Gould Academy Community Alps Ski Tour

The cost for the tour itself is $3,400.

This includes:

• all ski tour logistics,
• two-nights accommodations in Grindelwald before the ski tour
• one-night accommodation in Grindelwald after the ski tour
• hut accommodations (including breakfast and dinner)
• lift and train tickets during the tour
• guide compensation

• airfare
• transportation
• additional accommodations
• food in town
• lunches
• extra food and drinks at huts
• guide tips

Paul Koubek ‘90 grew up in midcoast Maine participating in a variety of sports including skiing, both alpine and nordic, and doing a lot of biking. As an outdoor athlete he was introduced to biathlon which he really enjoyed. This led him to Bethel and Gould to attend one of Kirk Siegel’s biathlon camps between his sophomore and junior years. He loved running and roller skiing up Grafton Notch so much that he went home and told his parents he wanted to go to Gould.

Paul states that going to Gould was great for him. Coach Dick Taylor impressed Paul with his worldliness as well as his experience racing and coaching in the olympics. Paul really enjoyed his nordic skiing experiences and it gave him a great outlet for his energies. He enjoyed skiing with senior captain Ben Michaud his junior year. In his senior year, Paul and Kevin Davis (son of Gould teacher Mac Davis) were co-captains of Nordic skiing. Paul remembers anchoring the winning relay team for the New England Prep School Ski Conference - with the championship races being held at Gould.

Paul was also captain of the cross-country team his senior year and remembers many fun training runs, especially with Maasaki Shibamoto.

Paul’s most formative memory of Gould is his junior year winter Four Point. This was an Outward Bound course in the Carter Moriah Sub-Range of the White Mountains. In his own words Paul says, “To this day, having since then worked extensively in the Alaska Range on Denali, all around Antarctica and in the Alps and North Cascades (all places known for challenging weather) the weather we experience on my Junior Four Point was maybe the worst weather I have seen in my life (!) It rained, it went to -20F and 40 mph winds, it was COLD and WET and FROZEN.” He distinctly remembers his debrief of that course: Gould teacher John Wight (AHOF member), teamed with an OB instructor named Tracy, told Paul he should consider becoming an Outward Bound Instructor for work. Amazed by this he couldn’t imagine a better job! That experience was what led Paul to know what he wanted to do for the rest of his life: teach and guide in the outdoors.

At Gould Paul was also exposed to rock climbing for the first time, top roping with Lorenzo Baker at some crags up outside of Mahoosuc Notch. Once again Paul was hooked. He remembers that to climb on the climbing wall, which was literally blocks of wood bolted to the side of the fieldhouse, first one needed to go on a weekend outing to North Conway and go to the International Mountaineering School gear store and buy themselves 21 feet of one-inch nylon tubular webbing and learn to tie a swami belt.

After Gould Paul was very fortunate to spend a post graduate year at a German boarding school in Berchtesgaden Germany. The plan was to race in Europa Cup races - but 1990 was the year of the German Reunification, and at the last minute all Nordic skiing programs in Berchtesgaden moved to Klingental in the former East Germany. Without the racing Paul learned German (which he still uses in his guiding work today) and ran all around the Alps that were in the backyard of the boarding school on the via feratti (a climbing route with steel cables, rungs, pegs, carved steps, ladders fixed to rocks!).

Paul returned to the states and attended St. Lawrence University for a year and had summer jobs with the Trails Department of the Appalachian Mountain Club. However, the West called and he eventually made the move to the Western United States and graduated from Reed College - with summer jobs working as an instructor for a wilderness therapy program for adjudicated youth - a “hoods in the woods” type program (which was challenging work but cemented the idea that he actually could make a living working in the outdoors).

After Reed, Paul was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, which took him back to Germany, where he taught English at a Sportsgymnasium for a year. While at Reed, Paul had started climbing all of the Cascade volcanoes (Kulshan/Baker, Tahoma/Rainier, Dakobed/Glacier Peak, the High Oregon Volcanoes, etc.). With a sense that he needed a “real job” his first post-college job was in commercial real estate which did not provide much pleasure.

Paul eventually convinced the Pacific Crest Outward Bound School to hire him for summer work leading rafting and mountaineering trips in Central Oregon. This was followed by three years of work with Outward Bound and another seven years of work with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) teaching sailing, mountaineering, sea kayaking, and rock climbing in Alaska, Patagonia, the Baja and the Pacific Northwest. Working with NOLS led to a guiding gig on Denali (Paul eventually summited Denali 12 times in 12 expeditions), which led to work with the U.S. Antarctic Program (where he was a field mountaineer supporting science for many projects, including three South Pole Traverses, work in the Dry Valleys, on Mt. Erebus and Mt. Discovery, and out in the Pirrit Hills and Antarctic Gamburtsev Province. Paul was awarded an Antarctic Service Medal by the National Science Foundation “for valuable contributions to exploration and scientific achievement under the U.S. Antarctic Program”.

Paul’s work with the Search And Rescue Team for the U.S. Antarctic Program helped him get a position with YOSAR (Yosemite Search And Rescue) - basically an “Artist In Residency” position in the world mecca of rock climbing. In Yosemite Paul made his first ascents as well as his first one-day ascents of the hallowed El Capitan. After a couple of years with YOSAR, Paul switched over to working with the Yosemite Mountaineering School and Guide Service (YMS). Paul worked with YMS for years, guiding the big walls of El Capitan, Half Dome and Washington’s Column as well as high alpine objectives such as Cathedral Peak, Mt. Conness, and Matthes Crest.

In 2017 Paul was awarded his IFMGA Certification and became what is colloquially referred to as a “pinned” guide. He holds American Mountain Guides License #125 (in 2023 they are at #194). Paul has also been elected to the American Mountain Guides Associations Board Of Directors, having now served two terms and currently serving as the Chair of the Compliance Committee. Paul also works for the AMGA on their Instructor Team, as an instructor in the rock and ski disciplines and an examiner in the alpine discipline.

Paul lives in Yosemite, California with his wife Dr. Breezy Jackson.