The Instructor Factor – The difference good instructors make on the season

Cody in Whistler is finding his snow feet…
Three weeks into my ski instructor course with Alltracks Academy, the best ski holiday of my life, and I’m flyyyying down the slope! When I put my hands out it feels like I’m going to take off, and if I don’t look where I’m going and hit a bump that can actually happen. However I could never achieved all this improvement by myself, no-way. It’s down to the three separate instructors that have guided me through into my third week. Just observing the quality of Canada’s best shooting past (leading the hazard that is the snake of the ski school) You can tell that whistler has a strong foster of ski instructors. Without a doubt, I will be better come March because of them.
Ryan was the first to mould our group into something that resembles a coalition of capable skiers. I remember the day our group hooked up with him and began to ski as one. I suddenly realised that I had become the thing I fear the most, a ski school snake…. but putting that out of my mind, I was soon doing back-flips all over the mountain under his teaching (joking of course). In actual fact he took us back to basics and showed us that a snowplow is actually a lot harder than a back-flip, because I haven’t done it for years. At the same time he focused on our technique, so that we saw improvement in all categories of our skiing over that week. As for our second instructor, Petra, I’ll never forget the moment I met her. She talks, acts and even looks a little like Sappho at the Erna Low London office (aka: the person who edits out all the good parts of my blog!). 

Petra - who reminds me of someone at home!

In any case, Petra again showed me some stuff that I never realised came into play with skiing, for example the positioning of the hands. For years I’ve been dragging my inside hand at waist height, oblivious to the fact that it forced me to lean back and lose balance. However Chris is the man that has really given me the confidence to take on any terrain. The secret? Attack it! You may not want lean forwards into a 99% incline mogul field, but trust me, it’s the best way.
I can’t imagine how I’m ever going to be one of these guys by the end of the course! They’ve made such a difference to my skiing, and I’m supposed to be qualified like them by the end of the season? It’s a strange thought. I look forward to it though, and I’ll only charge £200 an hour.

‘Bend ze knees…!’ Taking ski lessons at Arc 1950

Bethan Stacey, is spending the season working in the Erna Low Property office in Arc 1950 and has been testing out the local ski school…

Last week was the most beautiful week of the season so far – sun every day, cool temperatures to keep the snow good but not too cold (only one day of not feeling your toes at the end of your ski boots) and a small amount of fresh snow when it was needed.  And as I start in the ski property sales office every day at midday (jammy!), I decided to make the most of it by taking some ski lessons.  I’d taken a handful of private lessons before but never group ones, so it was going to be a little bit different and I wasn’t sure what to expect. But the bonus with the ski school in Arc 1950, ‘Spirit 1950′  is that it’s an ESI (International Ski School) and so the groups are limited in number so we were only 8 in total.

Bethan getting ready to go in Arc 1950

Although we were a level 3 group, in reality our ability was quite mixed but our instructor, Alex, coped well by giving us lots of different technique lessons so everyone had a different thing to work on depending on our capability.  We also took some pistes and off-piste routes that I’d never been to, despite having already had many ski holidays to Les Arcs, and I know that the rest of the group were also discovering areas they didn’t know existed.

We had a day where we went to the top of the Aiguille Rouge – the highest point in the Les Arcs domain – and did the run part of the way to Villaroger, so almost 7 km of black and red pistes without a chairlift!  We had a lesson on moguls and off-piste and did lots of fun tree runs around Peisey Vallandry and Arc 1600, which always test your technique, and then did technique to try and improve our general piste skiing – short turns and longer carving turns.

On the lift with Spirit ski instructor, Alex

All in all it was a really fun few days : great to be part of a group and fantastic to ski with an instructor who has all the local knowledge to guide you to places that you wouldn’t have known to explore alone.  Private lessons are great for really improving your technique and always working at your own pace but group lessons are a real laugh and you get to learn from other people too.  Not to mention the price advantage of course – adult group lessons cost 160€ for 6 mornings of 2 ½ hours.

Safe to say I would definitely recommend group lessons and also the Spirit 1950 Ski School in Arc 1950!