The blue jacket worn by the Ski Club Reps is synonymous with the Club. It’s one of the things the Club is known for and I have twice tried to gain one.
To be awarded the coveted ‘Blue Jacket’ you have to have successfully completed the Ski Club of Great Britain Mountain Safety and Leadership Course. The course runs once a year in Tignes and is not cheap at cost of £3199 plus an additional £480 if you are allocated single occupancy of a room. Then there are flights and insurance to pay for. This is a quarter of my annual salary and a lot of money ! Despite this I have twice tried to get my hands on one of the jackets.
I originally enquired about doing the Mountain Safety and Leadership Course in 2019 but my email never got a reply and the website only ever said there was more information coming. For me, doing the course in 2019 would have been perfect. I was already out in the Alps on a ski instructor internship and was not required to do the BASI Alpine Level 1 part of the internship because I already held the qualification. This freed me up to do the Ski Club of Great Britain Mountain Safety and Leadership Course but no information was ever provided.
When I returned home from the Alps in March 2o2o I again registered my interest for the Ski Club of Great Britain Mountain Safety and Leadership Course. This time, I got a place but it wouldn’t be the coveted blue rep jacket that I would find myself wearing but a different blue jacket from the Club.
A Different Blue Jacket
There had been a lull in the Covid-19 pandemic over the summer and I had even managed to get back out to Switzerland for summer skiing in Zermatt. As the autumn arrived and winter approached the Covid-19 situation started to deteriorate. It wasn’t long before the Foreign Office brought in advice against all non-essential travel. Tour operators, including the Ski Club of Great Britain, cancelled their winter programmes. This included the Mountain Safety and Leadership Course. For the second consecutive year I had missed out on the blue jacket. I had also booked off two weeks from work to do the course and another two weeks in case I needed to quarantine on return. This was a total of 4 weeks off from work that once booked couldn’t be changed. I was not happy.
I suggested the course was switched to Scotland and posted on Facebook an alternative UK version of the Mountain Safety and Leadership Course. My post did not go unnoticed. Both Angus Maciver (General Manager) and Owen Barks Chapman (Head of On-Snow Services & Membership Services) got in touch. My time with the British Association of Snowsport Instructors, involvement at the National Ski Show as an ambassador and my role at Disability Snowsport UK all mean I have built up a network of friends in the ski industry and it is very easy for me to put courses together because of this.
Whilst the Club was no longer running it’s Mountain Safety and Leadership Course nor sending reps to resort, members could act as Social Reps. I might not be able to have a coveted blue reps jacket but I could buy a different, darker blue jacket on the website and wear that instead.
The role of a Social Rep is to facilitate social meet ups and activities in resorts or regionally across the U.K. These resorts could include already “Repped” resorts or could be resorts where there is not a pre-established Ski Club presence. The “Social Rep” role is different to the “Ski Club Rep” role and the Social Rep position does not replace the dedicated Ski Club Reps ! By acting as a Social Rep members help to encourage communication within the Club community allowing for members to meet, ski and share their experiences of the mountains. For example, activities could include social evenings, meals, recreational activities around the resort or social skiing as a group of friends.
I planned on Social Repping in Saas-Fee over Christmas / New Year and put together a schedule.
As well as becoming a Social Rep I also started writing for the Club. When in the UK, I ski at both Castleford and ChillFactore on a regular basis. When ChillFactore re-opened after the first Covid-19 lockdown I went along to put a piece together about what it was like skiing at an indoor slope during the Covid-19 pandemic. The article went out to members via the Facebook page and via email.
Ultimately, ongoing travel restrictions and national lockdowns, both in the UK and in Europe, meant that a clear ‘Stay at Home and Do Not Travel’ message was put out across not just the UK but internationally. Any organisation that continued to run on-snow activities and who actively encouraged people to travel abroad to ski, against FCO advise, has to be questioned. Any such organisation clearly had financial gain in mind, completely ignored the Covid-19 pandemic and acted in a wholly irresponsible manner. Those sort of organisations are not ones I wish to be part of. Thankfully, the Ski Club of Great Britain was not one of them ! Of course, any company, reliant on snow sports for income, who was unable to operate last winter can claim Business Interruption and have their financial losses paid. By not running any courses or holidays, the Ski Club of Great Britain has a financial advantage over those companies who did operate.
BASI or Ski Club of Great Britain ??
I have been a British Association of Snowsport Instructors (BASI) member since 2018 when I qualified as a Level 1 Alpine Instructor. However, there were now problems starting to develop. None of them the fault of BASI. Not only had a serious hip injury sustained in February 2020 left me with a permanent weakness to my left hip, meaning my skiing was never going to be symmetrical, I was also starting to find having a BASI qualification could be a liability.
Whenever I ski with a group I inevitably find myself leading. If a member of the group was to have an accident and be injured, even if I hadn’t been leading at the time, I could find myself deemed liable because of my ski instructor qualification. Whilst there are Ski Club Reps who hold BASI Alpine qualifications I felt, personally, the liability that I potentially exposed myself to meant I needed to choose between BASI and the Ski Club of Great Britain.
In addition, I was starting to find a lot of duplication with regards to the courses you are required to do at both BASI and the Ski Club of Great Britain. I was having to do courses twice (once for BASI and once for the Ski Club of Great Britain) giving double the expense. Some of these courses were then being done a third time because I am a member of my local mountain rescue team. Take for example, outdoor first aid and mountain safety. All three of the organisations require you to have these but they won’t accept a course done through one of the other organisations. This means I have had to pay for and do 3 outdoor first aid courses and will need to do 3 mountain safety courses. Then there is the piste development course, which ironically is run by a BASI trainer at the Ski Club of Great Britain and is part of the Ski Club of Great Britain Mountain Safety and Leadership Course but I can’t use the BASI Alpine Level 2 courses that I’ve done so once again I find myself paying for something more than once.
One final thing factored into my decision making. Half of the BASI courses I book onto don’t go ahead. Seven of the fourteen courses I have booked with BASI ended up cancelled; and this was before Covid ! Once I’ve booked time off work I can’t move it and re-book it if a course doesn’t run. Moving up through the BASI system was proving difficult because of this and the regularity of course cancellations was not encouraging me to remain with them.
Both the increased liability , the financial expense of having to duplicate courses and the number of course cancellations meant that I had to choose between BASI and the Ski Club of Great Britain. I chose the latter.
Will I be doing the Mountain Safety and Leadership Course this coming winter ? Maybe but probably not. For me, it is simply too expensive and I can’t afford it. If I can magic up £3200 plus the cost of flights, insurance and possible single room supplement then maybe but it’s a quarter of my annual salary as an NHS nurse. There is then the small matter of having a phobia of off-piste skiing.
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