Banff/Sunshine 07 Course Diary...

Tuesday 9th January

Blue skies and powder for their 1st day coaching with smiles all round.
The instructors seem fantastic and everyone is excited about the course.
Looking forward to a good day on the mountain again today with the 1st leadership lecture this evening.

Ed Cornfield - Course Mentor

Friday 12th January 2007

Well that’s the first week of our course done and what can I say “AWSOME”! The first few days were hard due to the jetlag! The first day was devoted to deciding which group’s people should be in and getting to know our new instructors. The next few days in the skiers groups we were made to do some really funny but hard drill like skiing on one ski and having no poles and being made to put our hands on our head. The nights have been spent (for most people) getting a little bit drunk and meeting some local girls!! We have only had a couple of hospital visits one more a bad rugby tackle at lunch time!!! And another of a suspected broken rib! No arrests either which is a good start! All in all a great first week!!!

Joe Smithies

Tuesday 16th January 2007

Well, the crew have been here for a week now and are already styling on the slopes. Sunshine is still delivering with great snow, blue skies and no crowds. After a few days of -30 we're back to a tropical -14 or so and toes have come back to life. Eyes are on the prize with everyone focussed on their Level 1 and training hard. Delirium Dive is already beckoning some and the park has seen it's fair share of action, with various degrees of success!

Joe Smithies

Friday 19th January 2007

Its only been a three day week but it seems to have been a productive one. Both snowboarding groups are well on there way to learning all the teaching material for level one and should finish learning it all during the coming week. The three skiing groups have started to learn the teaching material for level one but they are still also working heavily on skiing techniques and different excersises to improve it.

There's been no major injuries this week accept for an emergency dental check with a very large bill attached. Theres still been plenty of socialising this week with Thursday night being the big night out starting at Brunos for food, swiflty moving to Mel's for cheap high balls and then moving to HooDoos for even cheaper high balls. The food this week on a whole has been great. Large healthy servings and nearly all being deliciously tastey, we are definitely being fed well here.

Anthony Mitchell

Thursday 25th January 2007

Last week the new role of team leader was started and the responsibility of keeping the group motivated, focused and punctual was really kept to a high standard (even if the leaders turned up late of last half of their group during the week !) Tuition stopped on Wednesday because the instructors realised how hard we were all working and felt we needed a break. Sadly the reality was that a celebrity skiing event took place which no one saw and I think the celebrities were hibernating with the bears because the only person I saw on the slopes was Alec Baldwin but he was definitely worth a photo of. The only other celeb was seen by Matt, Neil, Stu and myself at the Banff springs was Kelsey Grammar - yes Frasier himself - walked through the bar and attacked by two groupies who got their picture with and apparently come every year for it which is quite sad.

Chris (dale) Winton celebrated his birthday on Friday at the spaghetti factory who indecently serve eadable food - sorry Bruno - and showed Scotland his patriotism by proudly wearing his own clan kilt and sensibly wore enough to prevent frostbite! to prevent boring details of all the instructing and weather I'll briefly summarise by saying it was all awesome and injuries were at an all-time low including Dave's daily wipeouts which made him into Peak Leaders first "king of the hill" for which proudly he now wears a pink bandanna - suits you Dave!

Alex Green

Tuesday 30th January 2007

With near spring like temperatures here at Sunshine, goggle marks are appearing and confidence for the Level 1 assessment is growing. All the groups have now covered much of the teaching material, and technical improvement is coming along nicely. Over the weekend some of group ventured into some of the lesser known areas of Sunshine, and several are now looking pretty hot in the park.

With a couple of birthdays over the last week, downtown has experienced the PL team on mass, with the guys still pulling out the performances on the mountain the following morning. Cold snap on it's way and looks like some new snow forecast for next week. Team Leaders on rotation are doing a grand job motivating their teams and getting them to the hill on time, giving weekly reports to the rest of the group, and their nominations for 'King of the Mountain'.

Ed Cornfield

Saturday 3rd April 2007

Week 4 - Everyone continues to improve under the great ski instruction over the last 4 weeks. Can we all have been really that bad at skiing before we came here? We still have  a number of faults to fix but I think at least we all seem to have an idea what we are doing wrong, which is a good start.  Calamity Ho skiing has come on immensely over the last few weeks but he still manages to have some impressive crashes but with less frequency than he used to. In fact, he didn't have a single wipe out on the two days we were taught by Kenjisan but was back to his old tricks under John's watch on Thursday (quote from John - "Dave you are going to kill yourself if you keep this up - you need to ski at the edge of your capability not way beyond it").  Stuart (the only guy older than me on the course) was out partying until 07:00 and still managed to make the 07:55 bus for a full day's skiing, which is more than can be said for some of the youngsters less than half his age. 

Richard Beattie

Monday 5th March 2007

An 100% pass rate for the level one courses! Everyone has now passed their ski or board exams and 98 % have decided to go for their level 2 course and exams, which we think is a record for the Banff course. Many folk have already utilized their level one certificate to start volunteer teaching with some of the local ski schools in order to get some real experience of working with kids and adult beginners.

Lots of further courses have been organised too, including; race coaching, disabled skier coaching and park and pipe certification. In fact , if you want to, and have the energy, there are loads of additional activities to try. Some guys have already bought tranceivers, shovels and probes and started to explore the offpiste around Sunshine - Wild West is the best! Others have managed to get involved with "Masters Racing" on a Friday night and cross country ski racing at the weekends. The locals are freindly too and may folk have struck up relationships that have allowed them to ski and eat out with people they have met in Canmore and Banff.

It seems incredible that there are only a few weeks left before level two and going home. I'm already starting to miss some of the characters on the course in advance.

Stuart Stephen

Sunday 11th March 2007

This week has been a very busy and quite out of the ordinary week for the Peakleaders. The week began with a day of theory for all of those taking part in the Avalanche Awareness Course. The second day was spent on the hill building on our knowledge from the previous day, checking snow conditions and practicing avalanche rescue with beacons, shovels and probes. Everyone seemed to take a lot from the course, and it has certainly made a few of us more confident about shooting off down Delirium Dive and the Wild West.

The latter part of the week for many of the Peakleaders was trekking through the backcountry of the Bow Valley, learning how to survive in the mountains. By all accounts. a very worthwhile experience. For those not on the backcountry course, it was lessons as usual and more valuable mileage gained in preparation for our level two exam. Not long to go now.

Sandy McKee

Wednesday 21st March 2007

Last week started with Day one of the avalanche course, a recurring hangover theme again as Sunday is 25c a beer night at Aurora's.  This was more subdued than the previous week everyone was itching to be outside, and luckily day 2 was 'on snow'. Well more like in snow as we were searching for hidden bodies (transceivers and shovel blades) off the Wawa lift. Even better were the snow trenches, dug through 2 meters of snow and long enough to accommodate eight people. This was to get a look at the causes of slides, pretty sobering as a big slide would cause the top 125cm to shift and as tomorrow was the backcountry trip...

Steve Lloyd

The End

Well, the time has come and the end is unfortunately almost here. It's been an amazing journey from start to finish with epic days skiing, ridiculous parties, and a fantastic mix of people from all ages and all backgrounds. The guys pulled it out the bag and their strong focus and positive attitude paid off in the end with almost everyone on the entire course achieving their Level 2 Instructor award and numerous successful descents of Delirium Dive and beyond! The team worked and played until they dropped and will most likely sleep for a week when returning home.

Some have already got jobs as instructors this spring in Europe, and it's looking promising many will be back to Sunshine and Norquay as instructors next season. Wherever everyone ends up, lifelong friends were made, everyone rocks on the mountain, and the transmogrification is complete!

They are 'Peak Leaders' - coming to a mountain near you soon!

Ed