Kev's Extreme Pow-Wow!

I made it up Blackcomb for the Level 3 training just in time to join my usual training group (including my base pod colleague George and his wife Lian) and go skiing with Guy. The day was really nice and relaxed and we skied lots of advanced parallel and short turns. In the afternoon we hit the bumps and for me something really seems to have clicked this season after a lot of hard work and some great coaching. I felt pretty relaxed and confident with my bumps skiing today and this bodes well for considering the Level 3 standard.

Today's session ended after a great run down Couloir Extreme (a steep long double black diamond run), which I've never felt more comfortable skiing. Fortunately I heard Guy shouting "Look Up" as when I was halfway down the run and looked up, there was a skier who had popped out of his skis and was sliding down the slope at mach speed towards me. I skied out of the way and he screamed past me to a resting point a couple of hundred metres further down the slope (I said it was steep!). About 2 minutes later a guy from ski patrol arrived on the scene only to find that the faller was dusting himself off and was unharmed. Apparently someone had called ski patrol from the Rendevous restaurant at the top of the run and had just assumed that someone sliding that far must be hurt!!!

The days spent Level 3 training are definitely my most enjoyable whilst I'm out here. Having something to focus on when you're doing a ski season is really important and for me, ski improvement (and of course teaching improvement) was one of the big reasons why I wanted to work out here in Whistler. Having seen an improvement in my skiing since the start of the season, I'm getting more and more addicted to the training and so I'm already looking forward to the next session on Wednesday. In the meantime I'll have to make do with morning session tomorrow!

Unfortunately I didn't get a proper chance to catch up with Jennifer this evening but with less than three weeks until she gets back here, I'd just like to highlight the fact that I'm missing her more now than ever but we're past the halfway stage in our longest time apart so I'm really looking forward to seeing her in person again.

Today I spent most of the day recovering from last night's excess drinking. We had one of our legendary pay day parties, which involved drinking after skiing and then heading up to staff housing for large mugs of vodka mixed with nowhere near enough lemonade! By the time people got back down into the village with the intention of going clubbing they were struggling to stand up and by the time I personally got home, the room was spinning around me. I went to bed but not before popping in to see Alex and Katherine who are now staying down the corridor and embarrassing myself with further drunkeness. Katherine rewarded that by pouring me a supercharged gin and tonic! Thanks! After that I checked in with Jennifer, who today reliably informed me that I was really rather drunk!

Yesterday was quite a strange day as it was Australia day (celebrating the day that Oz was discovered or something like that!). It seems to be a big excuse for everyone to drink lots and mess around. Having been asked previously for assistance, when Paddy and Beata, a couple of my instructor colleages, decided to celebrate Australia day by skiing down the mountain in boxers and a bikini respectively, I stepped into the breach and helped carry their kit and take some photos of the occasion. Watching the two of them skiing down the Emerald lift line was priceless, as was skiing through our normal working area and watching them hug some of our colleagues, who were teaching at the time. Sometimes I think it's a shame that these sorts of antics don't seem to happen in the office at Nationwide!!!

After these antics, we headed back up the gondola for a late run down the mountain. After hanging around in the sun at the Roundhouse we came down the mountain very late and enjoyed a run down the mountain with no other skiers in sight. The setting sun over Blackcomb provided a lovely backdrop for a relaxed ski back down into the village in time for the pay day party.

Weather wise it has been interesting as although there has been no snow, the conditions have been warm so this afternoon was like spring conditions on the mountain and I was able to teach in sunglasses rather than goggles. There's no sign of new snow at the moment but fingers crossed I'll be skiing pow again within a couple of weeks.

Other occurrences of note in the last couple of days have been the purchase of some funky new skiing trousers and yet another Silverfoot instructor hat... this time with an added Whistler Ski and Snowboard School logo. I'm looking forward to wearing all this stuff when I head out for Level 3 preparatory training tomorrow.

Since teaching on Monday I've had a day off on Tuesday and went to training yesterday. Training was, once again one of the best training days of the season so far and was once again taught by Mark. We were working on short turns and advanced parallel turns but the snow was pretty shockingly icy so it was a challenge. We took some video footage and I was delighted to find that I am skiing better than I've seen myself ski before. Skiing is a strange thing because it always feels different to how it looks. Thankfully with experience of teaching and the recent training it has become easier to match the two up and improve my own skiing through making minor tweaks here and there.

One of the big things that has made a difference to my skiing is my new boots, which I've had for two and a half weeks now. Unfortunately my right foot has now been pretty numb for four days or so. I think this is down to the boots but can't be sure, so I popped into the boot shop yesterday evening to get the offending boot punched out a bit. Today it felt better but this evening I can't feel my toes as well as I'd like to. Hopefully another day or two will restore some feeling to my foot! Having seen video evidence of an improvement in my skiing yesterday though, I'm willing to deal with the pain and numbness for the time being!

Katherine arrived here yesterday evening for her second stint out here and things are rather different to last time she came. I'm now teaching and am part of the community so it was amusing to visit Mayumi on the race course on Whistler today and also to go out with some of the guys this evening for beers and a burger. Katherine is also now benefiting from some more advanced instructor experience and I was pleased (and so was she) to find some areas for improvement in her skiing - which was already pretty neat and tidy.

The countdown to Jennifer's return is already well in progress with 22 days left as of today. It's less to Darren's arrival but I think my liver needs more preparation for that than for Jennifer's visit. We'll see!

Despite the demand for instructors being pretty low at the moment (and me taking advantage of that with days off for training and free skiing), I landed a large all day lesson today and so had the delights of taking my group out on a wet powder day. They coped pretty well until I took them off the Olympic run and down Lower Olympic to the village. Despite my best efforts, the students had a number of entertaining falls... notably two excellent efforts into the powder filled ditches on the sides of the runs. If it wasn't so wet I would have taken photos!!!

Anyway after lunch we skied some more and worked on skills and the class was markedly more comfortable as the afternoon wore on. Now that I'm home I'm attempting to dry out my gloves, hat and goggles. Just be thankful if you're a good skier or boarder (Jennifer that's you that is) and can stay pretty high on the mountain because, as discovered during morning session today, that's where the good snow is found!!! Fresh tracks for over an hour this morning more than made up for this evening's dampness!

Rather than work on my scheduled Sunday, I managed to blag a day off for Level 3 training. It was on Blackcomb for once which was nice... especially given that the only real skiing that I've done on Blackcomb this season has been off piste. We ran a number of times down Zig-Zag and Cruiser learning all manner of new stuff with our entertaining coach for the day, Mike. This training stuff is great!

Today I taught again for the first time in a while and it was pretty funny. A large bunch of level 1 skiers (absolute beginners) appeared for lessons in the afternoon and we dished out one instructor for each of six students. These were all taken up the mountain together. I had to do a couple of extra bits and pieces before I could join in the teaching today so when I arrived I picked up one student, who was really struggling. Despite being what I would describe as patient and innovative in my approach... this student was still at stage 1 after the afternoon's lesson. It just goes to show that some people just aren't cut out for skiing. This afternoon was made funny though by looking around and sharing jokes with my core of friends at Base Pod whilst teaching these students. It's good to have fun whilst you're working.

I did morning session before teaching and then after stand-by, I went skiing with Wade but unfortunately, given that it was a Saturday, most of the morning was spent in lift lines. However we did finish on a high with a nice run down West Cirque and then down to Highway 86 via Grand Finale.

After this afternoon's lesson a few of us really needed to ski so we pointed our students at the gondola to download safely and we uploaded for a final run down the mountain. We headed down roundhouse roll, then down to Bear Cub via some pretty steep fall line skiing under Red Chair. I'm still working on my jump turns and mini drop hucking but today both were called into action as I got myself in a tight spot above a drop. Rather than climbing back out, I jump turned and went off a 4 footer. Having landed some jumps pretty badly yesterday, doing this neatly today made my day. All of this was done with a backdrop of an amazing evening view... take a look...

A couple of weeks after New Year, it seems like a good idea to catch on the season long tally standings. Understandably, now that Jennifer is back at home in the UK, the calls home to her have risen dramatically after a static period over Christmas. This is probably just as well as the number of skiers that I'd instructed had very nearly caught the number of calls to Jennifer by the end of her stay here!

More recently there's been a very limited rise in the number of skiers taught, as the demand for lessons has been very low. This has however meant that the number of powder days and skiing days on Whistler and Blackcomb mountains has continued to rise steadily. In the last few days there has been an inevitable increase in burger and banana bread consumption. This I attribute to the increase in days of free skiing.

Today's steep clinic was responsible for 2 of the 10 wipeouts I've counted this season... the best being the poor landing at the bottom of the Bushrat cliff and the worst being an inability to remove my poles from the Crystal Chair and attempting to ride the poles back down the lift!

The jaegermeister tally has remained incredibly low, awaiting Darren's arrive here in a few weeks (he's now an expert beginner having spent today on the slopes at XScape in Milton Keynes!) and the jacuzzi count has remained static since Jennifer's return home (a jacuzzi just isn't the same without her here!).

Well that's the stats summary... I wish now that I was counting the number of cookies and calzones that I've consumed this season, or the number of beer jugs consumed, or the number of times that I've thought of doing a proper job instead of ski instructing... but it's too late now! More in a couple of weeks.

I headed for today's 'steeps' clinic with some nervousnous, as the reputation of these training sessions is basically to throw instructors off the steepest stuff to be found on the mountain. It turned out that my trepidation was well deserved as after splitting into groups, I found myself in the most hardcore of groups and heading up to Spanky's Ladder for a warm up run. We took the top entrance into Ruby Bowl, which even our intrepid coach, Drew, from Extremely Canadian (the steeps arm of our ski school) described as a billy goat entrance. This was interesting and led to the first big jump of the day, which I opted out of! As the morning went on, we headed into Fraggle Rock and Cancer Man, both of which demanded some pretty hardcore tree and steeps skiing and we were pretty grateful to get to lunch at Glacier Creek.

After lunch we headed up the Horstman T-Bar and over towards Chainsaw Ridge. To give some context, Chainsaw Ridge is one of the scariest bits of Blackcomb Mountain and is described in the Advanced/Expert ski guide to Whistler Blackcomb as extreme! My understanding was that we were heading for Bushrat, which is a run further down the ridge and out of danger but instead we stopped halfway down and Drew opted to take us to Hawaii 5-0 instead. Now bearing in mind that the whole ridge is up against some scary cliffs and exposure, I was nervous enough just edging down the ridge but when this route was suggested I just thought about the ski guide's description of this particular run...

Hawaii 5-0 "Skiing for the ultra-hardcore... don't fall". Listed in the book are the attributes of this particular run... Triple Black Diamond rated, high enjoyment, high liklehood of powder snow, cornice hazard, danger of death hazard (!), cliff danger, avalanche debris hazard, traverse lines hazard etc. etc.

Basically this was a run not for the faint hearted. After nearly taking out Drew with a dodgy jump turn, I headed into the meat and veg of the run with some more jump turns and found the run to be pretty gnarly (as expected) but good fun. The run out saw a traverse over towards the bottom of Bushrat, where we each hucked off a 15 foot cliff. Having never hucked anything in my life, I was a bit nervous but went with it and as I took off I felt fine. Unfortunately as I spotted the landing I realised I was in a very poor landing position, back on my skis, and proceeded to cartwheel a couple of times down the slope before regaining my balance and skiing out. Well at least I got over the fear of going off a cliff edge... now I just need to concentrate on my landings!

The rest of the day was spent in a similar vein, skiing out of bounds from the Crystal Hut down to the cat-track from the Glacier and finishing off by skiing the Pipeline to Pakalolo (which is apparently Hawaiian for Marujana I found out today). The whole group was exhausted by the end of the day and personally I was having a job standing up on my skis, let alone skiing properly. We finished the day's session and had several beers and I've been reflecting this evening on the fact that I've skied so much stuff today that I couldn't have considered a couple of years ago. It's amazing how far you can progress in that space of time and although I don't have a death wish, it's hugely satisfying to find that you can ski and jump bigger stuff than you ever thought possible. This hasn't given me a taste for extreme skiing as I enjoy the technical aspect of instructor-level skiing but I don't think this will be the last steeps clinic that I do this season!

As Jennifer and Steve reassured me yesterday... good things come to good people. Today their predictions proved correct as I went to my locker room and found my locker neighbour, Max, had found my iPod yesterday and had put it back in my locker this morning. How pleased was I to find the iPod?... Very pleased indeed!

This started the day on a very positive note and as May and I headed up the Whistler Gondola for Level 3 preparation training we were both looking forward to a day of ski improvement in great weather (split clouds high and low with sun in between and a dusting of fresh snow). Along with George and a few of the other instructors, we were grouped with Mark, who I've only seen previously taking Level 2 courses.

The first run set the tone for the day. After brief introductions, we charged down Peak to Creek with very few stops until we reached about halfway, after which we pretty much spiess-turned (jump turns) the rest of the run to Dusty's at Creekside. Sweating at the bottom we caught our breath and headed back up the Creekside gondola only to come back down the lower Dave Murray downhill doing further exercises. After that we went for an early lunch in preparation for the afternoon of bump skiing.

Heading into Whistler bowl is always a bit daunting because the bumps (moguls for Europeans... basically lumps of snow formed by lots of skiing on steep slopes) are the size of small cars. We attacked these with gusto and worked our way round the mountain hitting more and more bump slopes. Between each effort we did further exercise to hone balance and other skills required for expert skiing and each time I noticed a difference in my own skiing. By the end of the day, I skied my smoothest ever run on one of the mountain's most difficult bumps runs.

Hats off to Mark for improving everyones' skiing who took part in the training and for making the day a really enjoyable one. It wasn't for the faint hearted though... I'm going to pass out on the sofa now!

After a day on stand-by for instructing yesterday I was excited about free skiing today with some of the guys from Base Pod. We headed up the mountain and skied Insanity and Cockalorum first thing and were on the Red chair when I went to plug in my lovely iPod into my helmet headphones... But it wasn't there, and an empty open pocket was found instead... Therefore my day was spent retracing my steps and checking in at Lost and Found. Unfortunately there's no sign of the little gadget box so it looks like I'll be having to get another one. Aaaargh!

I went to report the loss at the police station but it was already closed so instead I went to the ski shop and walked home with some awesome new goggles. Retail therapy and a call with Jennifer cheered me up this evening so as long as I get my ski legs back (I was skiing awfully badly today!) tomorrow then I'll be out to enjoy Level 3 prep training. Tomorrow is another day!

Rather than picking up a class at the base of the mountain, today I was sent up toe the Alpine. This means picking up level 4+ groups up at the Roundhouse Lodge on Whistler mountain. Heading up there was really interesting if only to see how the alpine pod worked. They have the luxury of taking their classes for a test ski first thing in the morning, which makes the splitting process much more straightforward.

Today also saw a fair amount of free skiing, which was spent on West Cirque (not recommended unless it's powder), Peak to Creek (not recommended unless it's groomed) and Ratfink (not recommended unless you're feeling well up for bump skiing). The free skiing was made fun by skiing with Daniel, Rory and Kurt. Lots of banter and good skiing was had by all.

This evening I had a good chat with Jennifer, who of course I am already really missing again, and then popped out for drinks with Simon and Rob at the GLC. With these two I also watched the Fire and Ice show, where some of our esteemed colleagues from ski school perform spectacular stunts on skis and snowboards. This evening was super cool because there were a bunch of kids aged about 12 doing stunts and they put many of us established (but zero air time) adults to shame!

My tip for the day is to not frequent the IGA supermarket past 8.30pm on a Sunday because there are no cashiers on the tills and those that are there, do not tell you that they are closed until you've unloaded your shopping basket. Tonight was the first time I've ever ditched my basket in disgust and just walked out! Take that IGA... this would never happen at Tesco!

First things first, my eye has been distressing me a bit today but I don't think that there are any permanent problems in there. Whenever my eye gets bashed, I tend to get distracted by the floating bits that have been in there since the surgery so add that to a white snowy canvas and you can see why I've been bothered by it! Hopefully in a couple of days it'll settle down again.

I was scheduled to teach this morning but as usual I felt like going for a ski. Therefore, after morning session (another morning of one legged skiing led by Lincoln!) although I was on the list to teach level 1s all day, I opted instead to teach just for the afternoon.

Fortunately whilst the demand for instructors is low and the number of instructors is high, there is never a problem in being a bit flexible about when you want to teach and when you want to ski. I'm only scheduled currently for three days a week so I'm pushing this flexibility to the limit but it's not often you get the opportunity to ski for a season so I don't even feel a pang of guilt for not teaching.

So in the morning I went skiing with a few of the guys. It turned out that I wasn't the only person to get injured in yesterday's pay day party. Those that continued to drink after I left ended up getting pretty drunk. One of the guys I skied with today was probably still a bit tipsy this morning (he dropped a ski pole from the chairlift!) and another was nursing a painful looking swollen gash on his forhead... he didn't even know where the gash came from but we suspected a cupboard injury. The morning's comedy entertainment came when the latter instructor fell for the first time this season and in making an evasive manoeuver, Richie managed to come out of one of skis and leave it embedded at the top of an embankment!

We skied all the way down the Dave Murray downhill to Dusty's at Creekside and it was awesome. This run will be the downhill course when the Olympics come to Vancouver in 2010 and after going at speed on the course I have a new respect for downhill racers! I wonder if the downhillers will partake in Dusty's famous pulled pork sandwich at the bottom!!!

I taught for the afternoon and enjoyed it because although we had problems with the magic carpet, this meant taking to the chairlift earlier than expected. Normally this is a recipe for disaster as it terrifies beginner skiers but my class took it in their stride and by the end of the lesson I was seeing genuine improvement in all of their skiing.

And finally... just to prove to Darren and various other doubters that my diet doesn't always consist of burgers and fries, this was my dinner tonight...

Today saw a return to the slopes of Blackcomb mountain for futher breaking in of my lovely and shiny new ski boots. They caused a stir in the locker room yesterday and were praised by a number of instructors both yesterday and today therefore they must be cool! Getting used to new boots after using heavily adjusted Salomons for years has been an interesting experience in that my legs have been hurting but I think that my legs are less badly aligned than previously thought. All I have to do now is to change my skiing to prove it!

We had one of our traditional pay day parties for the ski school this evening. It took place next door to the Crab Shack and was a good laugh, even when the nuts and their shells started being thrown. Unfortunately I took a direct hit to my bad eye so I upped and left to ensure that no further damage was sustained. My eye is bloodshot this evening but I think I'll live! The good news this evening was that a couple of fellow base pod instructors passed their CSIA level 2 so they were rightly chuffed. Well done to the two Dans!

Jennifer seemed to enjoy her birthday judging by the few chats that I had with her today. I had a mini birthday of my own as the package that Jennifer ordered for me from Santa Cruz arrived over the road. I picked it up this evening and I'm now the proud owner of another killer Santa Cruz jersey and also an awesome new hoody. I'm a bit nervous that I'm going to have to utilise UPS to ship home all the new stuff that I have collected out here! Anyway at least the UPS saga is now over. Thanks Jennifer!

Back to work for the weekend tomorrow... and that means back to Morning Session. Sweet!

Today saw the biggest spend for me of the season so far. Not only did I replace my scratched Oakley lenses, get some extra thermals (it's still extraordinarily cold here) and (finally) a CSIA Silverfoot beanie, but also I managed to spend a number of hundred pounds...

It was -23 degrees celsius where this photo was taken and I was only skiing for about an hour and a half. It was still long enough for my nose and ears to go completely numb. I'll have to watch out for the cold if I'm teaching this weekend. Tomorrow I'm going to continue to break in my new purchases...

Special mention today goes to Jennifer, who enjoys her 27th birthday today. Happy birthday Jennifer... I'm missing you lots and hope you have a great birthday, even without your ski instructor boyfriend! ;-)

Now you might think that it's not unusual for a ski resort to be cold but yesterday (I'm writing this on Thursday) Whistler was very cold. There was a chilly breeze but that was adding to temperatures that were already at -15 degrees celsius. It didn't help when I went out for my weekly level 3 preparation training and ended up standing around for large portions of the morning. It took me all lunchtime to get feeling back in my toes... just in time to venture back out for the afternoon.

In the afternoon I made some nice progress in the powder up on Harmony but found initially that my nose was going white with the cold. This is not a good sign... in fact it is what happens just before you get frost nip. Fortunately, given a bit of self administered TLC, my nose returned to a healthy and warm red colour and as a result, I didn't lose large portions of my face to the mountain. Phew!

I'm sat in the apartment this morning and the mountain temperatures are at a high of -20 degrees celsius. It doesn't help either that the pilot light on my gas fire has gone out so I'm well wrapped up in the apartment and am relying on the electrical heating until the man comes to relight my fire (Take That reference for Jen's benefit).

Having scratched my beloved Oakley goggles quite badly yesterday afternoon in a freak locker room incident, I'm going out shopping today for a replacement lens. I'm also contemplating buying some new ski boots in a bid to resolve my freaky leg bend issue (plus the fact that my feet move about not inconsiderable amounts in my current boots). What I'm definitely buying today though is some thermal inners. If I manage to buy all that stuff this morning then I might consider heading out into the arctic tundra that awaits intrepid riders of the Whistler Gondola this afternoon.

Not much happened today other than the fact that I felt pretty unwell (it's 8pm and I'm going to bed now after snoozing on the sofa for large periods of the afternoon) and that I think that I may have resolved the UPS saga. Unfortunately I seem to be the latest in a line of base pod instructors that has been knocked out by this nasty throaty cold fever thing but I'm aiming to fight it off using Tropicana orange juice and Pringles... both in large quantities.

For the uninitiated, the UPS saga was the problem whereby Jennifer had ordered me some lovely Santa Cruz goodies but they were to be delivered to me in Canada by UPS. Unfortunately UPS couldn't deliver to my actual address (which is a post office box just round the corner) so until today it had seemed like we'd have to cancel. We decided a few days ago that the alternative option of paying the UPS store to accept delivery on my behalf seemed a bit screwy so we cancelled the order. However, as the tracking status showed that my stuff still hadn't been returned and having had second thoughts about how nice the stuff would be if I got it, I took the plunge and opted to pay the fiver necessary to have the stuff delivered by UPS to the UPS store.

So to conclude... UPS are a bit of a waste of space, but Santa Cruz kit is so nice that we'll let them off... just this once.

I spent this morning's training session skiing fall-line bumps with Wade and was pretty pleased that at the end of the session he told me that I was skiing well this morning. After this I managed to change my schedule such that I only have to turn up for work on 3 days out of 7. I've always wanted the weekends to be longer than the working weeks and now it seems that I've got my way! This is great news as until the ski school gets busy again (during Presidents week and at Easter) I've got a number of days each week where I'm guaranteed to be able to go free skiing or go to the free training sessions provided by the ski school.

After morning session I caught up with a few of my base pod colleagues and we skied off Harmony ridge for most of the day. Before meeting them I dropped into a couple of horseshoe entrances that I never would have considered skiing before this year, then, in a bigger group we skied Harveys and Robertsons a number of times. These runs really are hidden gems and resulted in 'face shots' for the majority of the afternoon. I understand that there is a campaign being run by a skiing magazine to reclaim the phrase 'face shot' from the porn industry... and rightly so. Not that I understand what they're going on about but In the interests of good taste though we've taken to describing the awesome sensation of skiing in powder so deep that it kicks up off your skis and into your face as 'powder shots' rather than 'face shots'.

This evening I went out for my first experience of sushi along with a number of guys from base pod. This was good fun and was assisted by May, our resident instructor from Tokyo, who ordered all of the best food on all of our behalfs. However, I don't think that raw fish really agrees with my fragile tummy so I'll be steering clear of the fish eggs and sea urchins for the time being!

I feel compelled to publish the letter that I sent today in response to the recent slight (see here) targetted at myself on behalf of Salomon sports as a result of my new kit sponsorship by Whistler Blackcomb (i.e. a nice blue and yellow ski instructor outfit)...

Dear Mr Salomon,

I'm sure that you will find that my support of the Salomon brand has been both obvious and a stabilising influence on the company in the last few years. I've enjoyed sporting Salomon clothing and have maximised the performance of Salomon hard and soft wares.

However, where previously brands were complementary to my support of the Salomon brand, I've recently found that my backing of best of breed sportsware has taken me on a journey that does not always point me at the Salomon at Whistler store. Where Oakley and Giro both provided best of breed accessories to complement my Salomon skiwear ensemble, now other companies such as North Face, Scott and Head are starting to encroach on the territory that ordinarily would have been dominated on my body by Salomonwear.

Additionally, my recent employment by Whistler Blackcomb ski school has resulted in me sporting a number of DNA produced clothing items, all of which I've found to provide me with benefits over and above that provided by Salomon clothing. Namely, wearing the DNA ski school outfit has resulted in a serious increase in respect from punters and an ability to jump lift lines at regular intervals. Add to this a significant discount in daily burger purchases at the Roundhouse lodge and I'm sure you'll understand that although my loyalty to the Salomon brand is not in question, Salomon will have to up their game in order to retain my personal sponsorship arrangement.

Now that I am indeed a ski professional, I believe that it is only fitting that Salomon either nullify my existing contract or grant me a new one that provides kit at a price befitting my progessional status. This would include some of those sexy Streetracer Lab skis and one of the funky soft shell jackets.

Please make the necessary arrangements and may I remind you Mr Salomon that... I am a registered ski instructor!

Kevin

p.s. Please do bear in mind though that if I deck it in incognito Salomon kit, it is much less embarrassing than face-planting in ski instructor uniform. Thanks for that!

Today saw my return to morning session training for instructors after Jennifer's return home yesterday. Although Jennifer going home is a nightmare, this at least proved to be a pleasant distraction as we headed out this morning into 33cm of fresh snow that had fallen only in the 3 hours before morning session. As a result even the the groomers were covered in awesome soft snow.

A run down Emerald provided the warm up to what was to be the run of the season so far as we hiked over to Turkey Chutes above Harmony and skied happily into a field of fresh untouched powder the likes of which I've never seen before. Some awesome deep powder skiing saw none of the instructors deck it and indeed a small number jumped off the cliff on the way down. Pretty impressive!

The line up for work was pretty large given the low customer numbers. This meant that I had the luxury of once again opting for the day off work... instead choosing a day of skiing with my base pod mates. The morning was spent skiing on Whistler with Richie, Claire and Sean and in the afternoon we hooked up with Dan, Daniel and Simon for a sweet session of skiing through steeps and trees (some of which were so tight that they encouraged a number of tree hugging moments).

This evening saw the party for Ski Esprit... one of the ski instructor programmes out here. Just another excuse for excess beer for the rest of us and we happily took part in a fun evening at the GLC and enjoyed the same ZZ-top look-a-like band that had treated Merlins to a night of entertainment a week ago when we'd been so drunk that we hadn't noticed how hot the nachos had been!

Just so that you don't think that I've forgotten, I've still been tracking the critical tallies over the last couple of weeks and am proud to bring you up to date with what has been going on here!

If you observe the graph carefully, you will see that the calls to Jennifer have been stunted by her presence here in Whistler. She's quite nervous that whilst I've been busy instructing students to ski, her calls tally will no longer be the highest total on the graph so I've taken the unprecendented step of having a number of days off from work during this critical period to ensure that this disaster does not occur!

The biggest change since week 2 is that the number of students taught has risen quite dramatically. Yes, that is because I have actually been instructing people out here. Over Christmas there were a reasonable number of lessons and a few of the group lessons had a large number of people in them (I taught 9 people in one lesson a couple of days ago). Generally the lessons I've taught have involved no more than 3 people as I've been teaching supergroups quite a bit. Also, teaching private lessons often means teaching a smaller number of people (plus the tips are often better... "Get a better haircut, Try fake tan..." you know the normal stuff!).

Especially for Darren, I'd draw attention to the Jaegermeister shots tally which has rocketed up from 0 to 1. I was pretty proud of this when it occurred yesterday although I had to keep a low profile as I was on the mountain and in uniform (well the fleece and trousers anyway) when this took place! Jennifer can also confirm that I didn't even hint at a flinch after downing the shot, and indeed toasted it as "delightful". We have video evidence!

On the food consumption axis, you can see that banana bread consumption has been rather slow in the last few weeks. This is primarily because I've been eating so much breakfast, lunch and dinner that a lardy chocolate smeared banana cake has largely been unnecessary on a daily basis. However, on the flip side, the burger consumption has continued to rise steadily and I'm very proud to say that I enjoyed a tasty burger on Christmas day itself! I should also make it clear that Jennifer and I (well mainly her actually) cooked an awesome Christmas dinner that evening which I had no problems eating, even after the lunchtime burger extravaganza. That's how I roll!

Well our two weeks of Christmas and New Year fun had to end sometime and it happened at lunch today. Unfortunately Jennifer had to head back to the UK today to get back to work so although I got the day off today, it involved little more than a dash up the mountain to meet her, and ski all the way down to grab her suitcase and get her on the bus to Vancouver airport. We've had a really special two weeks... enjoying our first Christmas and New Year together and skiing together for at least 7 days out of her 12 out here. Not bad considering I was originally scheduled to work for 10 of the 12 days!

Jennifer staying here has been a lot of fun as it has been like a holiday within what is essentially a long holiday (ski instructing really is one of the nicest jobs going so I wouldn't really class it as work). We've both had a great time and I was very sorry to see her leave earlier. However, the good news is that she'll be back here for a week in six weeks time so that gives us both something to look forward to.

Yesterday I also spent the whole day skiing with Jennifer and given that it was busy on Whistler, we did a half day up there and then I introduced her to Blackcomb for the first time. We went all the way up to the top of Glacier chair where it was unbelievably windy and blowing ice that felt like a desert sandstorm. The visibility was virtually nil so I coaxed Jennifer down the mountain and we found refuge in the Crystal hut. Fortunately this particular refuge is famous for its fully loaded waffles so we got one each and topped it off with the first Jaegermeister shots of the season. I understand that Darren has been goading Jennifer to do this whilst I've been out at work but I just wanted to say that this was not a result of goading, this was all down to me!

A few days ago, we spent the whole day skiing in deep powder in the Harmony bowl, which was a nice introduction for Jen to the joys of deep snow skiing. However, after a couple of falls we were both left in hysterics as Jen was unable to dig herself out of the snow and fought to the point of exhaustion with ever increasing amounts of snow piling up on her snowboard! I came to the rescue a couple of times but we had a great time, plus we caused much amusement for the people on the Harmony chairlift, who did a couple of laps whilst we were stuck there!

At the end of that tiring day in the powder, we were skiing down from Harmony chair and Jen slipped and banged her head on the ice and her scream frightened everyone within a half mile radius. I instantly dashed back up the slope to make sure that she was alright and fortunately she's only jarred her neck and bruised her head. After gently skiing down to the Roundhouse lodge, Jen jumped on the gondola to the village and we immediately shopped for a snowboarding helmet for her. Being the ski-gear expert, I charged into McCoos in the village and demanded protective headwear with the following criteria... "It's got to look cool and it has to be pink"!!! Jen now looks resplendent with her new headgear and with her pink goggles it has the great effect of making her look like Penelope Pitstop!

For the first time since Penelope Pitstop arrived here, I'll be at morning session tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to some pre-lesson freshies. Thanks for your visit Penelope, I'm already counting down to your return!

Somehow got another day off today with it being so quiet not so many instructors were needed. I've actually had a chat with one of my colleagues about swapping my full time position for his part time position as it would prevent him from having to get a second job and it would stop me from turning up every day and skulking around in the hope of getting to go skiing! We'll see whether anything happens about that next week.

It snowed today... a lot. Jennifer and I went out on the slopes and had so much fun in the pow! There was sooo much snow and we just kept finding more, even on the greens and blues down to Emerald and Red. Anyway, Jennifer got so exhausted that she stopped functioning properly. In the meantime I nipped off into the trees for the best bit of tree powder skiing that I can remember and then found Jen on the way down the mountain. After dislodging her from the knee deep powder, we headed for the village, where we sought refreshment in the form of beer at the pub, and sustenance in the form of beans and pork (not sausages, just a couple of slivers of rubbish pork jelly) back at home. Plus I got wet feet.

Anyway, we had a great day and are chilling out ready to do it all again tomorrow morning. The snow looks so good tonight that I'm going to head out for morning session even though Jennifer's here. Believe me, the snow has to be really good for me to consider doing that!

Yesterday and the day before I was teaching private lessons up the mountain with a family of two parents and two kids. That was a lot of fun as it was a nice family and the kids were good fun to teach.

Today I managed not to teach at all and so skied with the other instructors in the morning and with Jennifer in the afternoon.

We decided to keep New Year a low key affair and so stayed in at the apartment and enjoyed a nice meal and bottle of wine together. We even managed to see the odd firework from the safety of the apartment.

Anyway, happy new year to everyone and I'm looking forward to catching up with everyone in 2007!