![]() ![]() During the winter we don’t get many days off, sometimes no days off in the really busy times and we can easily work 30 days in a row. I then spend the rest of the winter, or spring time, in Europe teaching skiing and snowboarding. It’s not a traditional British Christmas but we have lots of fun and celebrate our friendships. We order lots of different dishes and share them between us all, usually drink a bit too much sake and shochu (Japanese spirits). Then usually we go for dinner at a local Japanese izakaya, which is like tapas but Japanese food. A typical Christmas Day for ski instructors is a full day of work, which can be up to 10 hours on the mountain. Season life is the opposite of real world life because the school holidays are when we are most busy. I then work in Hakuba from then until the end of Feb, our busiest times being Christmas holidays and Chinese New Year. I am based in Hakuba, which is in the southern Japanese alps, but the start of my winter is usually in the north island of Hokkaido where I train gap year students for their first level of ski instructor exams until mid December. In the northern hemisphere winter (November to April) I split my time between Japan and Europe. I usually head down to town to go for a swim in the pool or lake, eat dinner around 6pm and am in bed by 8pm ready to do it all again. We then head back out on snow and train until about 1pm, send the kids home to school and we either teach an afternoon ski lesson, go skiing for ourselves, workout or go home. ![]() We train until about 09.30am and then break for ‘lunch’ seeing as our days are very distorted. We grab all the equipment we need to set courses and get on the snow by 06.30am, at which point it is still very dark and we are skiing around with head torches on. I then make an essential coffee and grab my trusty overnight oats out of the fridge before driving up to the ski tube (a train that takes us up the mountain through a tunnel) while dodging the kangaroos that are feasting on the salt that gets spread on the roads. A normal day starts at about 04.30am when my alarm rudely wakes me out of my comatose sleeping state. We spend a lot of early mornings on the hill before most people are even thinking about getting out of bed. I tend to spend the southern hemisphere winter (June to October) in Australia, working with 12/13 year old athletes and coaching them in slalom, GS and ski cross, which are three alpine racing disciplines. My name is Isla and I’m addicted to the outdoors.Īs a professional ski instructor, I usually spend my life travelling from winter to winter. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |