- The Guardian
2 Monday 2 May 2022
PHOTOGRAPHS: JULIE FRYER IMAGES/ALAMY; COURTESY OF ANDY WALTERSCOVER PHOTOGRAPH: PAT MARTIN/NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINET
here were a couple
of days on his most
recent course, Andy
Walter s admits,
“whe n I thought: ‘ Am
I too old for this?’
Then, the next day, I was fi ne. I
was the oldest guy who passed,
so that was gratifying.” He has
just taken a further qualifi cation
as a ski instructor, reaching a
level that enables him to teach
almost anywhere, four years after
embarking on this new direction at
the age of 60.
Walters had always had a
fascination with skiing, even
though he was born in Kuwait.
His father was a civil engineer, his
mother, a physiotherapist from
the Isle of Bute, the Scottish island
where Walters now lives. He and his
wife moved there 25 years ago and
bought a run-down hotel, which
they run as a self-catered holiday
house. They live in a fl at alongside,
handing over the keys to guests on
a Friday, “so we’re sort of retired,
and it gives me more time to do the
things I want to do ”.
It’s why Walters thought he
might enjoy teaching people toski. He had, after all, he says with
a smile, enjoyed the bread making
classes he used to run. “I like
teaching people things,” he says.
When he was a child, Walters’s
family moved back to the UK, and
he fi rst skied at 11 on a school trip
to Austria. “We were allowed to go
up the mountain on the second day
and I remember, with a friend, being
so scared of skiing down that we
actually walked down,” he says. Yet
it didn’t put him off. Their teacher
started organising Sunday trips
to Glenshee, the skiing area in the
Highlands, and Walters became part
of the school’s ski team (consisting
of just him and another boy).
In his 20s, Walters moved to
Brighton and worked as a computer
programmer in London, while
also working on Saturdays in a ski
shop. He was off ered a full-time
job there, and decided to take it.
Later, he and a friend worked as
location caterers, largely for BBC
productions. Between that and
raising three daughters, Walters
didn’t ski for about 20 years. “It
wasn’t until we moved to Scotland
and I was closer to some of the
resorts that I picked it up again.”A new start after 60
Once he had taken the week-long
instructor course in the Cairngorms- followed by further training – he
wasn’t sure there would be an
easy route into work. Then he
spotted a plea on Facebook from a
company that teaches children to
ski, for someone to replace one of
their instructors who had injured
herself. Three days later, Walters
arrived in Switzerland. “I was
thinking: ‘ This is going to be awful,
because I’ll be this old guy ,’” he
says. But he wasn’t even the oldest
instructor – there was one in his
early 70s. It went so well that, by
the second day, his group of 11- and
12-year-olds were skiing down easy
runs. He now regularly works with
the company.
He is pretty fi t, he says, and being
a 64-year-old ski instructor isn’t too
tiring, although, he adds: “ You can
fi nd yourself out of breath if you’re
following a 20-year-old down a run
and they refuse to stop. The thing
about skiing is, if your technique is
quite good, it’s fairly effi cient, so you
don’t tend to over-exert yourself.”
There is “very little ageism”, he says,
within the instructor world, where
there is a diverse range of ages – on
‘I became a ski instructor at 60 – it keeps me young’
his recent course, the youngest was
16, and the oldest was in his 70s
(although he didn’t fi nish it). When
you’re teaching beginners “you
spend most of your time dealing
with people skiing slowly. You’re not
trying to teach people to go as fast
as possible – you’re trying to teach
them how to ski with control, reduce
speed, get down the mountain
without killing themselves.”
Three years ago, Walters broke
his pelvis. “I had a sort of freak
slip sideways and landed on my
hipbone on a very hard piste, which
was enough to put me in hospital
for four days, and then on crutchesfor three months. When you get
to your 60s, everything can be a
potential problem, but I skied the
next year and it was fi ne.”
He doesn’t think the accident – or
its impact – was age-related, he was
just unlucky.
“It’s knees that generally go fi rst
but, so far, fi ngers crossed ...”
What has this change of life
given him? “Great friends,” he
says. “I’ve met a lot of really
interesting people, and skied with
them.” It has been fun to teach
children, he says, and see them
progress. “It’s something I didn’t
anticipate I would do this late. I
like to keep myself interested, and
I think it keeps me feeling young.”
Sometimes he compares himself
with an instructor, 20 years his
junior, who has become a good
friend “and think maybe I should
have done it at 40, but I didn’t have
the confi dence, I didn’t think I
could actually achieve it. Then for
some reason, four years ago,
I thought: ‘Maybe I can.’ ”
Tell us: has your life taken a new
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new-start-after-60‘It’s knees that
generally go
fi rst but, so far,
fi ngers crossed’