BASI Level 2 Instructor....

I arrived in Tux a few days before the course started as wanted to get my bearings and have a shred of the glacier. On the Monday morning we met our trainer who was Rob Sanderson and the rest of the crew who were doing the course, there were 2 level 2 courses being ran as well as level 3 and all levels for skiing and telemarking, with adaptive courses running too, you name it that course was being ran, busy time out in Tux for BASI. Being out there surrounded by all these people I learnt a lot, especially about the snowsports industry and hearing about everyones travels and where they have done seasons and where they were off to next, inspiring stuff.

In the group I was in we had a rad group of 10 of us, we all got along real well and helped each other out while encourage each other too. We had a mix range of abilities with some struggling at some things and others at other things (yeah I know that doesn't make sense, haha), for me it was steeps, I had to work hard on this over the 2 weeks as well as everything else but for steeps it came down to the last day to keep them consistent and prove I could do them right so once I'd done it a good few times on the last day and Rob said to go try it switch it was a weight of relief. Neil McNair really helped me out throughout a couple of the days with getting the technique right by giving me little drills to do which helped a lot.


We had a day about of technical and teaching over the 2 weeks, he was happy with the lessons that I gave, my first being me choosing to teach a group of 9 year old boys or something how to do c-turns and damn they did a good job of getting in character, haha and to  make matters worse this was all while the level 3 guys were sitting at the side doing there stuff but listening in as well!! 2nd lesson I did was teaching backside 180's and also doing them switch, final one being a variables lesson and the next day I had Ben and Bish who were taking the level 3 saying they'd heard about it, haha!! So first week was good learnt so much and knew what I needed to work on. I'd arranged to meet up with the others on the Saturday to ride with them and work on everything, we all ended up in lil groups and I spent the day riding with Mark and whoever we came across, was good fun and helping each other out!! The next day we felt we needed a break from the 'BASI Robot', haha and headed to the park, where I rode with Paulo, Mark, James and JJ, fun day but we were caught by Rob shredding the park, oops, haha!! Here's a wee edit Mark put together....

It was an intense 2 weeks of training being out on the mountain between 8- 8:30 until around 15:30/ 16:00 then the lecture/ theory part for an hour or 2 after then working on lessing plans after all that too and reading up on stuff but your just in this lil bubble there where everyone is under the same pressure so you get it done and get through it and it helped having everyone to speak to at the end of the day and hear their thoughts on things. Would sit at dinner with those I was doing the course with and also a bunch of the level 3 guys so was interesting to hear what they were doing and you think we were stressed out they were even more so!!


The final day came and I went into it with the mentality of just having fun and enjoying it as that is when I ride my best and it seemed to work as I past which I was stoked on :D The afternoon came and we just wanted to ride the slushy bumps, haha man their fun, I think Rob thought we'd all gone mad which we probably had but was such a fun afternoon of riding all throughout this though he was style keeping an eye out that we were not falling back into any bad habits or anything!!


So I think that's enough written about this, just a big thank you to all the BASI trainers who helped me out and to all that were on the course as it was a pleasure riding with them and so much fun I hope we will get to ride again someday :)