Blue Mt PA

I had a great finish to my time at Mount Snow. After 40 something degrees and rain on Monday to single digits on Tuesday and Wednesday, things on Thursday and Friday got back to more regular winter... in the twenties. Snow guns were running pretty hard all week once the weather turned. I cut out just after lunch on Friday to head for Blue Mountain in southern Pennsylvania. I went a couple hours out of my way to stop home to see my family and dogs. They were all good and pretty happy to see me. I pulled into Allentown, PA about 10:00 PM after a pretty easy drive. Saturday and Sunday I would run a PSIA Level 1 Validation in cooperation with PARA (Pennsylvania Alpine Racing Association). Level 1 for PSIA is a certification for teaching beginning skiers. In the race world, athletes are not part of it until they have some skiing skills making PSIA level 1 certification skiing information mostly useless for race coaches. The clinic has been modified to include safety, learning style, teaching style, learning partnership and so forth but with more advanced skiing to make the information more pertinent to race coaching.

I arrived at the mountain just before 8:00 AM, Saturday morning and the place was already pretty jammed. I realized the area opens early (8:00 AM). The Lodge is on top so they use a tape across the access to the mountain with skiers lined up along it instead of the a line at the lift before opening...different from most areas. I found the ski school director and he had me set up in the "boot room", one of the rooms that the ski school staff uses in the main lodge. The course is set up in theory for newer race coaches but in my experience it is usually attended by fairly experienced coaches. This group was no different. Only one of the six in the group was new to coaching; two others were not active coaches.. just interested. The other 3 had been coaching many years. Once we were out hill, I realized only the new coach was new to PSIA, the others were using this for and update. Three were level 3 (certified to teach it all) one was level 2 (certified through parallel) and one was level 1 (certified to teach beginning skiing). This posed a bit of a dilemma but not too bad. The program I ran went from an introduction to organized delivery of information in a way that keeps the athletes safe and engaged (see my earlier description above) to a shared session of different drills and progressions and how we would modify them to make them more appropriate for different aged athletes. It came off pretty well and was pretty fun. It sure helped that the skiing and weather were both pretty good.

Saturday night, I was invited to a Christmas party at one of the coaches houses. Most of the Blue Mountain race coaches were there. They are a good group. Most have skied together for 20 years as Blue Mountain coaches. It is fun to hang out with friends that have a long history...all you have to do is sit back and listen to the stories. It turns out some or our athletes at Labrador have shared coaching and race lane space Copper Mountain in Colorado during Thanksgiving camps with some Blue Mountain coaches. The ski world is pretty small.

Middle of the week at Mt Snow

After a fun weekend at Labrador Mt, I am in the middle of my week at Mt Snow VT. Labrador had pretty good skiing for opening weekend; only three real ways down but the snow was pretty good. I skied with the race team athletes. It was great to see them and great to get started on the season. Sunday it rained pretty hard, particularly in the morning but the snow was nice. We left a bit early because it was forecast to change to snow (and ice). Many of our high school athletes drive to the mountain and we wanted them home safe. This gave me a chance to get a pretty early start on my trip to VT. I wandered down route 20 to Albany which is slower than using the NYS thruway but it saves me about 30 miles (a gallon of gas or so) and I enjoy the drive. The car thermometer never went below 36 on the trip over. By the time I was in Albany, I had caught back up with the warm air mass and was traveling in 54 degree weather. It was warm all the way to Mount Snow.

I am skiing in a PSIA event called Pro Jam this week. I am a course conductor and my group is level I skiers that are preparing for the level II part 1 (skiing, as opposed to ski teaching) exam. The Pro Jam is essentially ski camp for instructors. There are 340 participants this year from all over the eastern United States. While not much of the mountain is open, the skiing is pretty good. Monday was still warm and raining pretty hard in the morning. The snow was okay and pretty easy to ski  in because it was so soft. The afternoon got colder and it snowed a bit. We spent the day playing with our stance on the ski to understand balancing while in motion (dynamic balance). Tuesday was frigid. My first ride up the mountain left 2 in my group with frost bite on their faces. Luckily there is a lodge at the summit and they were able to duck in to warm up. The rest of us took a "warm up" (yeah right) run. By the time we got to the bottom, back up to the top and into the summit lodge, a lot of time was lost. We tried to start at 9:00 AM and by 10:00 AM I was really just starting the program for the day.  We worked hard on generating a bit of tip pressure to help begin each turn and used a strong inside leg to help with balance and readiness for the next turn. The group did well and I believe they were happy with the positive changes in their skiing. Tuesday night I went to a really nice restaurant named the Hermitage. I had a delicious Caesar salad with chicken mostly because the equipment manufacturers representatives that are here this week put on an appreciation hors d'oeuvres  party right after skiing so I ate a bunch of fried stuff before I went to dinner (egg roll, 2 taquitos, 4 chicken wings and sweet potato fries...all terrific). Today was even colder but I luckily had a slightly better outcome. One of the participants that had frost bite yesterday got it again just before lunch, He went in while the rest of us took one more run. This afternoon was the "optional program" session. This is where participants choose from a list of topics and attend a 2 - 3 hour session on that topic. I was assigned to give information about and ski with a group through all the level II skiing certification tests tasks. There are a bunch of them so I had to work fast to get it all in in one afternoon. That said, I think it went pretty well! I gave a description of what the move was, what I thought was important in the eyes of the examiner and gave each participant a short critique on their interpretation of the task and what, if anything was needed to make sure the performance was at the level II standard. After skiing, I tried to go out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant but it change hands since I was here 2 years ago and is not Mexican any longer. I wound up eating a club sandwich and chilly at a pretty nice place in West Dover with 2 old skier friends of mine. It was a nice time. It is really good to be back into ski season...I am having fun.

My first day is almost here!

Well, we have had almost 2 feet of new snow in the last 4 days. Labrador Mountain will open Friday. Yesterday, I had to run some errands in Ithaca (about 20 miles from here). There is only  trace of snow there. Ithaca was out of the snow action. All the snow is from the lake effect bands off Lake Ontario that have been pounding Syracuse this week putting it up on the national weather channel radar (literally and figuratively). Lots of schools closed but not our district... my daughter was not too happy that the road crews kept things open and running. Anyway, I believe I will be able to take some runs on Friday. I may have to wait until my daughter gets home from school so she can come too. This weekend we will train with the race team and then it is off to Vermont for some relatively big mountain skiing for the week followed by a clinic in Pennsylvania next weekend (back to small mountain). So, after waiting for a while for it to start, it will start with a bang...10 days in a row on skis! Here we go..