VIEW FROM THE NON RACING SIDE

View from the

NON RACING SIDE

What a season that was. In the autumn of 2021 when I was looking ahead to the ski season to come, things were looking pretty bleak. The autumn covid wave was well and truly upon us, travel was restricted everywhere and there seemed to be no end in sight to the global pandemic that touched everyone in some way.

But it got worse, towards Christmas, the discovery of the Omicron variant in the UK had France ban not only visitors from the UK but even UK tourists transiting through France were banned. Shortly after that and for about a week or two, the Swiss also put a ban on visitors from the UK.

It was chaos with emails, calls and understandably worried messages from clients. Rescheduled trips, cancellations and the dreams of many to get back on snow were dashed again.

And then strangely, as soon as it all came, it all went away again. In January, when governments began to see Omicron as the end of the pandemic rather than another twist in the saga, travel restrictions were relaxed and the bolder people started to test and travel.

From then on until the end of the season, it was extraordinarily busy. In fact it turned out to be our busiest ever year, including all of the years pre covid. We put this down to a combination of people having funds built up from a lack of vacations during covid and just an utter desperation to get away after two years of doing the right thing. The best part for our ski instructor team was seeing the joy on people’s faces when they realised that they hadn’t forgotten it all in the time that they were away. That everything was still here and still in the same places that they remembered and that it hadn’t all been swept away.

I think the best bit for me was to see families out skiing together, some with young children who hadn’t been on snow before, seeing mums and dads introducing their little ones to this sport that we all love. It was an utter pleasure to spend time with people who had the chance to get away, let all of their stress go and just enjoy being one with the snow.

This year, we are planning on the basis of business as usual. I don’t think we are going back to where we were and we aim to get back to normal and continue to enjoy the fresh mountain air and joy of movement that skiing brings.

Dave Burrows is the owner of SnowPros Ski School based in the Swiss Portes du Soleil and in Villars. He also hosts The Ski Instructor Podcast.