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

Gap course summer camp

I’m in Saas-Fee, Switzerland on the Warren Smith Ski Academy’s summer 9-week GAP ski instructor course.

Saas Fee in Summer

I’m here because I realised that I don’t really like what I do for a living very much and at 33-years old, there is a chance to change it so I can be on snow for a living.

The GAP course coaches you to the British Association of Snowsport Instructors (BASI) levels 1 and 2. Level 2 is more or less the base level that you need to have in order to instruct in various countries in Europe and it’s this qualification that I’m here to get.

So I’ve left everything on hold at home and believe me, it was a real wrench leaving behind the missus and the dog. They will both be out to visit at various points but the ‘am I doing the right thing?’ questions soon faded while lounging on the train watching the Swiss lakes and countryside roll by, with the prospect of weeks of intensive skiing to come.

The course itself is based on the Feegletscher glacier that you can ski on all summer and towers above Saas-Fee village. There are around 20kms of pistes to at a height of 3500m with a small network of 3 lifts, an extensive snowpark and a lot of international race teams also do their summer training on the glacier.

I chose the Warren Smith Course because I was impressed by the technical focus of the program and also on the basis of a phone conversation with Warren Smith himself. He seemed pleased that I was going for a full-on career change rather than just gapping. By all accounts he interviews personally everyone that is attending the course, I guess to ensure that the students are serious about it and not just there to party for 9-weeks (!).

I’m the first person from the course here in the resort as I thought I would be clever and get two-days worth of practice in before the course started on Sunday but the glacier doesn’t open until Saturday so I’ve been poking about Saas for a day or two, dodging the electric cars that are the only transport allowed in the village.

The course starts on Saturday and I’ll be updated this blog regularly. New life starts here...


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