Ellicotville

Over the weekend of Jan 8th and 9th, the team had its first races of the season, a giant slalom at Holimont and a slalom at Holiday Valley. Both areas are right in Ellicotville, NY. If you have not been there before, it is something to see. The town is totally tourist; nice restaurants, ski shops, specialty shops..even a brew pub. The town is complete with all parking spaces taken and fancy, beautiful people everywhere. While I guess this could be construed as negative, I do like to go there.. if is fun. Holimont lists itself as 700 feet of vertical. I don't believe you can ski all 700 in one run. I bet it is measured from the top of the easternmost lift to the bottom of the westernmost lift. That said the area is pretty wide and has a nice but a relatively tame assortment of trails. It starts right the edge of town and is built along a ridge. It must extend a mile up the valley at least. The resort is a private club with many members coming from Toronto and Ohio as well as parts of New York. The area is jammed with houses and condos some of them absolutely gigantic. The race was held on Fall Line which is their race trail. The first course was set wickedly tight (not a lot of distance down the hill to the next gate) and there was a rumor that there were too many gates for the hill so I did a little research. The rule for the maximum number of gates in a GS course is 15% of the vertical drop in meters. Fall line is listed as 143 M of vertical drop. This means 21.25 direction changes. It turns out both courses were too many turns....

Holiday Valley is on the edge of Ellicotville and is, for me, the nicer of the two areas. While its vertical drop is similar to Hollimont, the variety of terrain and the layout make for better skiing. The race trail is pretty steep, so pretty challenging for 13 and 14 year olds. It was another cold day. The snow was hard but carvable. I was the second run course setter for the women. It was a good set but second run of a 2 race really cold weekend produced a lot of mistakes by athletes but it was good to be racing.

Hunter Mt bummer

I am at Hunter Mt in the Catskills sitting in the lodge writing this. I came down Sunday night for the on-snow portion of PSIA-E examiner training for this year. It is a pretty easy drive from Truxton; about 2.5 hours. I always seem, to stop at the Neptune Diner in Oneonta on my way. It has a huge menu and some Greek specialties but this trip I was not too hungry so I had a turkey burger and a coke. I got in around 9:00 PM, called home then settled in for the night. Yesterday morning was pretty cold and and a bit windy. I guess Hunter Mt doesn't really fit into the small mountain theme but the great thing about being a small mountain skier is that there are occasions to ski on a big mountain and they are usually very special days on snow. I went out with a group of 8. The front was pretty good but fairly buffed by the wind in places. Hunter has added a new six-pack in the front to replace the detachable quad. It is a really cool lift, you not only load 90 degrees to travel, you exit 90 degrees to travel too; first lift I have seen that is set up this way. We decided to try the back and discovered Annapurna had been blown with new man-made snow all night. It was the nicest I had ever seen it. We skied on it all morning. Just before lunch I was skiing slowly down to where the group was and my left foot went into a hole and stayed there. I went out over the handle-bars and the ski released but I hyper-extended my left leg. I thought I was okay but as I started skiing again, I realized something was wrong with my knee. I skied carefully down the rest of the run and while riding back up, decided to give up the next run with the group and go down the front and in to see if I could figure out how hurt I was. I hung around until after lunch but decided to rest my leg so, I went back to the hotel, put some ice in a trash bag and spent the afternoon taking ibuprofen, icing an elevated left knee and watching Manchester United win another soccer game. Hence he bummer in the title of this post.

Later in the afternoon the rest of the group started to return from the mountain so I rallied and went out to the lobby to be sociable. I wound up heading to Pancho Villa's Mexican Restaurant in Tannersville for dinner. I dined with the owner of Kissing Bridge ski area near Buffalo, NY, the ski school director from Gore and the other examiner out of Labrador Mt. We had a nice time and nice dinner. I ordered a Negra Modelo (Mexican beer) and Enchiladas Poblanas which are chicken enchiladas in a mole sauce. I can't seem to not order mole when I see it on a menu. I love it. This one was a bit sweet for my tastes but really good.

This morning, my knee seemed slightly better but still not right. I decided to take today off to give it some more healing time. I have a lot of days left to ski this winter. So, I am hanging around the lodge waiting for my commuting partner to finish and then head home later this afternoon. I will have my knee looked at when I get home. Hopefully I will be better soon...wish me luck.

Christmas Camp

Every year between Christmas and New Years the Labrador Mountain Ski Club runs a 4 or 5 day camp for its athletes. This is always a fun week. Many recent "alumni" (college students) return and help coach or train if they are racing for a college team. So, I spent the week skiing with the 13 and 14 year old ski racers at Labrador. This year there are 11 athletes in our group. We had a good week. The skiing has been great, the weather... so so. The week started pretty cold and Monday we seemed to get nothing done. Every three runs we had to come in for a quick warm up. When athletes are freezing focus is a problem and learning becomes difficult. We are working hard on getting athletes to drive their bodies forward as they turn using ankle flex as the primary means of accomplishing this. We were on GS (giant slalom) skis and did not ski in any racing gates but did run a brush drill. Brushes are a training tool looks basically like a bunch of astro turf gone rasta attached to a rubber base about size and shape of a decent sized carrot. The base is inserted into a hole drilled into the snow and the turf sticks out the top giving the athlete a reference of where to turn (or be). The brushes were set to help the athletes perform a series of rounded shaped turns to help develop a better turn entry. While this was working well most of the kids were starting to whine a bit about not getting into race gates. Tuesday was slightly warmer but really overcast and drab. The high temp at the top said about 20 but it was so damp it felt much colder. There was this sort of freezing mist that iced everything. This makes the trees beautiful but it also makes goggles impossible to see through. We were on GS gear again and set courses both in the morning and afternoon sessions. In the morning we used a tight and difficult training course in the afternoon we set it easier to end the day with the athletes feeling good about their skiing. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were slalom. We set training courses all three days. The weather was warming and Thursday was a fantastic sunny day. This brought out many skiers. There is a group of pass-holders that can't stand the fact that there are ski racers training on the mountain. They seem to love to complain vehemently to not only the race coaches but to the management of the mountain because our training courses are always in their favorite places to ski. What management always seems to forget is that all our athletes are season pass-holders too and we come and ski no matter what the weather... which translates into some sales even if it is only french fries and hot chocolate. We are sometimes asked to pull out training courses but luckily not Thursday. Anyway, it was complainer Thursday at Labrador... but it did not spoil our fun. As I said, it was a fantastic day and the skiing was great. Friday we found most of the kids were physically tired and we quit at lunchtime. All in all a pretty good Christmas Camp.