BASI Ski Instructor training: Day 10
This article was previously published on megeveski.com when I took some time out to ski. An index of these pages can be found here.
Today was the final day of the Instructor training course. We woke to find that it was raining heavily at lake level and when we arrived at the lifts there was snow on the ground at the base. We took the sextuple and skied in 4-6 inches of fresh powder under the quad. As we left the ski locker Julian gave us an impromptu lesson in ‘walking like a ski instructor’, including such gems as the preferred ski carrying style for both short and long distances, a stylish flourish to add to how we pick up skis onto our shoulder and the instruction in the appropriate use of the ski boot heel to enable us to swagger appropriately…
The plan for today was to ski until around 2ish at which point we’d be told if we’d passed the course or not and then have a late lunch and do whatever we wanted in the afternoon. Julian would then go away and write up our reports and we’d have a meeting in the evening to discus our final numbers and further development.
Cerro Catedral is pretty empty now, it’s low season and the slopes are quiet, also many of the recreational skiers here don’t come out until 11ish. This meant that we could ski fresh snow on deserted pistes and generally have a good time with only the other groups and some Argentinean instructors for company. Due to the good snow that we had earlier in the season there’s still lots of skiing available though you haven’t been able to ski to the bottom for around a week now.
We stopped for a coffee and cake break at Refugio Lynch at around 11ish and then skied some more, doing some synchro and powder 8’s but generally not working too hard.
We cut across to Condor II but the snow there was heavy and sticky, Condor faces a different direction and is slightly lower than the area around the sextuple and the difference in snow was incredible. We cut through the trees for a while but that was no better so we headed back over towards Princessa and the quad.
All too soon it was time for our results. Julian stopped half way down a path and we skied to him one at a time, found out our results and then skied on… After that we all went for lunch and celebrations/commiserations at Viento Cero.
