Last Race Day, February 16, 2013

Resting before the race.

The line up.

Last week was the last race day of the season. All of the girls did so well! I was able to ride the gondola and walk down to watch all of the girls race in the morning and afternoon. So proud of how well the Snowblowers are skiing. Besides a lot of waiting to race, the team did get in many runs (over 15,000 vertical feet!) on Jackrabbit Alley, Park 101, Centennial and Latigo. Tomorrow will be the last for the season, but I hope this is just the beginning of many years skiing together!

Race Day, February 2, 2013

Shots from Race Day

Waiting to race

Sylvia

Kamryn

Sofia

Reese

Kaia

Sorry it has been so long since the last post. As all of you know, I tore my MCL on Sunday the 3rd during a hockey game, so I had to deal with a lot last week. I am on the mend and have the okay to watch the races this weekend! I will walk over from the gondola. Anyway, I am so proud of how the girls performed at the race on the 2nd! I have some fun photos to share. It was also a beauty of a day.

Saturday, January 19

Reese out of the gate!

Sofia carving it up!

Glad Sylvia is back! She's ripping it.

Goofin' around...

Some more silliness...

Kaia heading to the next gate.

Kamryn heading down the course

MacKenzie-look at those poles out front!

Raven's Ridge!

It was a beautiful day! We ran gates on Bear Trap and on the new Epic Mix course two times each. Willie's Face is a pretty steep aspect on Centennial, just past Spruce Saddle. Our girls skied it about 3 times with no problems. I have a video of it, and need to figure out the best way to post it.And we even skied a nice run down Raven's Ridge on the Birds of Prey Expert only area.  Girls are having so much fun, being super supportive of each other and being TOUGH! We are seeing the girls really push themselves for the pure joy of the challenge and love of skiing. All this with safe skiing too. Matt and I are so thankful to have such a great group of girls!!

First Race Day!!

What a crazy day it was on Saturday! Frigid cold and our first race of the season. I am so proud of our girls.
Once we got out on the slopes, we slipped the course to scout out what it looked like and how to strategically go through it. Most of us were numb by the bottom of that so we went in until we had to go back up for our race slot. We arrived just in time to race and the girls didn't have to stand around to get cold and nervous. Everyone looked really good! After the race, most of the team skied a run over at Strawberry Park lift because Centennial was having issues. It turned out to be one of the best of the season so far. We started off on President Ford's run and then ended up on a nice black called Stacker. The girls skied it so well! There were bumps and some steep sections, and the snow was soft. Congrats to Kamryn who made a wonderful breakthrough on that run!
By now, we were pretty chilled, so we went in to McCoys for lunch. We had some time until our next run, but as we swung by to check out the course we realized that we could make our second run earlier than scheduled. This was good because the course was just going to get more icy. Everyone finished that race and looked good, despite the firmer conditions. Most of the girls peeled off with their parents so Matt and I ended up skiing with Kaia and MacKenzie over at Redtail (freezing!) and Centennial.
Congratulations to Charlie for her 1st and 4th place in the race!! Sofia finished with a 9th and 11th place. Amazing for the first race! I will email the document that has all of the results. I did not get any photos because they were moving so fast! Again, I am proud of the entire team.

Day 2 and 3, January 5th and 6th

What a great weekend! According to Epic Mix, we skied over 25,000 vertical feet this weekend! All of that mileage was evident by Sunday afternoon because the girls were looking really good!  Saturday started out pretty cold but we were able to practice running real gates on Gunders in Bachelor Gulch right away. We were able to do that 4 times-not a single complaint. Our guest parent skier, Slavina (Sofia's mom) gave us some really good practice drills to think about while running gates and making turns-lifting up in between turns and putting pressure down during the turns, plus putting most pressure on the downhill ski in a turn. We ate at Arrowhead, then headed back to the Beav via Larkspur Bowl where we found some hideous bumps with lots of earth showing. We skied C-Prime on Rose Bowl, which was lovely, then hit our mogul patch at the bottom of Piney.

Sunday was a lot warmer. Our guest parent skier was Jean (Kamryn's mom). She helped us set up the Pole "gates" and she was a willing volunteer to help demonstrate one of Coach Matt's fun spin drills! It was very enjoyable to watch them attempt it with those long skis. Some of the best runs of the day were Redtail, where we did some ski pole "gate" practice, C-Prime, and our bump run on Lower Piney which we did 3 or 4 times. I can't forget to mention our Human Gates on Red Buffalo. All of us are excited for our first Race Day this Saturday! Meet time will be 8:30 am. Look for an email on Thursday or Friday with some reminders about the Race Day.