'For those of you still on your feet, welcome to the Aspen Ski School hiring clinic'

Life in the goldfish bowl of Chatel continues at a relentless pace and I can’t believe that we are into March already. I either need to find work somewhere that has a longer winter season or start appreciating what I’ve got a little more.

An ego of ski instructors.

I say goldfish bowl because in a one horse town like Chatel (essentially it is if you take away the tourists who have no idea how the place really works) every little event or piece of news seems magnified.

For example, it seems like a really big deal if you skip going to the pub for a week (because you have the same stupid flipping cold that everyone else has got) you miss so much of what’s going on. Silly little things like who is or isn’t splitting up with each other and whether the owner of this or that business is leaving town or going out of business. If this was London, no-one would give a monkeys but because it’s here, it’s likely to affect you in some way or other, hence the goldfish bowl.

Finally today, I forgave the owner of The Avalanche Bar, Gavin, for a slalom ski stealing incident when the Rossignol Demo Tour was in town. This afternoon, Gav effectively guided me around all the best off-piste bits in the Pre la Joux area of Chatel. Although I’m a ski instructor, I’m average at best at off-piste and I also have a mortal fear of falling over and looking like a dickhead so I tend to make pretty ’S’ shapes in the pow like I’m in an 80’s ski video and some of this stuff was almost waist deep. A great 2 or 3 hours and probably the best skiing of the season so far.

Taking of old ski videos, my copy of ‘Aspen Extreme’ arrived via Amazon the other day and it is my gift to Gavin is return for his constant ribbing about how I’m not allowed to have fun when I’m skiing because I’m an instructor. For those who haven’t seen it, the funniest section for me is the scene with the Aspen ski school ski off which brings back memories of the Morgins Ski School ski off at the start of the season.

Talking of instructors, Jimmy King and Timmy Rah arrived last week for a short visit and the constant drinking (although not on the scale of my mates from home) did nothing to shift my cold but it was great to see them. We all qualified together in Saas-Fee and we are planning a re-union there this summer for some glacier action.

Timmy was still skiing well but it seems that Jimmy has more or less forgotten everything he learnt and also his choice of GS skis for the powder day we had was not a good one. Because it was half term, I could only find 45-mins to ski with them in the time they were here but for those 45-minutes, we ripped it and it was like being beamed back to the final day of Saas-Fee all those months ago when many of us achieved a lifetime dream.

Note: We were searching for the collective noun for a group of ski instructors. ‘Ego of ski instructors’ was the best we could come up with. I can offer a spare copy of ‘Aspen Extreme’ to any better suggestions..

online here
 
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Tele-tastic

I always seem to go out in Chatel on the wrong night. 

Snowy Chatel (just to remind you all what it looked like)

In the Avalanche Bar, Tuesday night is always a pretty big night with various themes.  Last week it was neon, this week I’ve been gearing up for moustache night but given that I had a rare free day to myself today, I got smashed up last night and now I’m going to miss yet another Tuesday night.  I know I’ll get a load of hassle for this but I’m working tomorrow and ski teaching with a hangover just isn’t fun.

After the chaos of the hot weather week last week, things are back to normal here now with cold temperatures meaning that the snow cannons are in action.  Because of the limited snow that seems to be a problem with the whole of the alps, the afternoons aren’t great with most of the top snow scraped off leaving sheet ice to play on.

This might account for the massive amount of injuries and constant ambulances and helicopters flying about.  The other night there were apparently 10-people in the pub with arms in slings and various other ailments.  If this continues on it’s going to be chaos in February when all the half-termers arrive.

I went telemarking the other day and I’m hooked.  It’s actually not as difficult as I thought it would be and it only took a few hours to work it all out.  It’s an addictive feeling and quite a difficult one to describe but it does feel so much more natural than regular skiing.  There is a certain something about the turn shapes and rhythm of it that really appeals to me, so much so that I’m going for it again on Thursday. 

Of course it will eventually mean a whole load of shiny new equipment and a new pair of skis so I think I’ll be hitting the end of season sales hard.

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online here and here 

Highs and lows of ski teaching

Last week it was a delightful group of Kenyans all learning how to ski and generally ski teaching was fun and happy. This week I’ve been plunged into Christmas week ‘cours collectifs’ and I’m grasping for the French, Dutch and German phrases for ‘get up yourself you lazy enfant, it’s the millionth time you’ve fallen over for no reason today’…

Jardin - 2 days ago.  Is raining now.

It’s amazing to see the differences in kids that, on the surface, are apparently the same. As soon as they click into (or spend ten minutes kicking) their skis, some kids grasp the simple skill behind skiing in a snowplough and some look like they are trying amateur breakdancing on ice. Beginner plus is apparently the worst group to teach because the parents think they can ski but actually they can’t. They really can’t.

Of course, this is now my job and it’s important that I do all I can to make sure these little skiers and ‘cours privé’ of the future have fun and learn something but for some, you can’t help but feel they don’t want to be there and are only there so their parents can go ski, especially the little German kid who has thrown up on the piste for the last 2-days.

Still, picking up the flotsam and jetson of my ski group after every other turn is good for fitness and given the diet that I’ve been eating (beer and pizza) since I got here in November, every kid I help to their feet negates a demi Becks in the Av.

To compound my worries of an expanding waistline and inept ski group, the whole of Holland, the UK and France appears to have arrived in Chatel in the last 2-days causing parking and traffic chaos. Someone recently mentioned to me that it wasn’t the French’s fault that they were rubbish drivers, it’s just not something that they do well and they are all crap. It’s just how it is. Well, you can lump the Dutch into that category as well and the majority of the English that have arrived here.

It hasn’t snowed here for a week, it’s raining at the moment but because they’ve seen a bit of snow, they drive at 2km/h everywhere and stop in random places. The main issue I suppose is that the village isn’t set up for this many people. Outside of the season, only 1200 people actually live here so parking is at a premium. Even the Sherpa supermarket has caught onto the fact that nipping in there to buy a chocolate bar doesn’t mean that you can park there all night while you get wasted in the bars of Chatel.

An exciting development this week will be that my mates from home arrive to spend New Year here with us. Tempted by the après ski, copious quantities of Jager and hot snowboard chicks (in limited supply but I haven’t told them this) Cheeko, Hughsey and Afghan Nick arrive tomorrow to smash it up in Chatel for a week.

As a prediction for the future, my guess will be the Beginner Plus group will be having to pick themselves up a little more than previously due to their instructor trying not to be sick like the German kid…

published here

It's Christmas

And like turning on a light switch, all of a sudden there is a million people in Chatel, all clogging up the highstreet, parking everywhere and walking down the middle of the road. The shutters on hibernating chalets are being thrown open and there are finally people walking around the streets with skis on shoulders. Christmas has arrived.

The Chatel locals are lamenting the loss of the free vend pool table in the Avalanche Bar, which has now been replaced by seasonaires and the occasional tourist. The tourists tend to go to the other bars in town and it’s always interesting to see the looks that the tourists give to the locals as they high five everyone that they know in the bar (which is invariably most of those with seats at the bar and their own glass appearing to drink for free). You can see the tourists thinking ‘Who is that guy? How does he know everyone? Must live here – sooo lucky..’

The party nights have started at the L’Avalanche Bar and L’Escalier and Tuesdays through to Thursdays and on weekends, you can take you pick of live DJ’s Muff and Jason Shutt as well as resident local bands. The missus doesn’t start work in L’Escalier normally until about 5.30pm which means that by the time these nights start at about 10pm, I am completely wasted and have to go home. This isn’t a bad thing though considering I have to get up and go rid the world of bad skiing the following day.

Last week I was teaching a group of Kenyan students from Nairobi from an international school who were over learning how to ski. Considering some of them had never seen snow before and the lowest temperature that they have there is apparently 25 degrees, the -10 at the top of Morgins was something of a culture shock.

The weather here was really cold all last week, the lowest I saw was -14 going over the Pas de Morgins one morning but it’s warmed up considerably and snow is expected on or about Christmas day.

Of course, for many of the seasonaires, Christmas day is a work day and I know that my missus will be working flat out from now until early January. The most that we will manage is a romantic cheap champagne Christmas breakfast of some sort before we both go off to work…

Merry Christmas all.

published here and here