Fernie 11 Week Instructor Course 16/17 - Week 6

It's week 6. The crew have been enjoying fresh powder all week and even squeezed in a road trip to the USA. Heather and her course mates are now qualified ski or snowboard instructors and this week they must decide whether they spend the rest of the course focused on gaining their level 2 instructor qualification or on developing their own skills through the AMP course.

After the nerves, excitement, and relief of last week’s Level 1 instructor exam success, it was time to buckle down and start thinking about the next phase of the course. Before coming out to Fernie I was so set on pursuing the AMP (All Mountain Pro) course after level 1, however I’ve had such a good learning experience on the CASI focussed lessons that I’ve chosen to try and attain level 2 snowboard instructor certification instead. On the lessons we spend time talking about the details of snowboarding and I find the more explanatory style of teaching in order to teach others, actually helps with my own development.

We didn’t jump into level 2 material straight away, instead the instructors used this week to give us a bit of a break from teaching to just let loose and the enjoy the awesome conditions we’ve had lately. It was termed as more of a demo week which would include elements from both the Level 2 and AMP courses, to help us make the decision for the next phase of our course. Our instructor for the start of this week was Jeremy, he was super keen to have us begin thinking about the mountain as a freestyle playground, encouraging us to ollie off cat-tracks, ride gullies like halfpipes and straight-line through the powder! “Get ‘sendy’!” was our goal. Thankfully the conditions were quite soft so we could push out of our comfort zones a bit more and test our freestyle chops, (mine are still fairly limited!), without fear of doing too much damage. As with everything these past weeks, I’m assured the progression will come with patience, practice and milage.

The second half of the week was spent mostly improving our carving abilities with instructor Lucy. I really enjoy carving, almost as much as untouched powder fields - I’m still raving to anyone that will listen about last week’s backcountry runs! Carving involves turning exclusively with the edges of your board, which means you maintain speed and power through turns, so you can get some serious momentum if you commit to the movements. The conditions were providing the perfect amount of grip, so everybody made great strides in improving their technique. I feel a lot more comfortable at higher speeds now and am turning into a bit of a speed-freak on the groomers!

On Friday we all took part in an AMP level 1 certification day. The format followed somewhat of a freestyle competition, which involved a carving run, a freeride run, a gully ride and a drop-in. The instructors took up positions on the sides of the runs and scored everybody as we tackled each challenge.

It was awesome to ride as one big snowboarding wolf pack and watch as everyone rose to the occasion and got ‘amped’ to try things we might not have done on a normal lesson day. I hope we get another opportunity to have a day like this before the season is out - everybody on the bus back to the lodge was in agreement about how much fun it was!

The ’Whitefish Weekend’ saw another great week out with a bang! 21 of us headed south into Montana to sample the snow at Big Mountain Resort and experience the town of Whitefish. The resort is beautiful, much smaller than Fernie but really fun and cruisey with lots of trees and two sides of the mountain to explore.

I’m really digging the gnarly run names that North America are so font of; ‘Hell Fire’ could be found in Hellroaring Basin. ‘Elephants Graveyard’ and ‘Goat Haunt’ were equally amusing. A group favourite was the long, blue run, ‘Inspiration’, that offered amazing views over the town and Whitefish Lake. On initial impressions the town itself looks like the set of a western, but get a little closer and you find modern coffee shops, boutiques, bars and great restaurants.

As cool as Whitefish was, reports of 35cm of fresh in Fernie had us missing our Canadian home from home!

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