Last day of training!

Yesterday we had our last day of training before our exam! We spent the day doing an in depth and detailed analysis of the different components of skiing and practised teaching the fast track to parallel to each other.
Pretending to be beginners so our friends can teach us is actually harder than it seems and guiding each other in snow plough, although funny, proved difficult too! Thankfully we had the whole day to perfect our lesson and fingers crossed we’re all ready for the exam on Monday – off to practise my snow plough turns and stops now!

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Shark Attack!

After a day of not much technical skiing but lots of free/fun skiing, today we stepped up and got down to the business of passing our exam next week.
We started with video analysis, filming our best intermediate parallel and then looking at our flaws and working out how to improve them.
Next we learnt about the fast track to parallel – how instructors take their beginner pupils and teach them how to ski parallel in basic steps. There’s 5 basic steps which should be worked through: 1. Mobility 2. Sliding 3. Stopping 4. Turning 5. Linking
And once these steps have been completed, the beginner can now ski a parallel turn. We started by pretending to be complete beginners and then slowly taught and helped each other in a lesson situation.

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After our fast track to parallel we worked on completing the perfect snow plough turn while demonstrating separation. We skiied in a snake trail down the mountain one by one behind each other until our instructor relived a childhood game of shark attack! (Where you ski in a line and when the instructor shouts shark attack the person at the back skis to the front!)
After an evening at buffalo bills, we headed home ready for an early night and a bigger day today!!!

Can you keep up?

Today, after remembering that our heads need to be above shoulders, shoulders above knees, knees above toes, I learnt that I need to bend my ankles more in order to create the angles and dimensions needed for a perfect ski position.
Once we’d practised our technique, our instructor decided to play a game of ‘can you keep up’ where he’d ski off as fast as possible between trees, through trails and off jumps and we’d see if we could keep up or even just stay in the same trail as him.
For lunch we went to ‘Dusty’s’, a local restaurant in creekside. Here we invented, explained and tasted a chocolate shot! We asked the waitress for shots of peppermint schnapps but then also had a shot of chocolate and so drinking them together tasted like an after eight drink – so yummy!
In the afternoon we were all very tired from our big (crazy) lunch and so, did some more can you keep up and some more technical exercises before heading back down the mountain for an evening of shopping!

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The end of our shopping trip took us to Moos where we had to make the hardest decision so far in Whistler.. What Ice cream to have.
In the end I opted for: Moo York Cheesecake (a cheesecake flavoured ice cream with Oreo pieces and caramel) and then also a Wowie Cowie (vanilla ice cream with chocolate crunch and Carmel swirl)
The third flavour that didn’t quite make it to the cone but that I tried was the Nuffle (chocolate ice cream with marshmallow and peanut butter cups). Can you keep up?

Flurries Forecasted!

After meeting our new instructor for this week, Mark, we set off to start our last weeks training before our exam. Since we only have 4 days to perfect our technique before our level 1, we don’t have much time to free ski so spent the day soon technique based exercises. Although it’s Marks first day with us, he quickly picked up on our strengths and flaws and set to work at setting the straight.
We had a ‘lunch vacation’ today and headed down the mountain to Portabello’s (the best sandwich bar in the world!) for lunch. OBVIOUSLY I had my regular, ham cucumber and tomato… Yumyumyum.
This evening we were all exhausted as we’ve had NO break these past couple of weeks due to the avalanche course. However we did have enough energy to dipdye my roommates hair purple which worked out surprisingly well!

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VERY VERY VERY excited by the prospect of snow this week, even if it is just flurries. WE NEED POWDER WE NEED POWDER.

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I will definitely be checking the weather forecast regularly for the next few days!!

Avalanche COMPLETE!

At 7.50am after quite a large night the previous evening our house was up ready to go off to the second day if our avalanche course… Until I realised I’d lost my backpack containing my transceiver, probe and shovel!! After some frantic looking I went to my housemates to ask for help and they put our avalanche techniques to great use remembering that my transceiver might still be on. After switching theirs to ‘receive’ they quickly tracked down my backpack under the bed and we were ready to go.
Day 2 can only be described as an epic game of hide and seek, but this time it is backpacks with transceivers in that get buried, and our aim is to track them down, probe and dig them out in the quickest time possible – saving those caught in an avalanche – boys v girls.
It does sound a lot more exciting than it actually is and after digging a trench to look at snow formations and measuring gradients of different sections of the slope we were all avalanched out and heading back to base for our debrief.
WE ALL PASSED wooo! And after receiving our certificates – very proud moment – we got in a very much needed hottub to relax.

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Avalanche!!

Yesterday was the first day of our AST level 1 avalanche course and we spent it in 10degree heat on the slopes – no better place to be!
First off we were in the roundhouse in groups of 7 with a guide discussion possible routes and snow conditions and what factors might affect our decision when entering the back country. Then we headed out and after a quick ski, reached the place where we were going to spend the day testing out our transceivers, probes and shovels. First we took it in turns hiding a transceiver in a glove under the snow so others could track it down and then we did the same with a back pack but this time digging it out with a probe and shovel, using correct technique for both.
After looking at snow layers in a dug out trench and spending more time looking at mountain conditions, we headed back to the classroom to complete the day there.
We spent more time discussing what had been learnt today and also the possible outcomes of getting stuck in an avalanche! A very sad short film quickly scared and warned us about that and soon we were on our way back home ready to stream Australia’s top 100 and head out to LongHornes to celebrate the beginning of Aussie Day! Up at 7 now ready to start avalanche training again..

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Jersey girls!

Yesterday we had a girlie day skiing, hitting the slopes late morning wearing our whistler jerseys! We just skiied whatever we felt like doing including gladed tree runs and some loooovely pisted snow! We could basically do whatever because we never lost each other as we could always spot the jersey girls!
Lots of people also asked us if we were part of a team and so we confidently replied that we are in the whistler curling team… I am a brusher apparently.. Ha.

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We spent the evening in a class room as the start of our AST 1 avalanche course. The three hours were spent discussion causes of avalanches and their different grades and scales. Now it’s 7am and I’m about to get ready for our first skiing day of the avalanche adventure course, let’s see what it entails…

It’s getting hot in here!

Since I’ve been here the weather has appeared to just increase and increase! Throughout the first few days the air was filled with snow and the temperature was around -5 at Rendevous, the most central mountain on the slope. Since the massive powder dump the weather has just got hotter and hotter and today has peaked to a MASSIVE 8degrees! In three weeks it had rocketed 13 degrees and the sun is shining!! (My favourite skiing weather ever is sun but fingers crossed the snow doesn’t all melt away!!)

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BEERGITA! (Aka Mexican Bulldog)

Spending our après ski at Longhornes bar meant that we were finally able to try a… BEERGITA! (Although we found out today it’s actually called a Mexican Bulldog.. Whoops). Anyway this drink consists of a double shot margarita in a MASSIVE jug with an upside down blocked corona which slowly empties into the jug the more margarita you drink! Lots of photos were taken with the drinks ofcourse…

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