It’s hard to believe that summer has already come and gone and we are on the cusp of another ski season. Let’s hope the wet summer translates into a snowy Winter – and one that begins in November and stays until at least Easter! 

Sasha & I have had an active summer with plenty of golf, cycling, and ultimate Frisbee three nights a week. We are stronger, fitter, and ready to challenge ourselves this winter on the slopes.  

Our plan is to start the season early and get at least 25 days on snow before the holidays. We start in mid-October shortly after thanksgiving when we’ll be travelling to Zermatt, Switzerland for the second time for a two week training camp on the glacier. Once again we’ll be with Sandy Gardner and his myswisstrip program. 

I’ll be taking my Level 2 coach during the first week. Sasha will join me for the second week as we both focus on training for our Level 4 CSIA. 

We’re hoping that by having a more active summer we’ll find the sweet spot on our skis sooner so that we can get the most out of the short winter in Ontario. 

I’m back on Head skis this year. I’ll have three pairs in rotation – my CHIP XRC’s from last season which are great all mountain skis, a world cup race stock Head slalom ski (but with softer bindings to make them more versatile) and a longer set of Super Shape Speed for the days that I’m skiing on bigger vertical. 

Sasha will likely be back on Atomic this year (ST 12) – although she is considering a switch back to her Lange boots. 

I’ve made some minor updates to our blog that we hope you enjoy. Specifically, we’ve added a pluggin that will make grinandbarrett.ca also a  photoblog – so you’ll be seeing weekly images from our adventures posted to our site starting this week.  

We also encourage you to follow us on Twitter. Links to both our accounts can be found on the top left navigation bar. 

The countdown to snow begins… now!

(photo: Esta Evans, Phil Barrett and Sasha Gollish  at Anik & Jeff’s wedding this summer!)

Here I am in Mont Ste Anne for the third time this season. 

After much contemplation over the past two weeks (and a lot of work by some of the people at the CSIA office) I have decided to register and take the level 4 exams which comprise of 9 ski and 2 teaching exams.

I flew out of Toronto early this morning to arrive in Quebec City - unfortunately my skis did not.  I was relieved to find them on the next flight, along with a friend who was also taking the exams. Ben & I hoped into a taxi and $115 later and we were on the hill with sunshine.

After meeting up with friends from Alpine (Anik and Phil McAllen), I skied for a couple of hours.  I free skied and made myself comfortable and at home on the hill.

Tomorrow exams start at 8:30am and continue for the next four days.  I’m going in with an open mind with little expectations while looking to have fun and learn something from the experience.

I’ll keep you updated over the next four days….

As our epic season comes to a close, I’ve found myself reflecting on what has been an interesting season for me.

For the first time in many years, I switched to “the dark side” as Sasha calls it and became a coach for a K1 team out of the Alpine ski club in Collingwood, Ontario. 

Having been on the instructing side for the better part of the last 15 seasons, I was looking forward to coaching kids who were inherently more focused on ski improvement and going fast.

I was also looking forward to refining and in some cases acquiring some new skills – like setting a GS and Slalom course for different training outcomes.

Overall the season was a success – but a few things surprised me about the coaching culture that I wasn’t aware of before…

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In a good year we can expect about 60cm of base at Blue Mountain in Collingwood, Ontario which usually means they can push around enough snow to have a few runs open until Easter or early April (which ever comes first).

After another 30-50cm of fresh snow pummeled southern Ontario this past weekend, we are now up to a remarkable average base of 150cm! This is actually more than double what Tremblant is reporting in Quebec!

Over the last two weekends I’ve been teaching & course conducting a Level 1 CSIA Ski instructor course at Mount St. Louis Moonstone.  This past Sunday was exam day where students were assessed one last time on both their teaching and skiing abilities to see if they had achieved the Level 1 standard.  After a few warm up runs I decided to take the class over to the Moonstone side where we found untracked runs all around us.

Needless to say we extended our warm up a few more runs.

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The past week has been a great experience.

We were lucky to have not only a fun group, but a talented one too.

For the first time I really understand our new learning methodology (AICRCv) and how it applies to different skiers who are at different stages of incorporating changes into their own skiing. I’m looking forward to applying what I’ve learned to our sessions at Alpine for the balance of this season and going forward.

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Our day, and course, finished on the ‘S;’ a gnarly, steep bump run covered in fluffy snow down skiers right on the south face of the mountain.  As a group we charged down the run, all feeling super confident and charged at the end.

Again today we were guided by Emerson Brooks.  His relaxed, efficient style was even more evident today.  He kicked off our day with a top to bottom cruiser; today there was no messing around!  It was going to be a maximum vertical day.

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Today was a typical Quebec ski day; -20C, a haze of clouds, and a thick frost on your windshield.

We were on snow at Le Massif by 9:00am with our new course conductor, Emerson Brooks.  Originally from Montreal, Emerson moved to Lake Louise 18 years ago.  He is your typical west coast skier, extremely relaxed and fluid, but his performance in this relaxed mode is matched by few. 

For the past four days he has been skiing in short bursts, usually about 100ft of vertical at a time.  What he didn’t realize was how energized our group was.

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None of us were looking forward to day three.

It wasn’t the fact that we were going to spend the majority of our day skiing moguls (we liked that part), it was the fact the forecast was calling for pouring rain and 8 degrees.

The temperature did get a bit warmer – but it stayed below zero which resulted in 15 lovely cm of snow instead of 15 cm of pouring rain. What was looking like a miserable day turned out to be another epic day on snow.

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 Day two at Mont Sainte Anne was much like the first – sunny with fantastic snow.

The focus of our day was short radius on the steeps while working on our own teaching methods. Looking to incorporate the new IACRCv development model which is very student / athlete focused, we worked on refining each other’s techniques through tactics and two-way feedback.

One of the themes of the day was keeping things simple. As Instructors we have a lot of technical knowledge and often talk too much and keep things too complex. It’s like telling somebody with the sniffles that that have an upper respiratory infection instead of just saying they have a cold.  Next time you are going up the chairlift, make note of who are the slowest skiers on the hill… it’s usually the instructors.

By keeping the feedback simple and specific you’ll spend more time skiing and less time talking. The last time I checked, you get better at skiing by skiing

We spent the last few runs in the moguls again today as a warm-up to day three where we’ll be spending our entire day in them.

We can hardly wait!

Sasha & I are in Mont Sainte Anne this week taking our level 4 Instructors course. Located about 8 hours north-east of Toronto or about 3 hours north of Montreal, Ste Anne is a great proving ground for instructors looking to achieve skiing’s equivalent of a kung fu black belt – the level 4.

We spent our first day working on ski improvement and skiing mostly on the front side (or the steep side) of the mountain. With over 2 feet of fresh snow on the ground from the last 24hrs, the conditions were fantastic.

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