VERBIER 2018-19 – WEEK 5
Happy New Year! All the Peak Leaders celebrated this one in style! Led by the girls of course, they certainly know how to start a party!
Verbier is an awesome place to be on New Year’s Eve as the sky is lit up all over town by amazing firework displays. Thousands of people congregate in Place Central to bring in the New Year and party! So naturally all the Peak Leaders headed down there and soon after went off to various local establishments to celebrate long into the night!
After a day off to rest weary heads and bodies the team are back either training or shadowing. Shadowing real world ski lessons is an essential part of learning to be a ski instructor. It’s important to be aware of the challenges that you can face as an instructor whether it is splits in ability in your group or carefully planning a route down the Mountain so that you keep everyone together.
So all of the Peak Leaders will spend a week shadowing existing instructors so they can get an idea of what ski lessons are like. This is essential so they can gain knowledge and get some experience of dealing with various different groups.
Another really important part of the course is learning First Aid. An outdoor First Aid qualification is a pre requisite of being a ski instructor as if an accident does happen, and they do, then each Peak Leader should know exactly how to act. Much of the First Aid course is based outdoors so the groups get to practice treating casualties and dealing with relevant situations. Also they get to practice their best Manakin poses! Of course, Peak Leaders mascot Indie is in the photo too!
Whilst there are other aspects to the course each on snow training day is focused on making gradual improvements so that each person can build upon their existing skills and become better at both teaching and technical skiing. And even though there are few other things to learn apart from skiing on each Peak Leaders course it’s important to remember why so many people want to be spend a season skiing. This picture seems to sum it all up!
