Michelle is a research chemist from Cork. She started snowboarding two years ago on her first ski holiday, did a snowboard taster on the last day and decided immediately to wave the skis goodbye. She’s only ridden about four weeks since then, but decided to give the camp a go because she wanted to ride in the summer.

“It’s the only kind of holiday that I want to do anymore. None of my friends snowboard so I had to come on my own, and I thought a girl’s camp would be a bit more encouraging; I never went into the parks before because I found all the fellers a bit intimidating.

“Yesterday was good because everything just kind of clicked. I found that I could take the 180s and switch riding that we had done the day before on the piste straight to the rollers. But then today – well, the weather was hot, the skies were blue, but I just couldn’t get the boxes. Okay, I got the first one. I didn’t think about it, and it was perfect; they were all like, “you’ve never been on a box before?” But I couldn’t do the second one, and then I came down on the last. I started thinking about it too much, I think. It’s just in my head, just the way I work – but I suppose I still learnt tail presses today, and even coming down off the mountain I was throwing some of those in, so … it’s just something you have to get over.

“Luging cheered me up a bit. Getting the speed was cool, after going a bit slow the first time, we started to try to chase each other down. And I was surprised when we went skating this evening; I thought that because I’d had a bad time on the hill that it would cross over, but actually I was learning stuff. And I think that will probably help too, when I go back up the hill tomorrow – it gets your confidence back.”