Jay Richards

Monday Jonell and I celebrated 19 great years of marriage.

One of the highlights of the year was the vacation to Fort Ransom One of many excellent adventures the past 21 years.

Tuesday we were scheduled to have the Detroit Lakes Invitational ski meet. Due to lack of snow, it was cancelled and hopefully we can have it in January some time. Ely was not able to host their invitational ski meet so they had their invite at Mt Itasca just outside Grand Rapids in the town of Coleraine and kindly invited the Section 8 teams. There were 13 teams including powerhouse Duluth East which is the number one ranked team in the state, boys and girls.

I have skied at Mt Itasca a few times before. There is around a 2 foot base of snow thanks to snow making and the trails are groomed perfectly with a PB200. There was about 2.5km of trail open and the course for the race was excellent with a nice balance of hills, flats and fast downhills. It is a great venue for spectating and I was able to watch about 70% of the race and catch some good video. There are also some ski jumps, a tubing hill and a few downhill runs with terrain park features. It would be an ideal place for a Nordic cross race but most racer types get wired skiing anything outside the above photo so it probably wouldn't work. Europe more likely and they do have some competetions.

Bumped in to Scott Kylander-Johnson who is one of the coaches at Duluth Marshal. Good to catch up.
Blasting away. Some serious snow making around the clock for the last 3-4 weeks.

It was a gorgeous day to be on snow and had a blast zipping around, catching the action. I talked to a number of coaches and like I told Bruce A, it was like people came from a funeral, where at a wedding and going back to a funeral. Snow needs to come soon!

Merry Christmas!