RED 11 Week Instructor Course 16/17 - Week 8

Cat skiing, powder, more powder, ice skating and Level 2 training. Just another week for Manny on our 11 week instructor course in RED Mountain.

I can’t remember the number of times this trip that one of us has said “This was the best day so far!”. But RED just keeps surpassing expectations. Week 8 started with a bang and a day of cat skiing – 12 runs of fresh waist deep powder through trees and steeps. Let’s just say there were plenty of high-fives and “woohoos” to go around. Even better was that we were lucky enough to have a professional photographer follow us around and take some brilliant individual and group shots!

The snow just kept coming throughout the rest of the week – 5cm here, 10cm there. The result was what we call “hero conditions” – the type of snow where every turn feels good, where you can charge off a small cliff and know that if you fall it’s like landing on a stack of pillows. The conditions even had the locals surprised, as this kind of “blower powder” is unusual for this time of year, when the snow usually starts to get a bit heavier.

What a day! Cat skiing wins.

Wednesday evening we were treated to a night of ice skating at the local ice rink. There were initially a lot of nervous legs as many of us had only skated once or twice before, but within about 15 minutes most of us found our rhythm and were able to get around the rink relatively comfortably. A few of us did however learn the hard way that a hockey stop on ice-skates is not nearly as easy as one on skis!

On Saturday and Sunday we had our Level 2 training which complemented our off-piste adventures nicely with some more focus on technique. There were no huge surprises here with the content building off our Level 1 course knowledge. We received some more valuable feedback on our skiing and teaching and now have a couple of weeks to refine our technique before the Level 2 exams.