, Utah, one of a group of Utes Thompson has instructed, praised the method, saying it got her skiing top-to-bottom on Buttermilk after three hours of teaching.

"After I got the hang of it, I was like flying coming down," she said. "It was really easy, like putting butter on toast."

Thompson said he left behind health insurance and some top-tipping clients to stick to his technique, but he's not complaining about his Sunlight exile. He points to runs he says are as steep as Steeplechase, trees like Temerity, and plenty of fellow telemarkers.

"It (Sunlight) has a lot of elements," he said, "and that includes a lot of skiing."
dfrey@aspendailynews.com