Fernie 11 Week Instructor Course 16/17 - Week 3

Heather is back on snow after recovering from her wrist injury and it looks like it’s been a fun week of progression on the slopes with her CASI Level 1 exams not too far away. Fernie has just had a huge dump of snow so I have a feeling next week’s post will be full of powder stoke!

When sitting down to write this third blog I had trouble remembering exactly what has happened this week - it’s gone by so quick! It’s true that time flies when you’re enjoying yourself and this week I most certainly have. I’m back in action on the snow and it feels brilliant!

Photography course with Mark Gallop.

The start of this week was spent getting comfortable on my board again. Our instructor, Ash, was very considerate of my situation and allowed me to play around and regain my confidence and not worry too much about the teaching or the more progressive elements the others were focusing on, which I really appreciated. He was great at giving me personalised feedback and tips that slowly improved the standard of my riding during those first two days back on snow. It was good to follow the group around and just observe, making mental notes and getting acquainted with what I’d missed during the first two weeks. We made good use of the time spent on chairlifts to talk about the theory side of things, which we then put into practice on the way down again. We spent Tuesday afternoon working through how to teach beginner snowboarders how to turn correctly and then how to link those turns and create ‘flow’ when we ride. It was a new experience to try and put yourself back in that beginner mindset and to adjust your snowboarding to specific rider abilities.

Tree runs at Kimberley.

Pow pow!

As I’d missed the first three core elements of beginner teaching, my friend and housemate, Javier offered to take me through them on Wednesday morning which was great for both of us, I got to learn and he got to practice teaching — he did an awesome job! I think this is a strategy that most of us will use to prepare for the upcoming CASI Level 1 exams.

On Thursday we did some practice teaching as a group, we took turns to take each other through each of the five steps, which was really helpful, both as a refresher and to actively put what we’d learnt into practice with demos and feedback. It’s useful to see how other people’s teaching methods and ideas differ, which can then go in to forming how you would approach the same situation when planning a lesson. Ash had lots of examples of teaching methods for different situations which fundamentally boiled down to making the learning process creative and fun, achieving the ultimate goal of getting people hooked on snowboarding for life; a noble mission!

Plenty of fresh to go around.

Yet another tree run...

By Thursday afternoon I really felt like I’d made decent strides in upping my level of riding, I’d started to feel like I was carving turns properly and really enjoying cruising down the wider runs, opening up my turns and carrying more speed.

For the snowboarders, Friday was spent at Kimberley Alpine Resort as a bit of a change of scenery. I think most, if not all, of us enjoyed the mellower terrain of Kimberley. It was a really cruisy, feel-good day with some fun tree runs thrown in for good measure, and to top it all off, it started to snow.

Fernie is just one big playground.

On Saturday a small group of us got to spend a day with photographer Mark Gallup, working on improving our action photography skills in the deep powder. He willingly hit a few jumps for us which made for some exciting shots! We focused on framing, panning with a moving subject and anticipating our subject in order to make the shot. I’m not sure I have the skills to operate a follow cam for Travis Rice yet, but it’s a start! I’d really like to spend more time photographing friends on the hill in the coming weeks and developing what I’ve learnt from Mark.

Fernie is expected to receive a lot of fresh snow over the beginning of next week, so I’m getting excited to have my first real taste of Fernie powder!

EXPERIENCE THE #FERNIESTOKE

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