Welcome to Peak Leaders

So, The course has well and truly kicked off. The first weeks have been awesome, and everyones riding has come a long way. Whistlers epic bike park has every type of riding possible on offer, from jumps to northshore to technical, and flowing high speed. We've been building our skills up to handle all these styles and working through tougher trails and bigger jumps! We've also been getting into Whistlers incedible Disc Golf course, a great way to chill out on a day off.   Here is Dom's account of the first week. On the first days training, we went through basics of range of motion on the bike, and body position. We ran a few trails including B-Line, Ninja Cougar, Karate Monkey, Ho Chi Min, Heart of Darkness. Started off on a shaley flat open few sweeps and I slid out. Stack one. Back up the chairlift (oh god that’s so good, no pedalling up!) then did some more skills. Front wheel lifts, rear wheel lifts, then flat lifts (both together but not a bunny hop). Messed around practicing those on some skinnies and funbox. Ran Krank it Up in to Heart of Darkness. So so sick, massive grin all the way down. We then did some more jump practice and learning about pre-loading the suspension and the difference the timing makes. Put this all in to practice on another run down Crank it Up in to Heart of Darkness. Stepped up the trails a bit and did very top of A-Line, Dirt Merchant, lower A-Line, GLC drops (smallest roller for now). An awesome first days riding. Tuesday 16 June First day with Mike as our coach. He really knows his stuff, head coach who’s written the manual for the IDP course. So technical as well and gets in to the physics of why things work and others don’t or are a bad idea. After a great day’s riding, which involved two crashes (one slide-out in a berm, the other a bar-tap in trees) we rolled home after a stop at the super market for bread, eggs, and other supplies to make recovery shakes. Back to the house to clean the bike up as they were getting so dusty, then a soak in the hot tub before heading in to town for Mongolian grill. PYO ingredients then cooked on a giant hot-plate-cum-wok and cost is calculated by uncooked weight. I was winner with with Spence I think in 2nd with and a horrendous concoction of prawns, scallops, beef, teriyaki chicken, and pork, and five different sauces. Even then he went back for seconds as he forgot salmon the first time but put on too much hot-sauce and blew his head off. Three pitchers with the meal set us off quite well. Another three pitchers of the same Rik’s white at Cinnamon Bear, and we were doing pretty well. Wednesday 17 June Rest day today. Much more mooching around the house, catching up with friends and emails etc. Spence sat and watched Cool Runnings on YouTube. After some lunch we went to town to get a few supplies and to buy some discs (basically Frisbees). After an eventual successful mission we dropped the rations back at the house then drove out (via the scenic route) to the disc golf course to meet Dahj and his two mates for a 27 hole round. The course was nothing like I anticipated. I expected a couple cages plonked around a field or maybe some woodland but this was crazy. Long blind throws through scrubland, up cliff faces, straight down steep-ass hills. A few lost (but all recovered) discs and a bloody good 2.5 hour evening (1900 to 2130).     Thursday 18 June Back on the riding today. Bike setup, mostly suspension, which showed I apparently have the stickiest forks in the world. We spent quite a while on each bike in turn tuning the suspension as well we could with the springs already in there. We went up the gondola to the Peak 2 Peak station for snow-biking then down the Garbanzo section. 4,000 vertical feet in a single ride down the hill. WOOOO YEAH! No Joke > Freight Train > Side Track > Dirt Merchant > A-Line. Then ran Crank It Up before end of school at 1630 then did two more runs ourselves before we called it a day from fatigue and lack of visibility ‘cause it was wet and kicking up dirt and ran out of tearoffs. Back home and in the hot tub.     Friday 19 June Full day with exclusive access to the Garbo zone with our coach Mike! The builders have made a whole new beginning section to Blue Velvet and we literally put first tyre marks in to it. Spent the entire day doing laps of Garbo (Blue Velvet, No Joke, Freight Train, No Duff, Sidetrack) only coming to the bottom twice: lunch and end of the day by which time we’d done 14,000 vertical feet of downhill. Best day’s riding of my life. Monday 22 June Straight to the Joyride Jump Park for some jump training. The drops start at around 1ft small working up to 4ft big each with a slightly steeper transition. Even though we’d all done drops before, including in fact in the park already, Mike wanted to go back to basics and eradicate any bad habits we might have and teach us the ‘lunge’ technique. About an hour or so was spent getting the technique right and working up to the biggest drop, after which we went to put them in to practice on Schlayer, one of the double black trails with a few tasty rock drops which, without the right technique, would easily get pretty wild. We then we took the Gondola to the top for some snow riding before doing three laps of the Garbanzo zone mostly on No Joke and Freight Train taking in the wooden drop on the latter we’d previously skipped. I had a sweet crash in the tunnel on Freight Train sliding off a wallride down the corregated wall and on to the gravel at high speed, after which I could smell burning: tasty. We finished with a run down Crank It Up with Mike giving us some tips on adding style to the hang time we’re now all getting on the super flowy jumps, beginning with x-ups and table-tops.              

Crikey!!! It has been quite a last week, so bare with me and I shall start from Monday. Monday had the team starting the second week of BASI 2 and more importantly we has an awesome pig roast!!! Which was rather delicious, thanks Bret and all the team at L'Atelier :-)   For the rest of the week it was heads down and focus on BASI 2. It wasn't long until it was Friday and so results day. The team achieved an 87% pass rate, which is absolutely awesome!!! I'm very proud of you all and for those that didn't quite make the grade, you still have your BASI Level 1 so everyone has come away from the course as a ski instructor. More importantly though we have all come away from the course with a great life experience and plenty of friends for life :-D   With the results out everyone could relax and concentrate on having a great evening together. Proceedings started off with everyone signing everyones Loverbier T-shirts, thank you Els and Izzy for organising that. After that we had a couple of videos of the course shown in the L'Atelier to do a bit of reminising. Then it was the most important part of the night, the course awards. Most questionable quote and most silly scenario was won by Hugo, the cleanliness award and joker of the course was won by Fred, biggest brown nose was won by Archie, most likely to turn up to training late was won by Matt, most improved skier was won by Sarah and finally the awesome award was won by Jack H. Well done to all the winners whether it was through working hard or lack of it :-P Hope the jager bomb wasn't too much.    The weekend was a lot of ups and downs. On the Saturday there was a mountain bike competition through the Verbier streets which nursed a few hangovers from the previous nights celebrations :-) Sunday was the down when it was time for everyone to leave. It was sad to see everyone go, with many hugs and tears. However, we will all see each other again whether it be in the UK, Verbier next season or in other foriegn parts. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who was involved in running such an awesome course. The trainers, Roddy, Sandy and Matt; the L'Atelier team; the Vieux Valais team; Peak Leaders head office but most importantly all the trainees. Thank you for being awesome, sweet as and spot on. Hope everyone remembers it forever :-D All the best, Your course leader Sam :-) P.S. Don't forget to check out all the pics and vids from this years course on the facebook group!!!