Ski Instructors Report 29th January 2012

I had no work today (Sunday), so I enjoyed a great morning skiing the new powder snow. It started to snow on Saturday afternoon and had been snowing on and off ever since. Apart from that, all my excitement this week was away from the slopes. I had a splendid dinner on Wednesday at the Palarine for the traditional Burns’ Night Supper; we had excellent Roast Beef and some very tasty Haggis. We had two Scots in the first set of Strip the Willow and six other nationalities. Their dancing was less than perfect but danced with great courage and vigour. We had our annual Burns party at Bogart’s Bar on Saturday. There was a lot of country dancing with a very enthusiastic crowd. We had ten couples dancing the final strip the willow of the evening. When we finished, a rather good rock band started to play. Spanish people arriving to listen to the band must have wondered why I was wearing my kilt. On Friday I had an email from my daughter telling me that she had won the award for Best Actress for her part as Anna in the King and I, production by the Fareham Musical Society. This was presented at The Curtain Call Awards 2011 ceremony hosted by a popular South Coast news paper. Back to the skiing; we had excellent weather all week and great skiing on good quality snow. Most of which had been made at night time by our snow cannons. The quality of the snow was excellent, due to the fact that we were having cold nights. This brings me to the question, what is good snow? The best conditions for skiing is when the snow is cold and dry; the sort of snow that you cannot compress into a snow ball. We rarely experience this type of snow in England. However we often find it at altitude when it is very cold. British holidaymakers seem more interested in the depth of the snow rather than the quality. We ski only on the top three or four inches of snow. (That is about 7 to 10 cms for our younger readers). It does not matter whether you have one metre or twenty metres of snow below that. If the top layer has melted during the day and frozen at night, you will have ice to ski on, irrespective of the depth underneath. Some of you may have experienced this is some of the cheaper East European countries. This is usually due to the fact that they do not have the hard currency to buy the “Piste Bashing” machines that we have. These machines break through the top layer exposing the real snow below. Arinsal’s heavy investment in snow making equipment had really been worthwhile this season. Sadly we are very quiet this season, I think due to many British people seeing that we do not have a great depth of snow so far this season. On the positive side it means that the slopes are not crowded. You can see from my reports that we have been enjoying good skiing with fairly quiet slopes.