Brantling

Every year Brantling Ski area hosts a couple of slalom races Christmas Eve day. Brantling may be the smallest place I visit this year. The total vertical drop for Brantling is 250 feet. My daughter entered the races this year. We left home early that Saturday morning. The drive was about an hour and a half. When we arrived they were pushing snow to build a finish area for the race. The hill was thin an narrow but there would be a race (two actually). Apparently, the show guns were on until about 7:00 AM that morning. Race 1 was scheduled for 10:00 AM.

Brantling has a giant claim to fame. It was the home mountain for Diann Roffe. Among Diann's most notable achievements was an Olympic gold medal in superG at the 1994 Lillehammer, Norway winter games and World Championship victory in GS at Bormio, Italy in 1985.

The first time I visited Brantling was before Diann's Olympic victory. I took one look at the hill and understood how they had produced a world champion. The race hill is the main slope. It is short and not too wide with a sort of rope tow on the side of the trail. I say sort of because there are these metal things attached to the cable that you can put behind your back or seat to help pull you up the slope. The athletes are never out of sight. They are either on the course or on the lift and never out of ear shot. Racing and training on this little hill helps keep the hill interesting and fun.

My daughter's day was not so much fun. She took it a bit too seriously. She, like over 90% of the field had not had any chance to train in slalom gates this season. Go figure, who has snow. We tried to approach the day as just a training day. She did make the flip both races but was not happy with her skiing. The flip is the start order for the second run. For the second run of the race, the top 30 athletes are started in reverse order of first run finish and after those thirty race the rest of the field runs in first run finish order. So, she really did okay considering the circumstances of this really weird winter but she was pretty hard on herself. In the way home after thinking about it for the first hour of the trip, she did admit it was fun to race even if she hated the way she skied.

I have only been to Brantling 3 times over the years and all were for ski races. I have always had fun there. The people there are friendly, the food is pretty good and the bar seems to be as big of an attraction as the skiing. Everyone there seems to delight in how small and intimate things are. While they all seem humble, they are quick to mention Diann. If I lived close to it, I would probably ski there but luckily I live near a mountain with nearly three times the height; a whopping 700 vertical feet and almost as friendly and humble. We can't, at my fun little mountain in what I affectionately call (tongue in cheek) the Truxton Alps, lay claim to a world or Olympic champion but we do have many really good skiers. I believe I will never go to Brantling for a ski day but I will definitely be back for a race.