Fernie Master the Mountain ’09 – Week 2
Well, it’s the end of the second week, and we are all pretty well knackered. We’ve had some great skiing and there has been a measurable improvement in all of us.
Leanne, our course ‘mother’, instituted a five minute rule for the bus, after we had a few stragglers early on. The bus waits five minutes, and then goes regardless. In her words, “We don’t want you to feel bad about holding up the rest of the course for half an hour while you fiddle with your boots or grab that last breakfast muffin; so we will just leave without you.” Very few stragglers after that….
The standard of instruction has been amazing. Technically, we have had our turns picked apart and put back together again on steep groomed slopes, with varying degrees of success. We have been down some pretty steep and bumpy single diamond runs, and an easy double diamond on the last day of instruction on Thursday. Easy here being a relative term, in the sense that a 200 foot bungee jump could be classed as easier than a 300 foot jump. As a result though, we are handling even the steepest groomed runs with a nonchalance that was missing last week. After skidding off bumps and dodging trees on a suicidally steep slope, anything after that is a piece of cake.
For anyone looking at doing this course who may be reading this, my advice is to actually do the pre-course fitness preparation suggested, especially if you are a bit of a slob. While the information pack suggests that it’s four days on, three days off; that is in reality, not the case. Basically, there will be skiing of some sort, five days a week, and sometimes on weekends too.
For example, we had avalanche training on Friday, which consisted of skiing around the mountain with our very helpful guide Dave, pointing out some classic avalanche signs. In minus 18 ish temperatures, one of the girls kept complaining to Dave that she was getting cold, and apart from admitting that it was chilly, he kept blithely ignoring her.
After that, we were supposed to save three people, but it was so cold that by the time we got to number three, we thought we would just send our sympathy and flowers to the family and ski down.
Looking on the upside, I can now see the occasional rib sticking out when I hop out of the shower, and the beginnings of a six-pack, (as opposed to the results of several thousand of them). My wife is looking at me with renewed interest, but sadly, I am too buggered to do much about it, (well, almost).
Not that it was all work and no play. The Curling night was a great success. For the Curling challenged, this consists of trying to send a rock down an ice “bowling” alley, and trying to have it come to rest on a target. Somewhat like lawn bowls on ice, which frankly, doesn’t sound very exciting. However, It is a lot more fun actually playing it. The 3 dollar beers certainly helped…
We are looking forward to the next week with great anticipation . Just hope that my energy levels hold up, as it really is NONSTOP ski!
DARWIN AWARDS
These awards, are given to individuals who have demonstrated acts of conspicuous stupidity which result in them being removed from the gene pool. An honourable mention goes to some guys who recently, removed the rubber collision mat from a lift pylon and hiked up the hill to ride it down. Sounds like fun, except that they smacked into the very lift pylon they had removed the mat from, killing two……
TO READ WEEK 3 CLICK HERE
