Exercise Dragon Eagle Ski is 6 Regiment Army Air Corps’ annual skiing expedition to the alps and for 2025 took place in Flaine, France. On the expedition, twenty seven personnel participated in both alpine and ski touring. With varying abilities, it was our intent to hold Ski Foundation One (SF1), Ski Foundation Two (SF2) and Ski Foundation Three (SF3) courses along with a single SF2 Continuation training group.
As an opening note, we would once again like to thank the South East Reserve Forces & Cadets Association and Joint Aviation Command for their continued financial support, without which the personal cost to those participating would have been considerably more.
On 7 March, the support team departed Bury St Edmunds in order to make the 16-hour road trip. The support team have become an integral part of this annual event transporting loan pool and personal equipment to Flaine.
The main body deployed from Luton Airport on 8 March and after a short flight to Geneva, were met by onwards travel partners to Flaine. After an uneventful journey, we all arrived at the UCPA Flaine to begin our expedition.
Day One
With skiing all set to start on Sunday 09 March, the groups collected loan pool equipment for the SF2/3 ski tourers and alpine skis for the remainder from the local ski hire provider. The weather was superb with bright blue skies and clean pristine snow. Ideal conditions for both alpine and ski touring. For all groups, today was time under the instructors to find absent ski legs, and get control over their equipment before breaking out into the challenging ski touring instruction and alpine development that awaited for the remainder of the week.
Day Two – Five
With a firm grasp of all students abilities, day two-five allowed instructors to push the boundaries of students skill and technique by introducing challenging terrain for ski tourers and increasingly difficult pistes as the SF1 students progressed their technique. As the week developed, the weather closed in as well – with substantial snowfall throughout the day, visibility was reduced which served to push all students further in edge control and technical development. The changeable snow conditions also ensured that all students were fortunate to experience a wide range of skiing conditions from groomed slopes, to dumping and blue bird powder throughout the week.
Day Six
The final day allows for a consolidation of training by the instructors, with each choosing to focus on a different training objective to help prepare the students for courses in the future. SF2 DT progressed to a challenging final ski tour, while SF1 who had progressed to all mountain skiing were able to introduce the carve technique into their piste progression.
Ex Dragon Eagle Ski has provided members of 6 Regiment Army Air Corps with an opportunity to experience alpine skiing and ski touring for the first time. Overall we had 14x students pass their SF1, SF2 and SF3 qualifications with 2x deferred students and 6x students pass CT training in preparation for future ski qualifications.
Financial restrictions are increasingly common across defence, and Ex Dragon Eagle Ski is a testament to the ongoing ability to deliver stimulating adventurous training to SP across the regiment. The financial support of the South East RFCA is absolutely critical to our ability to deliver these packages and we are incredibly grateful to the association for supporting this expedition.