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Eva Gonzalez is a ski instructor to be reckoned with. There's very little about alpine skiing, telemark skiing or snowboarding she can't teach you about, and teach you good.

Gonzalez is the only woman within the Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) organization, which is the governing body of snowsports' instructors in the United States, to become a Certified Level III instructor, that's expert in all three disciplines. It's like having three black belts.

Gonzalez works at Stevens Pass, Washington, alongside four other Triple Threat instructors.

"I started shadowing other instructors, and then tested for Level I Alpine. I got that, and then started snowboarding and telemarking more...." — Eva Gonzalez

Gonzalez was born in France to a French mother and Spanish father, and spent much of her childhood in Spain. She took ski trips with her family every winter, but didn't really get into snowsports until travelling to Seattle as part of a student exchange program in 1992. Friends of her host family were big skiers and she started night skiing at Stevens as much as a teenager without a car and away from her family possibly could. At the ski area, she started befriending staff members, many of whom helped her get on the chair at a...um, discount.

The next season, '93-'94, she returned to Europe to work and ski in the Alps. She was out in the snow every day, no matter the conditions. She started dabbling in snowboarding and telemark skiing, and began going on backcountry tours on her alpine skis.

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She came back to the States the following winter, '94-'95. "I started shadowing other instructors, and then tested for Level I Alpine. I got that, and then started snowboarding and telemarking more." Continuing to board and tele in her free time, Gonzalez taught skiing for the rest of that season, heading back to the Alps once the snow started melting in Washington.

Back in Europe, she took a job at a ski shop in Méribel, France, commandeered a pair of tele skies from another ski shop's dumpster and concentrated on telemark skiing and snowboarding. She returned to Stevens Pass that winter and received her Level II certification in alpine skiing, as well as her Level I Snowboarding.

During the '97-'98 season, Eva achieved Level III Alpine, Level II Snowboarding and Level I Telemark. Certainly, she was pushed a bit by her colleagues, four of whom — Chad Frost, Earl Saline, Sven Jonassen and Mitch Ross — were either already Triple Threats, or well on their way to earning it. Together, they make Stevens Pass a kind of vortex of high-level instruction.

"It's everybody feeding off one another," explains Saline. "We have a desire to stay fresh out there, on the snow, to always keep learning and improving. We definitely push each other a lot.

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"Eva likes to work and likes teaching. She shares her love of the sports with the people she teaches, too," says Saline.

Last year, Gonzalez completed her teaching triumph, gaining Level III in snowboarding and taking a telemark "challenge" that allowed her to skip Level II and go straight to the top. Now what? Gonzalez and the other Triple Threats at Stevens spend much of their time providing clinics for other groups of instructors. They're also starting to work with the PSIA to help make instructional books and videos, to be used in instructor's training.

She's also interested in competing. In everything.

"I competed in the US Telemark Nationals last season, and finished 7th out of the 50 skiers in my class. I'm getting more and more open to competitions — telecross, skiercross, snowboard cross..."

Of course, snow alone does not a good life make. Gonzalez spent most of last summer on the river, honing her boating skills and reaching the first level in kayak instruction. "I love skiing and all the rest," says Gonzalez, "but the river is different. It really gets my heart pumping."

Apparently, having already mastered all class of terrain with free heels, a single plank and the old standard skis, getting her heart pumping isn't so easy any more.

— Mary Catherine O'Connor, MountainZone.com Staff