A: Ski

ACTION 

PROJECT 2: SKI 

INTRODUCTION

During the skiing season (December to April) I will travel to Candanchú several times to ski with my family. I have been skiing since I was a child, and have taken many courses while I grew up. Whenever I go skiing, I enjoy myself, but feel as if I ski like if it was a routine. However, for this activity I am going to try to challenge myself and see skiing from a different point of view.

MY GOALS

My goals for this activity are to:

• descend a specific black track in Candanchú that I have never descended before
• prove that I am in better shape by descending the whole “Tuca” route (from the peak of the mountain to where the chair lift starts)

Every time I go skiing, I will try to achieve my goals, or try to train in order to be able to achieve them in the future. As I do this, I will reflect on my progress and how I see myself.

ANTICIPATED LEARNING OUTCOMES

1. Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth.

I will increase my awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth when I try to achieve my goals and analyze the results. Probably, the first day I skii after eight months without skiing I won’t be able to achieve my goals. At that moment, I will be able to know where I can improve and what I am already good at.

2. Undertake new challenges

I have always been weary of descending black tracks, so attempting to do so will take me out of my comfort zone and will be a challenge for me.

4. Worked collaboratively with others

Apart from all the other skiers that I need to take into account while skiing, I will have to work collaboratively with my friends and family that will help gather proof of my improvement/development by taking pictures and videos of my progress.

5. Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

I will go skiing various times during the skiing season and will attempt to achieve my goals several times before - hopefully- achieving them, showing perseverance and commitment in my activity.

My first skiing trip

7th and 8th of December 2013

After many months without skiing, I am back! I have come to Candanchú this weekend, on our first skiing trip. As it is not even winter yet, there wasn't a lot of snow in Candanchú, so we went to Astún (another station that is 5 minutes away by car).

I am obviously not going to achieve my goals on my first weekend skiing, but I have managed to get used to it and retake from where I left on this first weekend. As proof of my training, I have pictures and videos! Once I go skiing a second time, I will write about how I see myself and try to show my progress. When I feel like I'm ready, I will attempt to achieve my goals and will try to have proof of it on this blog. 

Images: 

Beautiful weather, happy as can be! 

Video:

Here is a video of myself skiing this weekend in Astún once I retook the hang of it. 

Evidence: 

A photo of the machine that reads the forfaits with the date on it: 07/12/13

A photo of the ticket we got for our lunch in Astún on the 07/12/2013

A photo of my Candanchú and Astún forfaits. 

And back to Candanchú!

15th and 16th of March 2014

It has been a long time since I last went skiing, but my family and I finally managed to go! Being an IB student makes it tough for you to go skiing for a whole weekend; taking into account the time spent travelling on Friday and Sunday and the time you spend skiing, there is not much time left for studying, but there still is the same amount of homework for the weekend. Also, my brother’s schedule also influences whether we go or not, my mom’s job, other obligations we may have or the weather. However, this weekend we were here, and we skied in Candanchú this time.

The weather was great, the sun was out and there were hardly any people skiing. Even though I sometimes don’t want to go skiing as it is a long trip and I normally feel stressed out about the homework and studying I need to get done, I really enjoyed myself on this trip. I felt good exercising and was in a very good mood throughout the weekend. On top of this, I MANAGED TO ACHIEVE ONE OF MY GOALS! I “descended a specific black track in Candanchú that I had never descended before”!

Saturday 15th of March 2014

When I first got to the top of the black track, I can´t lie, I felt pretty scared. I wasn’t really thrilled about descending it; it really was a challenge for me. Even though I knew I was able of descending it, it wasn’t the most comfortable situation. When it comes to skiing, I was “out of my comfort zone”. However, once my brother was ready to start filming and I saw him signaling that I could start, it all went by pretty fast. Curve after curve, I descended the slope in no time and felt very proud and satisfied of achieving my goal. I definitely think that I have achieved learning outcome number 2: “undertake new challenges”. If it wasn’t for CAS, I wouldn’t have the necessity to set myself these goals, but I truly enjoyed accomplishing one of them and look forward to the next. Below you can see pictures and a video as evidence of myself descending the black track!

The images above show the black track I descended. 

Myself ready to start....

and celebrating afterwards! 

Watch a video of the descent :D

Sunday 16th of March 2014

When it comes to skiing, Sunday is a hard day. You’re tired from Saturday’s workout, feel sore and just want to stay in bed. However, I was excited about getting on the snow again. Once I have achieved my first goal skiing, I have another goal to achieve: descending the whole “Tuca” route from the peak of the mountain to the chair lift without stopping. Today there were all types of snow: hard snow, powder snow, wet snow... and this made it difficult to maintain a constant speed or rhythm while skiing. This was an added difficulty to try to achieve my second goal, as skiing non-stop was extremely tiring, and I was starting to feel my legs ache. However, descending the “Tuca” route, even if I stopped in between, was good practice. Accomplishing one of my goals during the weekend made me happy enough.

Goodbye snow

Easter Holidays 2014

Friday 18th of April 2014

Today is the last day that I will sky during this season. When my family and I went to Candanchú during the Easter holidays, we were planning to ski several days as a goodbye to the season. However, the weather didn't allow our plans to fulfill. The high temperatures and the rain of the previous days made the snow to disappear at a record speed. Even though there was still some snow in Candanchú, it was very scarce. Because of this we went to Astún, which was slightly better. We woke up very early to make the most of the day. It was a great day to say goodbye to the skiing season and we all enjoyed it.

As the skiing season is over, I will review my goals and ask myself whether I have accomplished them or not. My goals were:

• descend a specific black track in Candanchú that I have never descended before
• prove that I am in better shape by descending the whole “Tuca” route (from the peak of the mountain to where the chair lift starts)

Looking back at this season, I have only fulfilled one of my goals, the first one. I have descended a specific black track (proof above!) and feel very proud about it. As to the second one, I think that I haven't fulfilled the second goals simply due to a lack of time. I have gone skiing very few times during this winter (mostly due to work having to be done), which has made my second goal more difficult to achieve. However, I have achieved half of my goals, which is good enough. You never know, I might achieve my second goal next year during the next skiing season!

                            

 

END OF ACTIVITY 

Even though I will obviously continue skiing throughout my life, ski as one of my CAS activities is coming to an end as my CAS program slowly finalizes. Even though most of the action in this activity took part during last year, I did go skiing once this year during the break and managed to get some clips of my progress since last year's video to this one. If you want to check out the video, click here! 

I had two goals for this activity and even though I only managed to achieve one of them (descend a specific black track in Candanchú) due to the few opportunities I got to go skiing, I feel very satisfied with this outcome and very proud of myself for taking something I've doing for a long time, skiing, to the next level. 

As to the learning outcomes that I anticipated to achieve, I believe to have achieved most of them. I increased awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth as, I feel that I was strong in my skiing abilities but could grow in my confidence; worked collaboratively with others as you always do while skiing surrounded by other people and showed perseverance and commitment to the activity even if I didn't get many chance to go skiing due to weather conditions and other circumstances. 

Overall, a great CAS activity!