End of a long week in Zermatt, doing a course which assessed my teaching skills.  It was my first visit to the resort and I’m very impressed.  The village is amazing: a mix of very old traditional buildings and upscale modern hotels.  It’s car-free, although not traffic-free as dozens of electric taxis dart around the place.  Several times I thought my time was up as I nearly got run over by the equivalent of a milk-float on steroids.

The main street in Zermatt                                          View from my balcony

The weather gods were in a playful mood this week.  What they gave with one hand, they took back with the other.  Plentiful snow, but bitterly cold temperatures.  When I arrived there was no snow at resort level, but in the first couple of days it snowed heavily, with more than 50cm falling around the village and more at altitude.  By mid-week the skies had cleared a little to be replaced by low temperatures: -20º at Klein Matterhorn one morning, on a day when we spent most of the time teaching snowploughs.  I can’t remember ever having been that cold before!

Our evening lectures were held in the ballroom of the Grand Hotel Zermatterhof, one of the nicest hotels in the resort.  It was a somewhat unusual venue for BASI courses, and I sometimes wondered if I was required to dress up in collar and tie!

The Ballroom at the Grand Hotel Zermatterhof

The course went well, skiing with a great group of people and being taught & assessed by an excellent Trainer.  Each day we have to plan and teach some demonstration lessons, as well as providing formal feedback on lessons delivered by other people in the group.  It was all a bit stressful because none of us had a good idea of what the standard was to pass, as well as the challenge of teaching your peer group some of whom were much better skiers than me.

Some of my group defrosting at coffee break while planning the next lessons

The teaching went OK, with the exception of an over-ambitious lesson on the Wednesday which was a bit of a disaster.  But apart from that I was reasonably happy, and was pleased (and a bit relieved) to be told I had passed in the final de-brief of the course.  Come Friday evening it was time to defrost and celebrate.    Starting off at GramPi’s for the very funny and talented Marco singing some of the worst songs in the world, then to Nelly’s until the early hours for rather too many drinks and dancing to Eddie Jordan’s band (yes, the guy from Formula 1).  A great evening all round.

Celebrating in Nelly’s

Overall a wonderful week, and I’ll be very happy to ski again in Zermatt, especially if I don’t have the pressure of being assessed while I‘m there.