The End

So last time we spoke, I was back in the teaching groove after finishing my BASI Level 3 technical and teaching exams.  The season soon wrapped up, with ski teaching work dropping off in Morgins immediately after Easter.  Annoyingly, even now, I can see there is snow up the top and the mogul field is still there, looking lonely. 

above the clouds in Tux and a rare pic of me skiing (complete with spear throwing pole plant)

Easter was quite busy this year in Morgins, probably due to Easter actually being at a reasonable time of the year when there was still snow.  The first season I was here, Easter fell at the end of April and the resort was already shut by then!

So now all of the lifties in Morgins are happy again because they can finally get their cows out of the shed and get on with their main summer profession, farming.  May has been a little disappointing so far, in that it has rained more or less constantly.  I don’t know why I am surprised because it always rains for a month in May and then we get on with a long hot summer from June.

I started my summer job in the second week of April this year, meaning no break between the ski season and the summer football season.  After a month of it now, I’m fully back in the groove and playing football for myself 3 nights a week, in a vain attempt to get fit and fight my aging body.

I suppose I did have a little break between the ski season and the football season by having to go to the Hintertux Glacier in Austria for the BASI Level 3 Mountain safety course.  For various reasons, I wasn’t looking forward to this course much but mainly because of the tales I had heard from other people about having to walk up mountains, in order to ski back down them again. For me, this is something that I just have absolutely no interest in, my preference is to use the lift that are there for your convenience.  When I see people skinning up the mountain, I am normally thinking ‘weirdo’ in my head.

However, I guess the point of the BASI system is to challenge you to become a more rounded skier and so I tried to be positive and get stuck in.  The course itself was very different to your standard BASI course in that it was run by a mountain guide from Chamonix, Dave Cummins.  Dave didn’t appear to be hung up at all on our skiing level; he was more into the walking up stuff and mountain navigation.  That said, he did ask us for ski tips during the week and he was definitely skiing better at the end of the week than the start!

The course covered a lot and I enjoyed the bits I was expecting to enjoy, namely learning more about the snow pack and avalanches, navigation, working with transceivers and skiing off-piste.  Luckily for me, because the snow conditions over the week deteriorated due to the heat, we didn’t end up doing that much walking up but I got a feel for what it was all about and getting away from the crowds.  As part of my level 4, I have to go and do 6 days of touring anyway, so I’m going to have to learn to love it I guess.

Another bonus of the week was skiing again with my good buddy George Walton, pro skier and all round good guy.  I’d seen George piste skiing in my Level 3 tech exam but it’s clear that his passion is off-piste and considering we spent most of the week ripping about hunting fresh or skiable powder and spring snow, his skills were on show and a pleasure to watch. 

Georgy rock jibber

So at the end of 6 days, another course was passed and that only leaves me now with 1 course left until I get my full BASI Level 3 ISIA stamp.  The exam I’ve got left is the Common Theory which you have to go to Scotland to do.  Everyone that I have spoken to says that this course is a dull one as it is classroom based but I’m determined to be positive about it, not least because the theory side of skiing is something I am hugely interested in.

So summer starts now, I need to get fit and have a determined think about whether I go forward to the BASI Level 4 or not.  I wrote down a pros and cons list as to whether I should, which came out 13 for and 4 against (is it wrong that a lot of the 13 pros were to stick it to people who told me I was crap at skiing??) so I suppose I had better get on with planning which modules to start training for next season.  I’m sure one of those will be to start going to Giant Slalom race camps in the summer so no doubt I’ll have a few summer blogs to add too.

See you soon.

Training days

Unless you are interested to hear me talk about the ski training that I have been doing more or less constantly since mid-January, I’m afraid you might find this blog entry a little boring.  I’ll try to jazz it up as best I can though.

GS training in the rain = dead phone

So last time we spoke, I was off to see where I stood amongst my peers on a BASI ISIA level 3 training course in Morzine.  The good news is that I seem to be in a good place, with all of my skiing in fairly decent order with the exception of my kryptonite, mogul skiing. 

For those of you that have never been on an instructor training course before, there is an awful lot of standing about discussing theory, which was tough going on the feet when the temperatures over there were down to -15 at one point.  (I discovered mid-week that if you put gaffer tape over the seams of your boots, it makes them slightly warmer.)  There is also lots of work on short and long turns, getting right down into the tiniest details of technique, things such as the precision that you load your new turning ski with etc etc.

For me, things went well for the first couple of days when we did lots of work on long turns and my personal favourite, short turns but I suppose that it was inevitable that at some point we had to head to what Jaz (our trainer) described as ‘the best bumps run in the world’.  This is The Renard, which is a black bumps run just to the left as you ride up on the Chaux des Rosees lift in the Pre La Joux area of Chatel.

So this was my weak point and I had a trainer watching who I know is likely to be one of the assessors on my actual exam.  I tried my hardest on that afternoon, not really helped by some terrible visibility but despite my worries and frustrations, I actually managed to put in a very slow looking but neat video run.  This gave me some confidence but I knew then that I needed to ski bumps for a month before my exam, a thought that was echoed by the trainer.

So, the following week, I was booked on another training course with BASS in Chatel run by a guy called Peter Kuwall (PK).  My mate and fellow ski instructor Ben really rates PK as a trainer having spent 8-weeks with him in New Zealand two summers ago, so when PK asked us what we wanted to work on, I said, ‘I need to work out how to ski bumps and fast’.  So on day 2 we arrived in the bumps and PK basically told me that my approach to bumps skiing was probably wrong tactically and set about sorting me out. 

Lo and behold, 2 hours later and another half day of bumps skiing later,  I am much more confident in what I am doing and more familiar with being in that environment.  We shot some more video and it looks visually better, if still pretty gentle!

As if that wasn’t enough, another quiet mid-season week means that I’m off for some afternoons of Giant Slalom training this week.  This is with a view to getting more familiar with racing in gates skiing which I’m going to have to do more of in order to work towards level 4 skiing.

I’ll let you know how it goes but it may be some time as we are almost into the madness of half term and all that brings.  It’s starting to get busier here in Chatel and it won’t be long before the masses arrive.

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