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

Nursery slopes of skiing (and teaching)

In my last blog I was worrying that my skiing might not be good enough to impress my new ski school director but since I’m now in my shiny new ski school jacket and teaching all this week, I guess I am – either that or no-one else was available…

view from the nursery slopes

Both the Pre-la-Joux area of Chatel and the Follieuse lift in Morgins have been open for the last two weekends, providing some epic skiing on the opening day of the season, with 2 foot of fresh snow waiting to be skied out in the tree lines. This was basically our ‘training’ on the first Saturday mainly because I think everyone just wanted to go skiing and blow out the cobwebs prior to getting down to the more serious business of technique and teaching styles on subsequent days.

At the moment, I’m teaching a group of Kenyan kids and their two teachers from an international school in Nairobi, who are here to learn to ski. The kids are picking it up a lot faster than I would have expected and it was wonderful to see the look on the faces of them all as they came to the top of the lift in bright sunshine this morning and saw the Portes du Soleil, Dents du Midi and Mont Blanc in the distance.

I kind of half expected it but the rulebook for teaching kids is more or less thrown out of the window compared to the theory that we learnt as instructors. The kids are ambitious and we soon had them going higher and higher up the button lift.

I’m being shadowed this week (!) by another instructor, Ross Jackson, who I qualified with this summer in Saas-Fee. It’s been really useful to have him around to bounce ideas off of and I really appreciate having him around to ease myself into teaching. We are probably going to give him a group of his own tomorrow to make the class sizes smaller and more efficient. The only bad thing about Ross is that he makes his instructor jacket look really cool whereas I think I just look fat in mine.

It’s freezing cold here at the moment, about -7 on my drive to work (this is a real culture shock for the Kenyans) and it’s been like this for a little while now. The snow cannons are working overtime to make fresh snow in time for official openings later this week.

There has been a noticeable influx of seasonaires arriving into Chatel. I’ve been quite lucky that because I arrived in early November, myself and the missus are almost considered as locals and I can now sit in the corner of the Avalanche in Chatel with them and grumble about how the bar is too busy and the free pool table has gone. There are plenty of young and hopeful chalet girls turning up, as well as Chalet owners rushing about last minute to get everything done before the start of the season.

Winter starts here.