Page 83 - Wish Stream Year of 2019

stop. We began our week learning basic skills including the snowplough, walking sideways up a slope, and the emergency stop in snowplough. We continued improving these skills on green slopes until our instructor was confident enough for us to attempt our first blue slope.
After a quick lunch we headed up our first lift to our blue slope. We skied one behind another in slalom down the slope until we
reached the bottom of the ski
lift. We attempted the blue slope numerous times, each time prac- ticing a different skill. Despite a few falls, the entire group improved and were able to ski safely by the end of the day.
After a morning brief from Marcus,
our instructor, we were straight on
the small ski lift to the blue slope, no longer feel- ing daunted by the downhill gradient. With the legs still feeling slightly wobbly, we set off. The morning was made up of skill learning and confi- dence building, moving between turning, snow- ploughs and knee bends, with the key concept of leaning into the slope being foreign to most of us. This was building us up to be able to tackle a 6km blue slope in the afternoon.
Post lunch gave us our first fully-fledged blue slope. OCdt Smith and OCdt Gordon-Smith
proceeded to show some outstanding skills of acrobatics and what can only be described as ski dancing, skiing backwards at times, or on one ski, as they descended the hill.
Day three introduced us to parallel turns and made us attempt one footed skiing, which helped build our confidence. The rest of day three was occupied by our first red slope which took some
more than others a bit of time to tackle. All of us fully exhausted and some a bit beaten, we headed back into town.
Day four took us all over the moun- tain as we desperately crammed in as much skiing as possible before the coming storm closed in. We made it up to the highest point on the mountain and then skied the entire
way down including a fairly spicy red which took us to the foot of the glacier.
As expected over night on Thursday, the storm closed in and the glacier was completely closed on Friday morning and we found ourselves stuck in town. We used this opportunity to fin- ish all expedition admin and then tour the local area before heading into Innsbruck on Saturday morning, ready for our flight back to London on Sunday.
We skied one behind another
in slalom down
the slope until we reached the bottom of the ski lift.
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