RED 11 Week Instructor Course 16/17 - Week 6

On a high after passing their Level 1 instructor certification, the gang in RED are having a blast. This week Manny enjoyed his first teaching experience and laid down plenty of fun turns in RED’s famous steep and deep after a big storm cycle. Here’s Manny’s story from Week 6.

After completing our Level 1 exams last week it was time to put our newly acquired teaching skills to the test by volunteering at the tiny ski hill of Salmo as part of Nonstop’s Community Day program. The mountain was open to all to ski for free, so there were plenty of families bringing their young children to the hill – for many of them it was their first ever skiing experience. But they weren’t the only ones facing a steep learning curve!  

The first thing we all discovered immediately was that teaching beginners, especially children, is far more exhausting than a day of riding at your own pace. I quickly learned a number of different techniques for hauling 5 and 6 year olds up the hill (for those who weren’t yet ready to ride the lifts). These ranged from getting them to hold onto my poles as I pulled them up the hill behind me like a human T-bar, to physically picking them up and carrying them up the hill.  Neither of these methods involved wearing a jacket or gloves, because within 10 minutes of teaching, and with the sun beaming down, I was as hot as a swinked gypsy.  It was well worth it though to see the smile on the face of my first pupil, little Jack, when he was able to go from barely being able to move in his skis to linking turns down the beginners’ area. At the end of the lesson, as I wiped the sweat away from my face, he said “I think my brother wants a lesson now”.  Shame there was no camera around to capture the look on my face!

The next couple of days it rained for the first time since we’ve been here and the snow turned to “elephant snot”, as our instructor Edwin calls it.  But as they say, “there are no crappy conditions just crappy skiers” so a couple of the keener Nonstoppers toughed it out on the T-bar, working on our carving in the drizzle and limited visibility. But it wouldn’t be long before Red delivered yet again, and after a couple of days our prayers were answered as the temperature dropped and the snow started falling. And boy did it fall! At the time of writing we have had 50cm of snow in the past week, and in the last 2 days I have had more fun than I ever thought possible on a pair of skis as we charged down moguls and steeps, through trees, and even off the odd mini cliff (voluntarily or sometimes involuntarily!)

Over the past six weeks I have learned that there is so much about skiing that can’t be taught and needs to be experienced.  A driving instructor can teach a student that braking is important, but they can’t teach how much pressure to apply to the brake – it needs to be felt and refined over time. Fortunately, Red is the type of mountain where you can really push your boundaries as a skier or boarder and there is just endless terrain to practice and experiment. Once you feel how your equipment responds in different situations you can alter your tactics accordingly. And the beauty of having completed our Level 1 instructor course is that by learning the building blocks of good technique we are starting to learn to self-diagnose and correct our own weaknesses as we play on the mountain.

Our preparations for the Level 2 exams will begin very soon. But in the meantime, we’re just going to keep “shreddin’ the gnar”, as the locals like to say!  

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