After a fantastic first week in Big White, our students seemed to have settled in very well. The jetlag seems to have worn off and they are cracking on with lessons nicely. Improvements are already visible and the group response to “how we feeling on the skis and snowboards now guys?” was “Unbelievable”.
All the groups changed instructors this week, which is something that occurs on a weekly basis. This is to enable the students to get a different perspective on what they are being taught, allowing for a more rounded education. The snowboarders had Cody and the skiers had Darrell. We had a late arrival to the ski group this week in the form of Billy. On this particular day Simon missed morning lessons due to extremely wet clothing that unfortunately did not dry in time. On the subject of clothing, Pascal had to purchase a new jacket, as he was getting gnarly in the trees and ripped his one across the
chest.
After lessons on Monday a few students including the instructors headed to the Bull Wheel to have a catch up and get more familiar with their instructor on a personal level over a few drinks. It was burger night in Sam’s and a few of the boys and girls decided they would treat themselves to a very decent cheese burger and fries for $5.95! After dinner a competition of killer pool began with the prize for the winner standing at 50 bucks. Who won, none other than our ski student Simon, who is proving to be quite the pool shark this season.
Tuesday arrived and what a day it was. Everyone woke up to a dumping of fresh champagne powder. A morning of riding trees and slashing pow ensued and by lunchtime everybody had an ear to ear grin and tired legs. “It’s the best day of the season” could be heard all over the resort. The afternoon followed a similar pattern to the morning, just riding fresh pow, hitting jumps and riding trees, whilst working on the individual feedback set out from Cody and Darrell. The end of the day came around and “I have never skied/snowboarded snow like it” is all that could be heard from our groups. What a great day it was and with snow starting to fall again the week was shaping up to be awesome.
It has been abnormally cold recently with Wednesday hitting -30s with wind-chill. WOW. A few breaks were needed to get out of the cold, so every few runs the students headed to the village to talk over their skiing/riding and take shelter from the sub zero conditions. Still nothing is going to keep these guys from hitting their goals and improving their ability and they tackled that mountain and cold like troopers.
With the level 1 exam date only a few weeks away, lesson focus has shifted from purely skiing and snowboarding to skiing and snowboarding and learning how to teach people how to snowboard and ski. This comes in the form of the ‘Quickride’ system for the snowboarders and ‘Fast track to parallel’ system for the skiers.
Thursday saw the snowboarders register for their Level 1 exams before heading home for dinner. The skiers will be registering sooner than they know it and before long they will all be under the watchful eye of their examiner hoping to come away a qualified level 1 instructor.
Thursday evening everyone headed down to Happy Valley for a spot of tubing. This basically consists of flying down an icy track in an inflatable ring. It was a race to get to the top as everyone wanted to be the first to whiz down. It was still bitterly cold out so huddling around the fire pit to keep warm was a necessity. Rob on the other hand had his own methods of keeping warm as he produced a small flask of Jagermeister from his bag. Collectively everyone became 8 years old again as they messed around coming down the tracks in groups and racing for bragging rights. It was a nice change to do something else and keeps the evenings fresh so as not to become tedious and repetitive.
Friday night saw us eat out collectively as a group and we descended on the Swiss Bear. After we had stuffed our faces we headed to Snowshoe Sam’s for our usual game of pool and a few pitchers of beer. There was also a few good games on ‘Big Buck Hunter’. A great end to the second week of lessons, with excitement in the camp still growing as we edge nearer to the Level 1 exam date.
