Ray Charles on ice....

....well slush really....spring has finally arrived with temperatures soaring into positive figures.

Considering last week we were still below -10 and two weeks ago we were hovering around -25 this is a pretty big temperature rise and I'm feeling it.

So too are the pistes with slush everywhere and some worrying brown patches appearing. We could really do with one more dump of snow before the real thaw sets in.

On the plus side our BASI course is going well with us working on our feel for the board today.

There are a number of ways of feeling the forces acting on a board all varying in difficulty. One of the more difficult ways of "feeling the force" involved riding down a green piste doing smooth linked turns. No problem there you might think but just to add a bit to the difficulty we had to DO IT WITH OUR EYES CLOSED! Obi Wan eat your feckin' heart out!

All we had between us and certain disaster were the shouts of other members of the group (those with their eyes open) and, surprisingly, despite half a dozen blind snowboarders heading down a crowded piste there were no major incidents. Except when one of us got entangled in the guide dogs leash.

I'm proud to say that I only caught an edge twice.

Anyway now i'm off to plan for the lesson i've got to take tomorrow.