7 Reasons To Work A Ski Season With Your Partner
Whether you and your partner are currently dreaming of working a ski season together or whether it is something that you’ve never even considered before, we are going to highlight 7 reasons why you should take the leap of faith and be inspired to work a ski season together - you will certainly not regret it!
In this article, we are going to talk you through our experiences of working a ski season as a couple and why we think that working a ski season with your partner is a fantastic idea this year.
Working a ski season together will bring you closer together as a couple and provide you with an incredible amount of memorable experiences that you can treasure forever.
We recently returned home to Belfast after having been out in Lake Louise, Canada, for the past 12 months working a ski season. Every minute of the day we wish we were back there, making first tracks in the fresh snow and kamikazing down runs that are far too difficult for us.
It truly was one of the best years of our lives, and we know it will be for you, too. If the last few years have shown us anything, you should get out there and enjoy yourself while you can!
1. Learn a new skill together
First and foremost, working a ski season means you can both learn a new skill. Learning a new skill, whether it is skiing or snowboarding (Personally, we prefer snowboarding), will take a lot of perseverance and encouragement from one another.
It is guaranteed that there will be plenty of laughs, along with the occasional tears, and the opportunity to watch both of you progress together will only add to the overall experience.
Learning a new skill together, particularly one as thrilling as skiing or snowboarding, will be a brilliant learning curve for the two of you and is certainly one of the best reasons why you and your partner should consider working a ski season together.
2. Make friends from all around the world
This one is pretty self explanatory, but as with any aspect of travelling, it is a major draw as to why people decide to get on a plane and visit a new country in the first place.
Lake Louise is in Alberta but despite this, around 80% of the people we met while living there were from either Ontario, or Australia. Australians are famed for working ski seasons and wherever you find an Australian, a Kiwi is bound to be close behind. Add to that a healthy European contingent, as well as a sprinkling of those from south of the Canadian-US border, and you have a range of nationalities that creates the unique ski season flavour.
One of the main reasons we love to travel is to meet people from all around the world. Working a ski season as a couple is a fantastic way to bring a number of different nationalities together, so you get the feeling that you are travelling all around the globe in just one conversation.
Need suggestions on where to work your ski season? Perhaps our suggestions of the best ski resorts in Europe for couples will be a great place to start.
3. Learn to budget together
When speaking to people about working a ski season, a typical response usually goes along the lines of ‘We would love to do a ski season, but we can’t really afford to do it’. Yes you can.
Obviously how much you decide to save up while at home, depends on how quickly you think you will be able to get a job once you arrive at the resort. In our experience it is pretty easy to find a seasonal job, as long as you are willing to give anything a go.
If you only want a specific role (Working with kids for example), or you want a job that guarantees staff-housing, then you may find it hard to secure a job and should factor that in when considering your budget.
Whatever your strategy is, budgeting together for a ski season will give you great practice for when you have to save up for a bigger investment in the future. Working a ski season with your partner doesn’t have to be expensive, you just have to know what aspects to prioritise and which parts you can save money on.
Discovering everything you need to pack for your first ski season can help you both with your budget as you’ll know exactly what to prioritise and know where you can save some money.
4. Makes your CV stand-out
A belief that we hold firmly, is that travelling looks incredible on a CV, and a ski season is no different. Whenever we have been for a job interview, rather than asking for our university degrees or professional background, invariably, the first question we are asked is about our travels.
Employers want to know what life experience you have, so being able to add a ski season to your CV is of huge benefit. If it came down to choosing between a candidate that had a year of experience answering the phone in an office, or a candidate that had just returned from a ski season where they worked in -30 degrees for the year, we know which one we’d be hiring.
One of the reasons we loved working a ski season as a couple, was that when we returned home, many people would message us asking how we did it and whether we enjoyed it. When we would added it to our CV, employers would straight away ask about our ski season and what we had worked during it.
We have made a handy little guide on how to find ski season jobs for couples to help you on your way.
5. Face challenges together
Challenges are something in life that are always going to happen, and learning to overcome them together during a ski season is the perfect way to practice.
Lets face it, the challenge of choosing between buying the brand new snowboard and going for second-hand goggles, or whether to forego the new board and opt for the newer goggles instead, is hardly a challenge that should cause arguments. Many challenges will arise during the season, and thankfully not many of them will revolve around life-changing decisions.
There will be plenty more challenges to tackle and facing them together will put you in good stead for the future, when those trickier decisions have to be made.
Working a ski season together you with your partner is going to be challenging at times, there is no denying that. On the whole though, we’ve always thought that we’d rather be learning to face challenges together while working at a ski slope, rather than learning for the first time while stuck in a corporate job in the city that we didn’t enjoy.
6. Encourages Spontaneity
One of the reasons you should consider working a ski season with your partner is that it whole-heartedly encourages you to be spontaneous. Whether you spontaneously jump on the flight to get to the ski resort, or simply decide to take the black run instead of the easy green run, working a ski season as a couple will certainly increase your spontaneity as a couple.
Being spontaneous is healthy for you. When we decided to work a ski season, we knew we wanted to do it in Canada, but that’s as far as our planning went. We secured our visas over the summer, and booked a one-way flight to Calgary only 2-days before we flew. We found a bus to Banff at the airport, walked into the first hostel we saw, and booked ourselves in for the night. No real plan. We just went on a whim and it worked out perfectly fine for us.
You don’t always need a concrete plan before working a ski season. Yes, securing a visa before you fly is essential, but after that you can be spontaneous and see where you end up.
7. You will love a working ski season as a couple!
If you choose to accept just one of the reasons on this list, let it be this one.
We have both had friends that have worked ski seasons in the past, recounting story after story of their season and vividly describing the first time they went down a black-run and didn’t fall flat on their face. We are now those people too.
Working a ski season in Canada is an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience, and working a ski season with a partner is the cherry on top.
If you’re wondering how to travel long-term as a couple, then working a ski season is definitely for you. After all, working a ski season in Canada is our number 1 suggestion when asked ‘what to do on a gap year as a couple’ - it really will be the time of your life!
In this article, we outline exactly how to become a ski instructor this winter season courtesy of The Winter Sports Company.