Double Threat

Today was the first day of my ski instructor training! I've been lobbed in with a great bunch of snowboard instructors ( four of us ) all learning how to ski. I've learnt so much and come a long way already: the understanding of skiing, techniques/terminology and the basic competencies- in particular MOBILITY. Being able to manoeuvre the mountain with skis on but also the range of movements/body positions one must uphold in order to stay centred and balanced whilst defying gravity, flying head first down a mountain. Don't I sound like I know what I'm on about?!

Its hilarious being a novice again and being in a course environment with some good friends. We all look like bambi on ice at times but on the whole.. we're doing it! We will morph into ski instructors! Plus its a hot topic around the resort with liftys and café staff laughing at our efforts and asking how we're getting on.

Manage to pick up some trash poles which are a perfect size for me from the 'boneyard' (pile of discarded poles found abandoned around the resort.) They're black and gold which adds to my classy riding of course. Next stop skis, but my borrowed pair of carving skis are perfect so far.

Working tomorrow with an after work ski study session about beginner progression and more technical stuff. Back on skis for training on Tuesday, but only after I work a 1 hour school group in the AM. We have 220 kids booked in for Tuesday already.. excluding add-ons! Love the madness!

Some of my colleges chillaxing outside the grand hall at break time.

Love to all my family xx until next time!

What's New

Thursday: Loving my job! In the morning I had a 1 on 1 children's lesson with a lovely girl, who had forgotten how to turn from her last lesson. Which threw a spanner in the works for my lesson plan. We stayed motivated and gave it our all till lunch, powering through the cold and aching wrist after a nasty little fall. It was relaxed and focused; quiet the opposite of my two new students who arrived at 1 o'clock.
A brother, sister pairing both under 10, who ski in the morning and board in the afternoon. These kids were nuttier than squirrel poo, and had enough energy to give the Duracell bunny a good go. The girl refused to converse and instead opted to impersonate a minion.. Yes, the little yellow blobs from Dispicable Me the movie. At first I was confused, stunned and overwhelmed at the situation. They were snowboarding away, refusing to listen or do what they're told, and bugging each other.

However, I refuse to be out done by a 8 year old. So I use my excellent knowledge of children's films and I start giving them 'missions' themed with Despicable Me which worked amazingly well! They actually wanted to come over and listen to me to get their next game. It was such a hit that I coordinated with Sylvie to create a super group of hyped kids playing my games, it went like this:
"So I talking to Gru, and he said that was more evil than me.. No way! So to prove I was more evil I stole all his weapons and I am chasing you down the slope with them! Rules; Lipstick tazer! = pretend electric shock, Shrink Ray! = crouch into a little, Fart Gun! = waft the smell away, Squid Launcher! = kung-fu the squid away (with sound effects) Piranha Gun! = jump to avoid the piranha biting your toes! Freeze ray! = big stop!" This game was soooooo much fun. I hope you can hear the voices from the film - I know I impersonated them! My loud voice and their delighted screams made heads turn on the lift but everyone was loving it.

Friday Session: Less than a month till my level 2 exam! This weeks training was focused on teaching, carving and self assessment through video feedback! Talking about the EFFECT seen in the snowboard and what is the CAUSE, such as body positions and movements. Taking into consideration conditions, equipment and physical factors that we call TOLERANCE to the perfect image of riding we want to create. Good stuff.

Today was a lazy Saturday. Not many lesson which meant I was back on standby - I haven't had a shift like this is ages! Paid to ski some park and carving training with Michael in the AM. Then I'm the PM I got on some skis and started practising with my ski instructor mates, it was great! We even bumped into the head of ski school, Jason. One of the top 20 skiers in Canada and a level 4 coordinator. I.e. He is insanely good. He attempted to fix my technique in the couple of runs we did together in the sun. Good day.

Tomorrow I am up early for the first day of my ski instructor training! I maybe be borrowing skis and pole but I'm on the case of picking up some second hand gear. I'm so looking forward to it, it should be hilarious 4 snowboard instructors learning how to ski!

Love to all my familly xxx miss you loads xx until next time..

Day Off, Thank Goodness

I say this because yesterday was a LONG day:
I was called in on my day off (normally Tuesday) to work a full day 9am-3:30. Little did I know that I had been given 7 never-ever snowboarders to teach.. That's a lot! Normal groups don't exceed 4 people and even the other instructors gave me raised eyebrows and said.. 'you may need some help' but everyone was busy too!

However the story behind why was really sweet - I had a boy Charlie (the one who liked snowballs!) earlier in the week try snowboarding instead of skiing. He loved it so much that whenever he saw me he'd come over for a chat with his mum too. They're so lovely. So Charlie's friends come over from Calgary and after a big days skiing, and snowboarding stories from Charlie, his friends wanted to try too! They were super excited to meet me and get snowboarding. It may have been organised chaos, but everyone was happy, everyone got mobile and learnt the basics of snowboarding. All of them said they can't wait to snowboard again which means I did my job right.

The day didn't end there though. Currently we a have a 50 person school group from Birmingham UK on a field trip. I volunteered to work in the evening to help put the activities department. I was assigned to poolside games in the hot pools. The hot pools do cover a large area but to keep 50 excitable 12-18 year olds contained when sharing this space with the public was a challenge but aptly managed by my college for the evening: Sarah. Thankfully no one minded the odd splash and excitement from the trivia game we played. The twist was that to answer the question you had to swim to me for a hi-5, which was hilarious as I kept hiding, swimming away and finding new places to sit when the kids had all their attention on Sarah the question master!

All in all a successful evening, a long tiring day (pretty much 9am-9pm) which required a lie in.

After my lie in today me and my housemate Elliot decided we would tackle the gross mess that was our kitchen sink and give our living area a bit of much needed care and attention. Good job us. Unfortunately we didn't have the best time management skills so gave ourselves 3minutes to grab all our stuff and sprint to the bus stop! We powered up the hill just in time to jump on the bus and head up to Pano for a park session and grab some footage.

Then disaster struck agian! After I stacked it (too much focus on filming and not skiing) I broke the strap off my binding! It was a only a matter of time as it was coming off already but it did kinda suck. Thankfully my friend and fellow instructor Josh always harvests parts from his bindings so odds on he can find me a piece to fix it with. If not, $8 for a replacement.

At home I fixed myself up some food, had a quick visit from the landlord regarding household fixings- the tumble-dryer short circuited and we couldn't mend it. And then we settled down for a unsettling horror movie night. At least my friend brought down my IPad I left at theirs so I could use it to unwind. Plus when I opened it I had a load of messages from friends and family to respond to, little things like that brighten your day.

I'm going to try to sleep now.. maybe some prince of bel air will appease my brain so I don't give myself nightmares..!

Until next time xx

I'm A Working Man

The last 6 or so days of my schedule has been jam packed with work! I've had straight, full days of work since Saturday - fairly odd for a snowboard instructor eh! Its down to 3 of the snowboarding boys taking a 4 day break to go CAT skiing which sounded epic, and has set me up for a fat pay check come next week.

Saturday-Monday: 3 days with a new(ish) adult snowboarder who happened to be a 17 year old Polish immigrant who came here on holiday with her family and friends- who we bumped into on many occasions. She was super nice and by the end of 3 days of private tuition, with no add-on students, I pretty much new her life story and beyond! Her progress was great, so we went from the bunny hill (beginner terrain) to riding black runs! It was great to see and was rewarding as a teacher, just not financially... No tip for me.. boohoo.

Tuesday-Thursday: Full day beginner kids lessons! Arguably THE most tiring full day lesson you can be scheduled with. However I love it. And as these kids are sticking around for the week I got to see them again on the hill and during lunch duty which is always fun. The two boys I had on Tuesday and Wednesday LOVED snowball fights, to the point where I used it as a reward system! If they could complete my learning challenge they got a free snowball to throw at me.

In addition over Tuesday and Wednesday we had high school and elementary school kids arrive for field trips. The later were a real hand full. My fellow instructors Sylvie and Tyler had a handful of excitable, energetic.. eager boys. At lunch I had to round up three of them and return them to Sylvie after they ran off without her! By the end of the day you can imagine they were getting a little crazy. So instead of fighting it we held up our hands and declared a snowball war break!! We had around 10 kids vs 3 instructors playing in the snow at the side of the bunny hill having the best time ever. They thought it was awesome. I loved it too! We finished the war by calling a truce and all held hands in a big line and did a group cannon-ball jump into the snow! Cutest thing ever. After that they were very happy and behaved reasonably well until the end of their lesson. Little snow monsters!

Today was another great day! Full day kid lesson with a level 4 - so already a competent snowboarder, my job is to refine their technique and give them lots of mileage to help them improve. She was a babbly sweetheart from alberta who loved to chat and could remember all the exercises her previous instructors had shown her - which was perfect. Whenever I explained something to her she needed to work on she already knew a way to practise it! She even taught me some new ones myself. My favourite was MarioKart Game (its as awesome as it sounds) : A race down the hill with certain commands following the mariokart computer game! Bananas = 360 spin, Shell = jump, Star = GO FAST. We had a super fun day, one of my best so far!

Until next time! xx

Silver Lining

Suprise training day! Today the snow was just as good but after a full week of hard riding we were all feeling pretty fatigued, so instead of more riding we are now transitioning to the teaching and technical side of the level 2 preparation.

Today we touched on intermediate and advanced carving turns, what lessons were are expected to teach as a level 2 instructor and how to use the terrain to challenge yourself and your students. As a higher level instructor you are qualified to teach both on the piste and off of it, as well as an introduction to freestyle. This means we will be assed on basic tricks like manuals (pressing down and balancing on the nose/tail of the board) buttering (a manual whilst spinning around - super fun!) and 2 footed takeoff and landing during jumps. Exciting stuff!

Also I have some even more exciting news. Because my mates have been let off there seems to be a lack of level 1 skiers in the ski school.. therefore I was approached today by one of the senior members of the team along with my friend Sylvie to do a discounted ski instructor course and start working as a dual qualified instructor.

No brainier! The two of us are so excited! It means that we will bore ie even a higher wage as well as get more work! It also feels pretty special as he said he asked us first because the team thinks we're awesome. So there early is a silver lining to a storm cloud!

Plus my mates may be finding work at a nearby hill, so that we can all stick together in the same area which would be amazing. Things are looking up thankfully.

Love to all my family xxx working tomorrow, hello BC family weekend - busy busy busy!

Blessings and Curses

Over 100cm of snow in 6 days. Powder skiing is both a blessing and a curse, but something else has brought our household to a new all time low. Update in 7hours, when this day has finally ended!

*update*

Wednesday night - musical bingo night! It's a great laugh and it's the midweek night out for many staff members and this week for a lot of my friends family's too! Parents brothers and sisters would be there as well as the normal crowd so it was shaping up to be a good night.

We arrive around 8:30pm after a few drink at ours and get intoduced to my friend Carly's Mum and dad, and then a little later Michaels whole family rocks up too. Lovely atmosphere, happy chatty and all having a nice time. Musical bingo is awesome.

Last week I won a thing! A beer cosy!

The incident. It's a long complicated story that can be condensed into, two of my over-intoxicated mates got into a fight. One knocked a bloke out and the other was badly injured and suffered concussion after another knock out blow. He had to go to hospital in an ambulance and stayed there tone whole night with a bloodied swollen face. Thankfully he's okay and home now recovering.

However that is not the bad news. Both lads lost thier jobs. They work at the resort so should have known better, but what's more they have been completely banned from the resort. They can't even walk through to see us at work, or for a coffee, or even ski again. We are all absolutely gutted as it may tear down our group of housemates. One is definitely going home, which may cause a chain reaction for two more of my friends to leave. The other is trying to at least revoke the ban so that he can stay here with us, and ski a little on the good days and work down in Invermere. As he suppposed to stick with his best mate and go travelling after the winter season.

Needless to say it's a pretty gloomy mood now in the house and around the resort for us and all our mates from work. They've gone from having responsibility of children's lives on the mountain to forced security escorts around the resort to go retrieve thier belongings. Madness.

We never truly appreciated the special situation we were in and how perfect it was until it was flipped on its head. It's a tough lesson for these boys and I hope they can stay longer I'm not ready to say goodbye yet. Potential to lose some of my closest mates, such nice charismatic blokes in depressing.

In other news it did actually snow all day! Another 10cm which brings the total to over 100cm in the last 6 days. Epic powder day after epic powder day! So Wednesday daytime I was working, from 8am (tough shift) but it did mean I got to go riding at 8:30am and taste all the fresh powder before anyone else got a look in. I was a little dusty from the night before so riding in ankle deep snow was a little but of a suprise! But so much fun.

I had a 1 hour lesson booked for a school group in the morning that never showed so I was able to get paid to go ride some fresh powder and clear my head! Luckily I bumped into one of my lofty friends who had never ridden pow on a snowboard so I gave her a private lesson and showed her a nice, easy, tucked away run called loose moose to practise on. It only takes 1 chair lift from the mountain base to reach and no one uses it! We had fresh track all morning and must have done it around 4 times! So much fun and she picked it up super quick! We definitely discovered pow is a curse and a blessing - it's super fun and soft.. but if you get stuff.. it's blooming hard to get out again! So funny having to swim through chest waist deep snow to save your little friend. Part of the fun I said!

So then I took her into Sunbowl - ungroomed terrain that is a nice place to introduce people to backcountry skiing without chooseing  mega difficult runs, it was amazing. Pockets of waist deep snow that was so light you just glided through and smashed.

In the afternoon I met Tom and his brother for some Taunton and Extreme dream zone laps (harder back country) and the snow was epic. Waist to chest deeep, every time you made a turn a wave of snow soared up Andy hit you in the face which freezes your manic grin to your face. Just amazing.

I have training again today and will hopefully grab some footage with my GoPro to try and show you the awesomeness.

Until next time xxx

I Swear My Life Is Perfect

The last 4 days have been epic. In the full sense of the word.

In Panorama, after a 3 week dry spell of no snow whatsoever with -20 degree and below weather systems we finally got a dump of snow! Over 40cm in 48 hours - which is unheard of for this resort. Instructors who have been teaching here for decades were calling it some of the best conditions they can remember. I certainly made the most of it.

It started Friday afternoon when we had a slight deposit of fresh snow. Which made my weekly Friday training super fun. Leading into Saturday, a work day where I had the sweetest little boy all day for a 1 on 1 lesson in the 8cm deep soft snow on his birthday! Lots of playing and falling in the fresh stuff as it doesn't hurt at all! Although it does make teaching beginner lessons rather challenging as freshly fallen snow provides fantastic grip - at high speeds and on steep terrain this is perfect. However it is not ideal for side slipping - you just don't move! So my day involved a lot of walking, pulling and physical aid to keep the kid on his feet, moving and learning all at once.
My favourite part of the job is making up games to play with the children so they learn and have fun. Todays theme was police, security guards and SWAT teams. He had already been in lessons and had customised his name badge with a security emblem and wore it proudly. It seemed all the other instructors and lift operators (liftys) could remember him and he was undoubtedly popular! Babbly, fun kid who gave me a big hug before he left after the day. I love my job.

Sunday: normally another work day but as Alberta and British Colombia (BC) family week is coming up, the Ski and Ride Centre (ski school) needs all hands on deck. So instead of training the next 2 Fridays we could have the Sunday and Monday to train instead. Ha! "Train" With the forecast looking so good and snow falling heavily all day Saturday with no signs of letting up - Sunday/Monday was going to be amazing.

We rode hard all day, visiting the best places to find fresh powder. Guidance was conscience and preferably on chairlifts, so we could do as many laps round the mountain as possible. Josh our instructor knew all the best places to go, to avoid the traffic and find fresh, untracked spots. Unfortunately the famous backcountry runs in Tayton Bowl (a massive natural bowl created by the mountain containing around 7 runs and 3 ridges completely open to shred however you want to) was closed due to avalanche control. Instead we rode choppy lift lines to hit bumps, jumps off rocks and a fallen tree was even made into a jib (a all-natural rail to grind over! It was epic! I may not have stuck the landing as well as I wanted but boy did I hit it SSX Tricky style! Dream come true.)
Then onto glades where we arced between tight tree lines in waist deep powder so that we could jump a 6ft cliff drops back down onto the CAT track (a flat road made by the groomers) to get back to the resort for lunch. It was insane. The best riding I have ever done was over this weekend; thanks to the tuition and guidance of my instructor for both terrain and rider improvement. Plus it only got better into Monday.

Monday: Another training day in over 60cm of powder. Despite being in Canada, even the day to day life was affected. Buses running late, cars and even snowploughs sliding into snow banks! It got a little crazy but everyone knew how to cope and business went on as usual... kinda.With this much snow schools had a snow day and even businesses had a mandatory noon. Which meant a lot of locals flocked to the hill for a morning on the snow before work - not bad eh?
Same deal as Sunday, less jibba-jabba more shredding! This time Tayton Bowl was open so we trekked to the top of the mountain to find the best spot to drop into the back country. Josh introduced the squad to a run called Devils Drop.
To think, I had never rode powder before coming to Canada; and now I not only drop into double-black diamonds (expert riders only!) but I look for lines (routes down the mountain) to make it the most fun! That shows competency and a speaks volumes about my progression in confidence and riding ability since becoming a snowboard instructor.
So Devils Drop, immediately we took a high line round the peak of the ridge. Slicing through deep powder, winding carefully past windswept trees, protruding at odd angles. Then Josh halts and points at a gap between two said trees and exclaims "There's a great 10ft drop here! Its 15ft if you really send it or 8ft if you go thata way." We all exchange stupefied expressions and raised eyebrows. "Just follow me!" And with a WOOooopp! He vanished over the sheer edge. Anxiety and adrenaline coursed through my body as I waited for my turn. I knew that a soft cushion of snow waited for me and that there was nothing to worry about. But logic like that had no dent in my brain screaming 'cliff drop?!' As I forced myself towards my first cliff drop I felt a kind of numbness, panic, and exhilaration. Then I was on cloud nine. Pure joy and sense of pride that I had done it. Now I could enjoy fresh tracks down the mountain, jumping off anything I could, cutting through the snow, in completely control of my explosive decent.
The rest of the day followed in similar fashion, and it was incredibly tiring work. You have to work extra hard to turn your board as you must unweight it to change edges by lifting up your legs to breach the snow and then sink back down. Not to mention the fact you must absorb all kinks in the terrain or risk being knocked off balance and ejected into the snow banks! Which takes even more effort to escape from. The trick is to stay in the fall-line and don't lose speed, or at least have a someone track next to you to hop in if you get into trouble.

Aching all over, jelly legs and a big grin. 3 signs that someone has had a fun powder day!


Tuesday/Today. Now my body was screaming for a day off, and my timetable delivered. No work, but there wasn't a chance in hell I would miss a day in heaven. I rode dreamy snow all day under a blue ski and bright sun followed by a glass of beer with my best mates. Sometimes you have to sit back and appreciate what life has given you, how fortunate you really are, and how much you love life. Sitting there today with a cool beverage I contemplated this.

I want to thank everyone who helped me get here and enabled me to live my dream of being a snowboard instructor in Canada. Whether they are with us or not, I love every one of you and couldn't of asked for anymore love and support that you have showed me. I just hope some of these pictures live up to the feeling and memories I have made. *experiencing technical difficulties*

Ps. I really am working on a massive CatchUp blog I promised! I just like sleep, socialising and snowboarding too much! I will finish it soon.. There is still hope!