CHALET ALPINA'S SKI GUIDING SERVICE
WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN CHOOSING A SKI INSTRUCTOR 

OR MOUNTAIN GUIDE


You've booked your holiday to come skiing in La Thuile this winter so now is the time to book yourself a Guru to take you skiing. Getting a good mountain guide or ski instructor to ski with can make the difference between a fantastic mind blowing ski holiday or just the usual once a year “see how much suffering my body can take” experience.
It’s a really important part of a ski holiday that skiers really don’t take seriously. Most skiers tend to think that their holiday is to short or they are too old to improve their skiing technique. You battle on your own during the week with the techniques you learnt on your first ski holiday and by the end of the week are just starting to pick it up again.
Good skiing is easy..........
A good instructor can show you how to make it easy and a good mountain guide can give you that mind blowing experience. Good mountain guides are particularly useful when snow is thin and the weather is bad. He will know where to find that ray of sunshine or the slopes that hold the best snow and save you from many otherwise boring days stuck inside your chalet.

Find a professional that does both well and you have got yourself a guru

So what makes a guru ?

A good ski instructor has a passion for teaching skiing. It’s fairly easy to teach the basics. Any instructor can give you those and a lot do just that and not much else. You can even get the basics from books, videos and even from friends (not always advisable) Most skiers stop at this point. Getting you past those basics and off the plateau is the challenge for any passionate instructor. Not many SKI PROFFESIONALS have the patience as it’s incredibly difficult and frustrating for ski instructors to get their pupils to put the same passion into their learning. Skiers are on holiday anyway so why should they. A good instructor persists though until he finds that slight variation of technique that makes his pupil click. He teaches you to teach yourself. It usually only clicks long after he has finished his lessons but the satisfaction comes for a passionate instructor a few years later when he observes his ex pupil racing, teaching or just showing proof that good skiing is easy.

A good mountain guide has a passion for discovering the perfect skiing conditions which will  hopefully also bring out that passion in his group to want to learn more that the good ski instructor is looking for in his pupils. He does not just say follow me and take you to the bottom of the mountain. He reads the mountains – he knows the slopes that face the sun and the shade. He plans his runs on how the sun moves during the day. He feels if the snow is dry, wet, icy, crusty and all the other 50 types of snow
under his skis that the Eskimos have classified, . He knows what type of slope and snow you can handle and pushes you only every now and again into what you cannot handle just to bring that spirit of challenge in you. You are not just been lead down the mountain you are been immersed into it feeling every slight variation in snow texture, every change in temperature, every change in colour as you move from the open slopes into the forests and from the sun to the shade, every movement of your skis as you float in the snow and flow over every mound and dip, every change in emotion running through your body as you go from steep to gentle.  He teaches you to feel what he feels and what it feels like to ski like he does. 

Now you see why I say find someone who does both guiding and teaching well, and you have got yourself a GURU. Doing both does not necessarily mean that person has to be officially qualified to do both. At least one official qualification in guiding or ski instruction is necessary for safety, professionalism and not having your legs broken by the local lads.

Obviously someone as good as this is extremely difficult to find when you are already in resort. 

TO GET YOURSELF A GURU YOU NEED TO BOOK HIM WELL IN ADVANCE
SO BOOK OUR GUIDING SERVICE
NOW TO ENSURE THAT FANTASTIC SKIING EXERIENCE YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED
  You can read about some of the guides we use on our all you need to know   web page and feel free ot contact them for more details. They are worth spending your hard earned bucks on.
 
See our PRICES webpage for costs and details.

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