Living Legacy
Theresa Leland’s ongoing impact on the ski-education community.
It’s a brilliant day at Crosscut Mountain Sports Center, with last week’s powder dump now neatly groomed into corduroy Nordic ski trails that sparkle under the midday sun. Six elementary-schoolers follow one of Crosscut’s instructors up a gentle incline, forming a tail of Nordic skis and poles as they glide, not yet effortlessly, but more smoothly than they did an hour ago, beneath the looming peaks of the Bridgers. Crosscut hosts several of these groups each day—composed mostly of schoolkids from across southwest Montana—and this gaggle in particular stops at the top of a hill, encountering a silver-haired woman, bedecked in broad sunglasses and a big, black hat, who asks them about their day. It’s a pretty picture, the young and the old connecting over a shared enthusiasm for the sport, framed by the snowcapped mountains—but it’s more than that, too. Without the silver-haired woman in the big sunglasses and hat, the kids probably wouldn’t be there.
Theresa Leland, never seen on the trail without her trademark hat and glasses, founded Crosscut’s youth ski program in 1989 back when it was Bohart Ranch, and today the program teaches over 2,000 grade-schoolers how to Nordic ski each winter. Local schools send up students for either the Nordic Ski Adventure or the Adventures in Winter Ecology program, the latter of which integrates outdoor science into a day on the trails. Every year, Crosscut has more demand than it can supply, with teachers clamoring to get their classes on the schedule and some inevitably missing the cut. But the program had humble beginnings.
Theresa, a lifelong Montanan, started working for Bohart in 1988, fresh out of college with a couple years of teaching and ski instructing under her belt. That year, only two schools came to Bohart to ski, and there was no formal programming. “When the kids got off the bus, we’d just herd them in here to get their skis and send them out,” Theresa says.
It was up to the kids to figure out the basics, and they learned the hard way how to descend hills and get up after a fall. But after two years of watching their struggles, Theresa decided to get things organized. Drawing from her experience as an instructor and her Professional Ski Instructors of America training, she designed a curriculum for beginners and established training days for her instructors. Slowly, the program began to take shape.
Theresa, a lifelong Montanan, started working for Bohart in 1988, fresh out of college with a couple years of teaching and ski instructing under her belt.
It started small, with one to two schools coming to Bohart each week for a ski lesson. Rather than letting the kids run wild after they poured off the bus, Theresa and her instructors brought them to an instruction arena to teach them the basics—how to fall down, stand up, turn around, and hold their poles like they were holding a lunch tray. They played games to reinforce these skills.
“They were getting used to maneuvering around and gliding without really thinking about it, because they were having fun playing the game,” Theresa reminisces. Then the kids would share a snack, and the instructors would take them on the trails in groups of five or six before coming back for lunch and sending them home.
The program was a success, with more and more schools signing up over the next decade. By 2002, it was ripe for another evolution, and Theresa approached Bohart’s owner, Jean MacInnes, about creating a Ski Education Director position to address the heightened demand. Jean agreed, and Bohart’s School Group Program became the Ski Education Program, with Theresa at its helm. Then she pitched Jean another idea.
Theresa still recalls the conversation. “I said, ‘We have a captive audience in a beautiful outdoor setting—it’s a great opportunity to incorporate some outdoor education into our ski program, teach the kids about their environment, and empower them to be good stewards.’”
Jean loved it, so Theresa approached Montana Outdoor Science School (MOSS), who specialized in summer science camps for kids, about developing a lesson plan. MOSS’s directors at the time loved the idea too, and developed a one-topic lesson plan to try out the following season. Theresa called the hybrid “Adventures in Winter Ecology (AWE),” and in 2003, three schools signed up for the inaugural run. But when the first batch of students from Hawthorne Elementary showed up, things didn’t go exactly to plan.
“It was a disaster,” Theresa says. The MOSS employees Bohart enlisted to teach the science knew how to manage kids in an outdoor classroom, but didn’t know how to manage them on skis, and that first year they had all the students take their skis off for the lesson. “The kids were bummed, because they got to ski in the morning, but then they had to do science,” Theresa says.
The teachers from Hawthorne were not impressed.
Not to be discouraged, Theresa and the folks from MOSS regrouped to come up with a better approach. The following year, Theresa brought MOSS instructors to Bohart’s ski instructor training program to teach her instructors how to execute the science curriculum. Theresa and MOSS also developed a unique curriculum for grades 3-8, and their goal was a more integrated approach: ski games were modified to include lessons in animal adaptation and habitat, so the day felt less like school and more like an adventure. “It became part of the tour on the trail,” Theresa says. “The kids loved it, and the teachers loved it.”
When the first batch of students from Hawthorne Elementary showed up, things didn’t go exactly to plan.
The program was a smash, and the Bohart ski instructors, rather than resenting their new roles as science teachers, rejoiced in the work. “We all loved our jobs,” Theresa remembers. “I still have instructors tell me it was the best job they ever had.”
One of those instructors was Krista Wright, who, after helping develop the outdoor science curriculum as one of MOSS’s directors, came to work for Theresa while she was supposed to be on sabbatical. “I was so inspired that I came back,” Krista says. “Theresa is a true inspiration in the Nordic-skiing world.”
Theresa regularly worked 12-hour days all season long, as she had to spend more time on administrative tasks while also managing instructors. But she never stopped teaching classes, and working with the kids kept her energized. “The excitement was infectious,” Theresa says. “It was so rewarding.”
During a long day of skiing, playing games, and learning to identify animal tracks, Theresa and the other instructors would often hear students exclaim, “This is the best day of my life!”
“To give us these big hugs and tell us that it was the best day of their life? Holy smokes,” Theresa says. She especially loved working with the never-evers, the kids who hadn’t skied before and were often intimidated to get out on the snow. “They feel so empowered,” she adds. “And as an instructor, you feel so fulfilled that you were part of that experience in their life.”
Theresa was a never-ever herself until her second year of college. She took a ski PE class at MSU that allowed her to ski Bridger Bowl once a month. She loved it, but once the class ended, she couldn’t afford a pass, so she perked up when a friend from Sweden told her about Nordic skiing. Theresa started out on wooden skis with lignostone edges, three-pin bindings, bamboo poles, a wax kit, and ski boots that were basically glorified tennis shoes, all for $50 from the old Sports Chalet. Then she and her friend began wandering into Bridger Canyon on the weekends and teaching themselves how to ski. There was no Bohart Ranch or Crosscut at the time, and there were very few people to learn from, so it was all trial and error. “We just parked the car, put our skis on, and took off,” Theresa says.
The students in Theresa’s classes got a much more formal education. Theresa wanted to introduce lifetime skills that her students could use or come back to in the future—like Nordic skiing and the power of exercise—but with the outdoor science program, she also wanted to give them an appreciation for this “wonderful, beautiful gem of a place,” and encourage them to protect it.
“They are the ones that have to care,” Theresa says. “They’re going to make legislation or found programs themselves that will raise awareness of why our environment is so important. We have to take care of it or it’s going to disappear.”
Despite its explosive growth, the program itself remains almost exactly as Theresa designed it. Crosscut still uses the manual Theresa wrote in the ’90s, and the instructors play many of the same games she did back then.
The AWE program just celebrated its 20-year anniversary. The Nordic Ski Adventure program has been going for over 30. Both have grown dramatically in that period, with one or two school groups each week turning into two or three every day. Crosscut bought Bohart in 2018, but they kept the program going, and last year it had its highest enrollment yet at over 2,500 students. Public schools, private schools, and home schools all take their kids there to Nordic ski, and Crosscut has maxed out their ski fleet and facilities to the point they can’t add more schools to the calendar. “When registration would open, teachers would be ready to dial the phone to get through, and in two hours the whole winter schedule would be full with people on a waitlist,” Theresa notes.
Despite its explosive growth, the program itself remains almost exactly as Theresa designed it. Crosscut still uses the manual Theresa wrote in the ’90s, and the instructors play many of the same games she did back then. “The really solid foundation that Theresa created is still the heart of the program,” says Chandler Bowen, the current Outdoor Education Manager at Crosscut and one of Theresa’s successors. “It’s cool to see how long all those things have lasted.”
Theresa retired, along with her boss and Bohart’s founder Jean MacInnes, in 2017, but she helped oversee the transition after Crosscut bought Bohart, and continued teaching classes until Covid hit in 2020. She’s proud of the program’s longevity and success, but emphasizes that she’s not the only one responsible. “I did not do it alone,” Theresa says. “I hired amazing ski-ed instructors. I had Jean MacInnes’s blessing. I reached out to MOSS and they were wonderful. This program, although I was the founder, was a real collaborative effort of a lot of people who had the same passion that I did.”
That passion lives on today in people like Chandler Bowen, and Crosscut’s president Angie Weikert—who was once an instructor in the AWE program under Theresa. With the new leadership, Theresa is glad to see the next generation sharing their passion for Nordic skiing, and appreciation for the environment, with kids. “That was why this all started, and that’s why it’s still going,” she says.
Theresa’s legacy lives on in every student who learns to ski at Crosscut.
Although Crosscut’s winter schedule is jam-packed, the organization is finding new ways to share Nordic skiing with others. They helped Piikani Lodge Health Institute launch its own version of the Ski Education Program on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning—sharing teaching manuals, part of the ski fleet, a snowmobile, and grooming equipment to get the program up and running. Last year, Crosscut included the Piikani Institute in their instructor training, and this year Bowen joined the institute in Glacier National Park to ski with students. Crosscut also added a global snowsports program to offer free skiing opportunities to those who otherwise couldn’t afford it.
“There have been a lot of changes and improvements up here, all for the good,” Theresa says. She still skis at Crosscut often, and at age 73, she’s barely lost a step. This winter she averaged three or four days a week, and during one particularly good weather window, she spent 12 out of 13 days on the trails. She’s proud of what she has accomplished with the program, but prefers to remain anonymous as she tours around Crosscut, occasionally stopping to listen to school groups while instructors teach the curriculum she helped to create. “I am just so glad this program is still touching lives,” she says.
One afternoon this winter, Theresa was out for a lap on Crosscut’s trails and ran into a school group stopped at the top of their final hill. She stopped too, and asked them where they were from and what they’d been learning. The third graders chattered excitedly, and as Theresa talked with them about the fur, fat, feathers experiment—something she helped devise in 2003—the group’s instructor was puzzled. Who was this grey-haired woman in the big, brimmed hat that knew so much about their program? The instructor asked her name.
“Hi, I’m Theresa.”
Then it clicked, and she burst out, “Oh my gosh, you’re a legend!”
But that’s not how Theresa thinks of herself. “I’ve never been called a legend—I guess you have to get older to finally gain legend status,” Theresa laughs. Legend or not, Theresa’s legacy lives on in every student who learns to ski at Crosscut. She just hopes they keep having the best days of their lives.
