10 reasons why it's great being a ski instructor

10 reasons why being a Ski Instructor is the greatest job in the world (in no particular order);

1. Free lift pass for the Portes du Soleil. 650kms of pistes to rip on your day off.

2. Ski Instructor Jacket. It looks really cool and anecdotally I’m told that it’s the best pulling tool there is. I cannot verify this claim though as clearly, I am married and my pulling boots have long since been retired. But I have noticed a certain aura in bar situations that would mean it would be fairly straightforward even for a funny looking mug like me.

3. ‘Passage reservé pour les Ecoles de Ski.’

4. It’s your actual job to blast back to the village from the top of the mountain at a million miles an hour. If I blast past you going straight down the red run you think looks like the North Face of the Eiger, then I’ve kept the myth alive that we are all amazing skiers and not just alcoholics.

5. It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to make people ski better to the point that they start enjoying themselves instead of being scared. I lose track of the amount of times I’m giving high fives and hugs to clients because I’m so happy they’ve progressed.

6. Making skiing with one ski only look easy.

7. There is a certain privilege that comes with people coming to you and putting their entire trust in you that you won’t let any harm (most of the time..) come to them or their kids.

8. Getting an awesome suntan going on.

9. Being part of making someone’s one week annual ski holiday great. This can be easily forgotten when you live out here but it’s something that I try to tell myself every day. These guys all have to go back somewhere after this and it’s about making their week/day/hour as good as possible.

10. Working with kids. This is something that I am surprised that I enjoy so much, given that I’d had limited contact with them before I started doing this but I’m constantly amazed at the tenacity of these little guys. They have no fear and are happy to try new things which normally makes for quick learning and a fun week.

 
published here
x

The central dream and start of bootcamp

I sit writing this with an epic hangover because the gappies had a party last to let off some steam. I’m in desperate need of pizza, sky tv and my sofa at home.

some crap skiing not doing justice to an epic background

We were hammering the Jaeger because we are one week away from our BASI 2 exam which is a 2-week course and we only have five days of coaching left to get up to the level needed, and we still have to fit in the avalanche course which keeps getting put back because of bad weather.

Last week was mostly about the central theme, which means loads of snowploughing and fairly basic stuff – most of which is really difficult. Because at some point some of us are going to be teaching this to real people, our demos have to be spot on. I find it harder to ski at this sort of speed than the usual warp speed that I used to blast blues and reds on ski holidays.

This week brought a change of coaches and our group (imaginatively named ‘Group 1’) had Jordan Revah for 3 days. I’m not sure if he meant to boot camp us so much or whether that was the point of this week but I don’t think that I’ve hurt so much after skiing as I did this week.

The highlight for me of the week was the one-ski skiing. I don’t think that I’ve ever laughed so much on a piste before in my life – or fallen over so much. It’s a favourite exercise of a lot of the race camps here and some of the top racers make it look very easy. For me though, I discovered that my left leg is completely useless for anything but standing at the bar – it was an absolute revelation getting back on two skis afterwards; I felt so balanced and so totally in control of what I was doing. Jords looked surprised when I bear-hugged him in the lift queue as a thank you.

A few of us also gate-crashed a photo shoot that Warren Smith was doing for one of the magazines and got some amazing shots, one of which is this week’s picture. The location was just above one of the regular pistes with an amazing glacier backdrop in about 5cms of fresh snow. I’ve put them all up on my Facebook page and I’m now attaching the link to my applications that are going off to various ski schools around Switzerland to show them that I can actually ski.

It’s been a little tricky to actually write this as I’ve got a big burn on my finger from a P-Tex candle that decided to attach itself to me while I was doing a base repair on my Head Supershapes (which I have totally fallen in love with). I’m starting to get a bit weird about my skis and most nights I’m in the basement of the Dom Hotel with the other ski obsessive gappy Tim (he is an ex-racer though so it’s understandable for him). Tim has been quite entrepreneurial and is making a few quid servicing the skis of other gappies and academy clients on the Warren Smith courses.

We’ve got five more days of boot camp before our BASI 2 starts so it’s time to work hard and polish everything before the assessors get here.

The glacier has been closed for a day or two while the weather gods have dumped about a metre of fresh snow. I got up early on the first day that the lift was open and treated myself to an hour of fresh powder skiing. The Supershapes are not the best tool for shredding pow but now that the piste conditions have settled they are performing better than ever. The snow is amazing for August and should remain so now for the rest of the summer and into Autumn/Winter