BASI Ski Instructor training: Day 6

The rain had been falling as snow on the mountain and there was even a little snow at the Catedral base. After waiting for a while for the gondola to open and then being told that it would be another 30 minutes we took the sextuple and then the quad. From the lifts it looked like there had been around 4" or so of new snow and the mountain looked clean and smooth again.

All of the groups were heading to the top, all were meeting in roughly the same place, there was untracked snow… Once we all got to the top Julian started a warm up; we groaned, thinking that the other groups would get the powder first, we needn’t have worried, the warm up was much abridged and we were the first group to head off. Julian shouted “follow me” and we did as we ripped up the remaining untracked and had the other groups shout abuse at us for being first…

One run down under the quad and then we cut over towards the drag lifts. As is usual these days where we’re travelling from place to place, one of us was given responsibility for leading the group safely to the next destination as if we were a class of students. When we got within sight of the drags Julian announced that the long drag was running and that the steep off-piste was accessible and he shot to the front of the group to take the lead. One of the other groups was looking down at an untouched powder run near to the short drag, standing on the ridge of the road and preparing to put some nice lines down… Julian shot across over the ridge and we all followed, ripping up the powder; it seemed appropriate to try and rip up the whole slope… Once again we had some abuse shouted at us…

After we’d finished making our mark on the slope we cut across to the long drag and headed to the top. The visibility was pretty poor when we got there so we waited five minutes or so for it to clear before heading off on the long traverse through the rocks to the third gully. We then took it in turns to ski down the steeps and looped on the drag lift all morning. I had some good runs down, taking different lines with different styles; due to the fresh snow it felt more like a ‘freeride’ big turns kinda day, but I threw a few shorter turns in to mix it up a bit. Although my runs felt good I never really felt that they flowed quite as well as I wanted, I always felt that on my bigger turns I slowed down slightly too much before initiating the next one… It was interesting to see how different members of the group handled the same steep slope; Stewy, Chris and Phil all did quite small controlled turns, Phil’s were very fluid. Bengy took a much more aggressive freeride line with only two or three turns all the way down and a huge, long fast run out at the end. Jo initially found the first turn intimidating but soon got over it and Katie improved on every run, gaining more confidence and attacking the slope more each time; her last run had some killer turns in it as she cut down through the rocks.

After lunch we headed over to Condor, took the lifts all the way to the top and came down on the off-piste to skiers left of Condor III. The snow was OK but not as good as the stuff we’d had in the morning. We then took a run through the bumps on Condor II and these weren’t that pleasant. The initial idea was to have two groups skiing down next to each other with the group members behind each other and keeping close. This worked well until Stewy’s group cut a little left and we cut a little right…

Lower down the snow turned to very sticky slush… We decided to try the bumps over by Militares instead and so went to the top and dropped over the back. The snow over this side was better, even lower down. The top set of bumps were fine but the lower ones were a bit more of a challenge. We worked on techniques for speed control and attempted some ‘mute’ lessons (as hard as they sound, you need lots of gestures….). After a couple of runs we headed home and downloaded via the sextuple.

This evening we had a lecture on customer care; keep a notebook with details of your private clients and provide more service than they would expect; be able to recommend evening venues, book lunch, replace things that they have lost or forgotten on the slopes, etc.

Tomorrow we have individual teaching sessions, each of us will teach for 20 mins and two of the group will observe with Julian whilst the other 5 are our students… Should be fun. I have “gliding plough to basic plough turn” which should be fun…