Page 99 - Mind, Body and Spirit 2016/17

The Joint Service Adventurous Training (JSAT) Ski Scheme includes Alpine ski touring (glaciated and non-glaciated), Nordic and Adaptive skiing disciplines. Whilst delivering a Ski Leader 1 course in Austria on the Stubai Glacier in December 2015, I was approached by a student who mentioned that one of his friends was part of the BBC and there was some real interest in lming some military skiing for BBC Ski Sunday. Ski Sunday....... Really???? But after a year of waiting and many emails between ATG(A), JSMTC and the new Bavaria Wing OC (Maj Jen Painting) a date was agreed and the BBC Ski Sunday team arrived in Bavaria for 2 days in January 2017.
The Ski Sunday team arrived directly from Kitzbuehel, Austria where they had been lming one of the Alpine world cup races. Their team was small and consisted of the presenter, the producer and one cameraman. The objective of the visit (for both BBC Ski Sunday and ATG (A)) was to showcase ‘how’ and ‘why’ the Services use Ski Touring activities to train our personnel. The BBC team followed a Ski Leader 2 (SL2) group during their planning stages, the journey, the summit and then the ski down. I was instructing the SL2 group and SIO Daz Doyle (former RAPTC) was responsible for the leading and safety of the BBC crew. We undertook a planning session that incorporated weather and avalanche, which resulted in us using the Gamsfuß ski tour. This tour is a grade 1 tour, just across the border in Austria with 770m of ascent with duration of approximately 2-3 hours to the summit.
We spent 2 days on the ground with the crew. Day 1 focused on navigation, ski tour techniques, leadership and safety aspects and day 2 culminated in the achievement of the Gamsfuß summit. The team was keen to extract key information of which it would then air. As you would imagine there were many questions raised as to why we go ski touring in the military, information on skiing in the backcountry and in particular avalanche awareness. During the
BBC Ski Sunday outside JSMTC Bavaria Wing HQ
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JOINT SERVICE MOUNTAIN TRAINING WING – BAVARIA
SSgt (SSI) L Kemp RAPTC
In 2016 the JSMTC Alpine Concentration, formally Joint Service Alpine Meet (JSAM) was delivered in Realp, Switzerland. Realp is a very small town located in a valley at the foot of the Furka
pass (made famous by Sean Connery as James Bond in Gold nger). The village is surrounded by hundreds of mountain
peaks and ridgelines; the area is incredibly well
suited for the delivery of Alpine
Mountaineering Foundation
SSgt White In STRETCH
through to Alpine Mountaineering Instructor level courses. For those unaware of the Joint Service Adventure Training schemes, Alpine Mountaineering uses the combination of skills from the summer/winter mountaineering and climbing courses in order to safely conquer peaks in excess of 4000 meters (even at foundation
level). Early starts from mountain huts are essential for safer
ALPINE CONCENTRATION 2017
SSgt (SSI) C White RAPTC
second day of lming the cameraman used a drone to capture the footage which allowed us to travel far quicker because the cameraman didn’t have to carry, balance and operate the camera whilst trying to ski. We reached the summit in good time and managed to ski some much deserved fresh lines for several hundred meters.
On the 12 February 2017, I sat on the sofa at home eagerly awaiting the start of the show and I was very impressed with the way the BBC edited the footage to bring together the exact message as to why we ski tour. The lm clearly displayed the message of why we use AT, and in particular skiing in order to enhance and develop the operational capability. The video can be found on the JSMTC Facebook page; it’s a great lm and worth watching.
SSgt White Alp Con JSMTW Bav 2