Our NZ ski instructors don their red jackets for the first time...
It's not just pow, pow and more pow in New Zealand at the moment, although the videos below show that it's been a week of epic freeskiing. Andrew has provided the written blog this week, so read on below... but to get you started, here's a little something to get you jealous:
Following some more work on our personal skiing on Monday, we visited Broken River, another local ski field, on 
Tuesday. The weather in the morning did us no favours. The snow felt awesome but, after a couple of runs skiing by touch in zero visibility, we decided to take refuge in the lunch hut. This isn’t as basic as it sounds – lots of space, warm, free tea and coffee, cooking facilities etc. - and friendly locals.
Shortly after lunch, the clouds lifted almost instantaneously, a big cheer went up, and everyone (all 30 of us) rushed out to enjoy the fresh tracks in dry powder in bright sunshine.
On Wednesday, we experienced our first lessons from the other side of the fence. Sophia got a head start on the rest 
of us as she was allocated to an early lesson, shadowing Swedish instructor Andreas, and being given plenty of opportunity for some hands on experience. Unfortunately, the expected busloads of children from local schools failed to appear, the rest of us still got the chance to observe another beginners’ lesson, with occasional opportunities to pitch in and help the slower learners along – a valuable experience.
During a brief free skiing session, Sophia took over from Alice and attacked Bluff Face again – with her face: Bluff Face 1 Alice & Sophia 2.
On Thursday, the group split up, with the girls deciding to work further on their personal skiing at Porters, while the guys went off to Craigieburn Valley ski field. We were joined by Martin (2009 Nonstopper, now working at Porters, aka God). Although it hadn’t snowed for a couple of days, we still found plenty of fresh tracks, and the terrain and weather were both awesome. Check it out in the video below:
Then on Friday morning, the busloads of schoolchildren did turn up and we each had a class to follow and get 
involved in. For a couple of us, that wasn’t enough and we stayed on to give a few more hints (hopefully not too misguided) after the lessons were over and the real instructors had gone on to their next lessons.
Friday afternoon was another session on personal ski development. After a few weeks of frustration as we all had our tried and tested (?) techniques dismantled and reconstructed, we’re now beginning to see the benefits.
In the evening, we all celebrated “UK Day”. Under God’s guidance, the British staff at Porters decided that we ought to have a national day to celebrate and 30th July was chosen, as the day England won the ’66 World Cup – not such a popular choice with the Welsh and Scots, but still. Jason, our resident Aussie, celebrated more than most – which was just as well as he didn’t have much to celebrate on Saturday night!
Stay tuned for more updates from our New Zealand Ski Instructor Course.
Find out all about our ski instructor courses here and snowboard instructor courses here
