Ski Instructor Course Saas Fee Week 3

The third week of our Saas Fee ski instructor course in 2016 has delivered brilliant results on the BASI Level 1 Alpine exam and created many happy new ski instructors!

Before we look at how the week went, let’s meet some more members of this year’s group:

Ben

Ben is one of the younger members of the group, keen to gain his BASI Level 2 qualification and work the winter season in Europe following this course. Loves Millwall (for the football, not the fighting!) and La Cabana.

Michael

Michael has travelled the furthest to take part in this course – all the way from the Big Apple! That’s NYC if you didn’t know that…. NYC is short for New York City…. it’s in America. Alongside experiencing European culture we’ve been educating Michael in the UK way of life especially GBBO!

Louisa

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Louisa made a friend 🐪 🇨🇭

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Previously a BASI Level 1 ski instructor, Louisa is on a mission to improve her skiing, pass BASI Level 2 and work in Japan after the course! She’s making friends all over the village including with the Bodmen camel. What’s weird about that?

The temperature has been steadily dropping throughout the week, enough in fact that the snow canons have been on full power creating a strong base layer down to Morenia (mid-station). If the forecast for next week comes true, we could soon be skiing powder halfway down the mountain (in October)!

Week 3 has been focussed on one important part of the 10 week course – the BASI Alpine Level 1 assessment. Two BASI Trainers from the UK came out to train the group for 5 days and assess their abilities according the criteria of a BASI Level 1 ski instructor. The trainers, Lee Townend and James Bennett, know exactly what they are looking for and have plenty of experience to help our instructors improve throughout the week.

On Friday, everyone received their results which kick started a weekend of party! Fantastic results and well deserved as everyone has really given their all to training from day 1. For an already confident bunch, being handed the chat-up line of ‘Hey, I’m a ski instructor’ is pretty dangerous stuff!

The winner of this week’s ‘Peaked Too Soon’ award goes to Timothy for his 9pm failure at Happy Bar. The runner up award (surprisingly!) also goes to Timothy for his 10pm ‘head in hands’ moment outside the hotel.

Few people surfaced over the weekend, many nursed well deserved hangovers throughout the weekend. Those that did get out of bed went to check out the neighbouring village of Saas Almagell and decided to partake in an impromptu game of mini golf amongst the Autumn leaves.
With so much focus being on the BASI Level 1 assessments, there was little opportunity to do fitness sessions or any afternoon activities this week. Most of the guys are keen to get back out for a run soon and work off those weekend beers…

Next week (week 4) will see the return of our trainers from Element Ski School, Emma and Jake, who will begin working on training everyone up to a level 2 standard. But first, Marco Eydallin will be arriving at the start of the week to teach the group the ins and outs of freestyle skiing! This is always a hugely popular part of the course once the apprehension subsides.

Let’s head to the park with Marco…