Instructor Training course - Results Day

  First things first though: Happy Birthday to Josie - officially a teenager today !

  Almost first thing, I went down to catch the first lift this morning and managed to get in a couple of runs practising my carved turns before we had to meet at 9:30.

  The first half of the morning was devoted to the remaining four practice lessons and then it was all Central Theme demonstrations: plough turns, plough parallels, parallel turns; with Dave looking on a grading us.

  Finally I got to do three runs showing off my carved turns, although my second run was pants so I was hoping Dave didn’t notice that as we are supposed to have fully acquired the techniques.

  Then the drag lift we were using broke down so we only got one run of short turns (my other bugbear) and it was all over.

  As soon as we’d all gathered at the bottom Dave saw us one by one and gave us the results.  Although we got a full breakdown later there’s really only 2 results; pass or fail.

  Of the 17 people on the course 12 passed - sadly I wasn’t amongst that group.

  I have to admit I’m disappointed although not surprised as I knew my carving and short turns weren’t really up to the mark - I was just hoping that on the day I’d nail them.

  When I was deciding which course to take it was a toss-up between a standard GAP course in Zermatt and this course in Méribel.  The difference is that on the Zermatt course I would have got the full 70 hours of shadowing, a second discipline and lots of time to practice the elements required for the BASI Instructor test.

  Although I didn’t know it then the Méribel course has such a focus on slalom that I only got 12½ hours of shadowing, no second discipline and virtually no time to practice the BASI stuff.  Still, I always knew that the Méribel course was the riskier option but I thought I’d go for it anyway because if I’d passed the Test Technique (which I soon discovered was going to be completely out of reach) I could have joined the ESF.

  So I suppose the question is what now ?

  The answer is that I’ll think about it - I’m not far off qualifying so I’ll have to see what courses are out there.

  In the meantime I’m going to do some snowboarding.