Day 1 is done and dusted! Always a big landmark, as it seals an end to months of planning, preperation, and generally hard work from every parent, teacher, and event organiser!
Yes, the event has only just got started, and the majority haven’t been on snow yet, but the magic and uniqueness of this event is all about the festival atmosphere that we try and create by getting such a large handful of schools out together, to enjoy the mountains, have some early season skiing, and and look forward to a bit of relaxed competitive racing. And when you have 180 people sitting down for supper together on the first evening there’s a great feeling amongst all the teachers and staff, and you just have to take a step back and try and enjoy the moment!
This year the event has grown by about 50 competitors. We have about 180 pupils from 11 schools. Over the course of 3 days we have handled 8 different flights from all over the UK. We are split over 3 hotels, with everyone having breakfast in their own hotel, packed lunches on the mountains, and a communal evening meal in the central hotel run over two different shifts. We did have a few curve balls thrown in our direction with a few lost passports, and some pretty tight airport timings but you soon forget about these when you’re breathing in the mountain air (without having left anyone behind!)
Despite its growth in size the event is all about being personal, friendly and good fun. There’s a lot of familiar faces in amongst the new ones, and it’s always great seeing people come back each year.
We’ve got an early start tomorrow with everyone meeting up with their instructors at 8 45 to head up for 5 hours of ski school, and break the ski legs back in. The snow’s certainly a bit thinner than we would ideally like with an uncharacteristically slow start to the snowfall this season, but the beauty of Les Deux Alpes (and the reason why we hold the event here) is the high glacier, meaning that we are guaranteed good snow and decent racing conditions even if the rest of the alps is suffering.
We’ve closing off tomorrow with a mix of ten pin bowling, and a presentation from a mountain videographer who recently returned from a Powder trip in Japan with the Nixon team, which should make for great viewing. We then have one more day of ski school before we start the actual competing.
