Summit High School students are producing twice as many skis and snowboards as learning opportunities expand

Kit Geary/ Summit Daily News
Bauer Dunnum started the first semester of his senior year with a plank of wood but ended it with an all-mountain ski that can navigate variable conditions.
Thomas Lutke’s career and technical education class at Summit High School provides students like Dunnum with hands-on experience in both manufacturing and marketing skis and snowboards. This year, Lutke said the class size doubled, helping students produce nearly 30 handcrafted skis and snowboards.

The high school tested a new co-teaching model for the 2024-25 school year and added a section to the class taught by graphic design teacher Erin Scott-Williams, who focused on the media and marketing aspects of the industry.
Senior Annika Kramer was in Scott-Williams’ portion of the class when she learned how to advertise her snowboard. Her design reflected her love of both the oceans and mountains by bringing together magazine clips and photographs. She didn’t really have an interest in graphic design until she worked with Scott-Williams. Now she’s considering it as a career.
Senior Autumn Alcock, similar to Kramer, was the only female in her ski manufacturing class. She said she entered the semester intimidated, but Lutke helped ease her concerns early on.
“I had picked up a drill maybe twice before this. … We used a lot of tools that I’d never even seen, but once (I got a grasp on how to use them), it was really empowering,” she said.
Alcock’s 174-centimeter-long, all-mountain skis that she dubbed “The Equinox,” a reference to the change in seasons from fall to winter, were on display at Rocky Mountain Underground in Breckenridge on Jan. 8. Community members and professionals in the ski and snowboard industry voted on the skis and snowboards made by Lutke’s class based on three categories: best social media post, best shape and profile, and best overall impression.
Summit High School graduate Drew Petersen, a professional skier sponsored by Salomon who recently released a mental health ski film called “Feel it All,” wandered around the room quizzing the student’s on numerous aspects of their products and said he was impressed by the knowledge-base Lutke instilled in them.
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“I think — for a lot of kids who maybe aren’t the most engaged or the most psyched about school — having something that they can pour their passion into and really learn from is so neat,” he said.
“I don’t know if anywhere else has this opportunity for students,” he added.

Lutke said no one in his class builds the product solely by themselves. It’s a collaborative effort that models what it would be like to work for a manufacturer.
From Rocky Mountain Underground hosting the event to the local ski areas doling out giveaways, Lutke said community donations help make the class possible. For the past two years, Arapahoe Basin Ski Area provided the class with lift tickets so the students could try out the products they made on the slopes. The resort also gave the class a spot in “The Beach” parking lot right in front of the base area so they could conduct market research and collect input from mountain-goers about their skis and snowboards.
Prior to this iteration of the ski and snowboard manufacturing class, Summit High School had offered ski manufacturing as a “Level 1 program” for nearly a decade before beefing up the offering and introducing “Level 2” during the 2023-24 school year. Level 1 is the class students take as a prerequisite through a collaboration with Colorado Mountain College, where they can secure the college credits. Level 2 is the hands-on aspect of the program where the students are actually manufacturing skis and snowboards. The new addition this year is Scott-Williams’ class.
Lutke said they are able to put on the class thanks to grant funding, particularly from the Summit Foundation.

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