The upside of the blizzard on Sunday was the amount of snow to ski on Monday... POWDER!!!!! Actually I may be overselling it here. Whilst great in theory, we haven't ever skied much powder plus we were exhausted from the weekend and it was fairly wet and heavy. Still, an opportunity to learn. Along with the new snow conditions, we had a new instructor, Downtown Johnny Brown. A man firmly of the opinion that life is not to be taken seriously and that skiing should be fun So he took great delight in introducing us to powder - I don't think I've fallen over so many times on the entire trip to date! But it obviously worked because by Wednesday we were nailing slopes we'd had difficulty with on Monday. Not to say that I'm an ... read more

What did you all do for Valentine's Day? I spent the day in the company of 6 nice young men on day 1 of our avalanche safety training course... Not entirely sure how that happened - one minute we were all milling around chatting outside the building where we'd been going through some of the theory, the next we'd been arbitrarily split into 3 groups and I ended up with the boys, rather than my normal "less aggressive" ski school group. This could prove interesting, particularly being with 2 teenagers with a penchant for chucking themselves off cliffs... First stop was the Horstman Glacier on Blackcomb to look at some recent avalanche activity. All sounds fine, but I didn't immediately realise that this meant negotiating a pitch of about 45 degrees through chopped up powder. And ... read more

Firstly, the important bit - I passed my level 1 instructor course!! The Alltracks crowd did everyone proud and managed a 100% pass rate (except for Nicole who busted her knee last Sunday and is now on crutches and Callum and Miranda who couldn't be bothered to take the course) - cause for much celebration! To give you a brief rundown of the week - it snowed really hard on Sunday night so that we had powder conditions for our first day of the course on Monday. Not ideal as we'd all been used to the hard-packed/icy conditions of the previous snow-free couple of weeks and it was first powdery then lumpy and hard work. Therefore I skied like an idiot and got very frustrated with myself. Tuesday wasn't so bad although our instructor Sarah insisted ... read more

Whilst it's undoubtedly beautiful with lots of sunshine and clear blue skies, the snow conditions are now getting a bit unpleasant and we desperately need some fresh snowfall... There are still some areas where going is fair (albeit hard-packed) but there's too much ice for my liking now and quite a few of the runs have bare patches of rock and/or grass. But salvation may be in sight - apparently flurries are forecast for tomorrow with proper snow on Tuesday. Here's hoping! So it seems like a while since I last updated you on my progress. Finished lessons with Petra last Thursday, feeling a little more confident. Took the entire weekend off to rest my weary limbs and to try to recover from my various lurgies. Then back to school with a vengeance on Monday with ... read more

What a Beautiful Day! When I woke up this morning with a sore throat and grey skies outside, I wasn't particularly enthusiastic, but it was great out there! The cloud base was pretty low but above that was a lovely sunny day with plenty of good snow. And my skiing didn't entirely suck either - maybe drug assisted is the way to go - the ibuprofen/codeine/salbutamol/strepsils mix obviously worked wonders ;-) Enjoy the pictures! According to the locals, days like these are rare... Today's excitement was provided by my classmate Marie... she managed to fall off the edge of a cat track we were traversing into deep snow and trees ("the cliff" as it is now known). She was rescued by 2 snowboarders (one of whom I cursed as he stopped right in front of me, ... read more