End of week two (and photos)
We arrived on Monday evening and spent the next few days settling into our apartment and getting organised for the 11 weeks of training ahead of us. It was an easy start to week one, as we only had classes on Thursday and Friday and then we had the weekend off. Both days were spent getting to know our fellow students and instructors, followed by a day of mountain orientation. It was fantastic to get back out on the slopes and feel that rush of cold wind on your face and fresh tracks under our feet.
Our first observation is IT SNOWS NEARLY EVERY DAY AT BIG WHITE. Biggie has different weather and snow than what you find at Whistler or other resorts closer to the coast. The snow is lighter and a lot closer to the fluffy snow you find in Japan which makes it super fun to ride. It really does make a big difference particularly as we’re training every week day and there’s little worse than learning on icy snow. We’re perhaps a little naive not to have realised this before we arrived, but it’s a welcome surprise anyway.
Our apartment is located in an area called Snow Pines which is a 15-minute walk along a snowy path or short bus ride into the main village centre. The village centre is a small area with a finite choice when it comes to bars and restaurants with only 7 to choose from in the entire village. It’s great having our own apartment and even more fun riding our snowboard home each afternoon (almost) to our door and jump into our own hot tub to relax.
On our first Saturday night we went to an ice hockey match in Kelowna, an hour down the mountain from Big White. We hadn’t seen an ice hockey match live before and it was quite the experience! The Kelowna Rockets (who I took as our new team as soon as we heard their theme music was Def Leppard’s ‘Rocket’) were playing at home against the Kamloops Blazers. Sadly the match was almost over two thirds through the match with the Blazers finally winning 7–2. Tensions flared and then off came the gloves and it was fightin’ time! I counted five separate fights over a 15 minute period, including at one stage 3 separate fights all happening at once! See how ridiculous it got in the clips below! Needless to say it was a fun night out!
Our second week of training was above all else freezing cold! The weather at this time of the year is usually cold but not teeth-shatteringly cold!! By mid-week the temperature was -25 minimum, -15 maximum. But even worse with wind chill it was closer to -35 degrees celsius on the mountain. Our instructor mentioned this happens only once or twice a season, which while welcome news to Tori still didn’t change her mood knowing full well what was still to come. At those temperatures you have to cover as much skin as possible and it was a little hairy listening to advice on early warning signs for frostbite (note: if your toe is already past-numb and now tingling you should get inside pronto). Not long after hearing this Tori started using two heat pads in each boot before leaving the house each morning to keep her toes safe.
We love our new snowboarding crew. There are 16 snowboarders (and 11 skiers but we won’t talk much about them) this year which is the first time they have had a higher proportion of snowboarders on the course. Everyone is a lot of fun and aside from Vitalie, who has previously spent three full seasons snowboarding, we’re all a similar standard and experience level which really helps as we are learning at a similar pace. It’s also a diverse crew (with ages ranging 19–47), with two who work for Amazon (in different countries), a furniture maker, ex-British military adventurer, a chef, a maths genius, a horse trainer, a civil engineer, and recently-graduated university students.The one thing we all share is a love of snowboarding and it’s really fun to learn new skills together as a group and we hope we make lifelong friends by the end of the course.
This brings us to the end of week two. I had a couple of days off this week due to the dreaded flu (thankfully I wasn’t first and therefore avoided the accusations I was spreading the Coronavirus) and luckily Tori has avoided it.
We have a group dinner every Friday which so far has evolved into everyone cutting loose and drinking far too much. On Saturdays this provides a great excuse to relax and let our sore muscles recover. Plus we have an Australia Day BBQ to prepare for on Sunday which should be loads of fun!
That’s all for now, if you’d like this delivered to your inbox use the sign up form at the bottom of this post. We’re sharing more photos on Dec’s Instagram so if we’re not yet friends we should be, come find us!
See below for more photos!
To see our other posts use these links:
Post 1: Our New Adventure
Post 3: End Of Week 4 & Photos
Post 4: We Did It!
