Freedom Snowsports - Back to Will
Back to Will
Freedom Snowsports ski school was
set up by ski instructor and current director Will Roberts enabling him to
realise a long-held ambition to deliver his own vision for ski coaching. An
accredited ski school covering Chamonix,
Megeve, St Gervais and Les Contamines Freedom Snowsports offers private
lessons, group lessons, off-piste skiing lessons alpine touring and guiding.
The instructors, hand picked and led by Will, are a group of top snowsports
professionals, equally delighted to help you with your first steps in skiing as
they are training future ski instructors
like myself. Teaching is tailored to each individual, with focused learning
based around you and what is actually happening.
Will qualified as an instructor in 2005
and quickly progressed to the highest BASI (British Association of Snowsport
Instructors) level within just 3 years. His passion for, and dedication to his
sport saw him start coaching and grading
ski instructors in 2014 when he became a BASI trainer.
Private lessons with Freedom Snowsports
offer the most flexibility. When you book you customise your lesson entirely
around you, choosing the duration, instructor and meeting point. I chose Will
because he was my BASI trainer and examiner. He would therefore know exactly
what was required in terms of my skiing to pass my exam in March. Since I was
staying in Saint Gervais I chose to meet him at the mid station of the Bettex
ski gondola which comes up from Saint Gervais.
This was not my first attempt at trying to get
training with Will. Lack of snow had resulted in me not being able to go out to for
training in December as planned and I had rescheduled my visit for January. I
would be back with New Generation and going onto Will from there made perfect
sense. However, this rescheduled training nearly didn't happen either. In the
run up to my visit I was to be very ill.
I'd not felt well New Year's Eve, had gone skiing anyway and then
out to New Year's Eve celebrations. When I went to work on New Year's Day I
felt really ill. By January 3rd I had developed a really bad chest infection. I
was too ill to go to work or have my chemotherapy for an auto-immune disease
that I have and most definitely couldn't ski. I desperately needed to train as
my technical resit was on March 2nd; I had a real problem.
With a three hour afternoon lesson with Will already booked, a
technical resit also booked and a chest infection which would be made worse if
I went I had no choice but to keep quiet (literally as I had no voice!) and go
anyway. Since skiing with Will was going to make me more ill I decided it might
as well make me super extra ill and I booked a 2 hour morning slot with him
too. Whilst he went to the lesson in between mine I would practice. That should
do it. 7 hours in cold, freezing, sub-zero mountain air ... super extra ill
guaranteed ... just as I was starting to get better. Hopefully Will would never
know how ill I'd been and would only ever find out by reading this blog.
Lesson Day
Heavy overnight snow made conditions in Saint
Gervais village interesting to say the least. It was very amusing standing at
the bus stop waiting for the free ski bus watching vehicles trying to negotiate
the roundabout. Some decided flooring the accelerator was the best option; this
just made the wheels spin. Others decided slowly, slowly was the better
approach only to come to a stop on the roundabout and not be able to get moving
again. A lengthy traffic jam from the village round to the ski gondola station
quickly built up. The traffic crawled over the bridge to the ski
gondola station. I then had to buy a ski lift pass and was only just going to
be in time for my lesson starting at 09:00.
I arrived at the mid station of the Bettex ski gondola
three minutes late expecting to find Will already there. He wasn’t. Nor had he
been on my bus (the first bus of the day and which run every 10 – 20 minutes).
This meant he had driven to the gondola station and would have been in the same
queue as me. Upon checking my phone I found a message from him. He was in
amongst the carnage on the roads. Eventually, half an hour late, he arrived
full of apology. Finding himself stuck in the queue he had made the decision to
drive up the mountain instead of getting the ski gondola lift. He had also had
to dig himself out of his apartment block.
I felt like saying ‘did you not know it
was going to snow ? Did you not look out of the window this morning ? You know
there’s a free bus … you could have got that and saved yourself the hassle of
digging your car out … all you had to do is walk a couple of hundred metres to
the stop ?’. Instead I kept quiet. I was educated at private boarding school
from the age of 10, predominantly an armed forces boarding school, the only
reason you were late for anything was poor planning and bad time
management. Will had only got away with
being so late because it was me he was coming to meet. In fact, he had been
close to cancelling my lesson.
Conditions on the mountain weren’t much better. Even on
the pisted runs the snow was up to my knees. Neither of us could see what my
feet or skis were doing. Will is exceptionally talented at what he does and can
quite literally see through snow. Although he couldn’t see my skis or feet he
knew exactly what they were doing by what the rest of my body was doing. He was
correct 100% of the time, clever !
I found the deep snow a real challenge.
When I fall over I let out a little squeak, a bit like one of those dog toys
that makes a noise when it hits the ground; I do the same thing. Will didn’t
need to see that I had fallen over, he just listened for the squeak.
On one occasion I’d not had time to even
squeak. Standing at a ski lift chatting I stepped aside to let someone pass.
Instantly I vanished. Unbeknown to me I had stepped into a snow covered hollow.
I completely disappeared. One minute I was stood chatting with Will, the next …
gone … vanished into thin air. Well thin snow actually. I was like a tortoise
stuck on its back unable to right itself. From my snow hazed hollow I could
just make out Will unclipping me from my skis. There then appeared a white
gloved hand which had me briefly confused as Will was wearing black gloves. In
fact the hand belonged to the ski lift attendant who had left her usual
position to come and help. Once hauled out I expected to find Will doubled over
laughing but his brain was still trying to work out, process, understand and make
sense of what had just happened. If it had been Will I would have quite
literally pissed myself laughing.
One thing that did impress Will was how
much better my skiing was. When he turned around and shouted back at me ‘it’s
great to see you skiing properly’ I knew I’d finally got it right. He was
convinced that the change was through my practice. I disagreed. Yes, I had been
practicing back in the UK but not that often. I had been to the indoor slope at
Manchester twice in October and Castleford twice in October. I’d then been back
to Castleford twice in November and once in December. That’s only seven times over
four months. What I had been doing was getting coaching from another BASI
trainer and it was whilst skiing with them earlier in the week that I had my
lightbulb moment and everything clicked together.
The three things I won't do
There are three things I won’t do that are skiing related;
off-piste, bumps and ski touring. Why ski off-piste when there is a perfectly
groomed run you can use which will take you to the same place ? I just don’t
understand what the point of it is. Bumps are much easier and safer to
negotiate if you take your ski's off and walk down the side. All that bumping,
jolting, having your body shaken every which way only to end up in a painful
crashed heap very quickly. No thanks. Ski touring is another thing I just don’t
understand. Basically, ski touring is where you ski up the mountain so that you
can ski down it. What !! Just buy a lift pass ! It’s so much easier !!
Will actually suggested I tried ski
touring. Hahaha ...er ... I’ll stick with buying a lift pass. I do understand
his thinking though. I do a lot of walking. In fact on my first day in Saint
Gervais I took the Mont Blanc Tramway up to Bellevue for some winter walking. I
walk because my feet are a mode of transport which is free and I can get to
places I otherwise wouldn’t reach. At no point did I think 'oooh ... I wish I
had ski's with me'. Unfortunately, I suspect Will is right. I would like ski
touring. In the short time since September he has managed to build up a very
accurate mental picture of me. If I am to try ski touring it will be with him
since I trust him implicitly not to get me trying anything that he knows I am
not capable of. So when he took me off-piste towards the end of my lesson I
knew I was totally safe with him.
For those seeking personalized ski
instructing in incredible surroundings, there is simply no better choice; join
Will and his team for an exceptional lesson! Whether it’s your first turn on
skis, or tuning your skiing performance to its peak Will and his team are some
of the best in the world at teaching snowsports.
Next:
Saint Gervais - More Freedom Snowsports
Previously:
Return to New Generation
December 2018
September 2018
March 2018
The Beginnings
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