JO racing resumed last weekend with racing at Theo Wirth on the man made snow. Jake had a great race on Saturday in the classic as Bruce Adelsman of skinnyski, captured above, posting a solid result. I am still trying to figure the exact placings as they had SR skiers mixed in with the JO results. Sunday was the skate race and not feeling as punchy as the day before before but still a solid showing. The last two races on tap this weekend, ready to make it count!
In the mix of weekend hockey games and everything else, piano recital for Jens and Jack. Grandma Mary photo.
With snow falling Sunday, grooming resumed full force Sunday and all day Monday with high school race on Tuesday and getting the other trails set for recreational skiing. With limited snowfall this year, each inch that fell was packed on the key trails in effort to get the most out of the snow. Lee holding stick he uses to chase timber wolves off the trail. People comment it would be nice to get a 8" snowfall but sometimes you can get more mileage out of less snow managing it proper versus waiting til a 8" dry dump has stopped and a lot of it gets pushed to the sides.
Mark Morrissey and his family visting for a few days and took a hour break to ski in the fresh snow with Mark. Mark and Monica lived one year while we were in Essex working at the Izaak Walton Inn and good to catch up reliving the crazy stories in the soap town of Essex. The year Mark was there it rained at least one day out of the week the entire year. That might sound for bad skiing but when you live in the Pacific NW, it is part of the weather and rain is good for settling the snow pack. Mark and I did a few backcountry trips with the most memorable being a hike to the top of Spot Mountain along the continental divide in East Glacier area, and tele skiing down on wind swept slopes that had been subject to wind speeds highest ever recorded off the divide. It was probably the sketchiest skiing I have ever done.
Ski race on Tuesday, Bemidji Pursuits. A few of the Finnlandia crew down to help with timing and starting and fun working with these folks. Mark Walters, head coach at Bemidji always does a great job. Nice having background music in the start finish area.
Hockey players in the Richards family alarmed seeing skiers in the snipers edge room. Each team uses a room to change, hang out etc. in between racing and skiing. More space once everyone cleared out, all good.
Team mates Riley Nelsen and Zean Baker battling it out for the win as Zean overcame 500 meters to go to take the win. It's a lot of work setting up for the races but fun having the positive environment of hs ski racing in your back yard and the enthusiasm of the kids.
Jake did not race, instead skiing around with me. Tuesday I kept track of the time on the boards and # of km skied. Zipping around taking pictures, moving course tap for the five different courses and smoothing out snow on the corners etc and make sure things were flowing along resulted in about 5 hours clicked in and around 35km.
One of the things that happened you don't want to happen as a weekend starts is a break in the water line around the well. Since the well crew can't dig before locaters come out to mark lines, not able to fix the problem which was a hole in the pitless. Like I said before, no big deal to Elsner. Fixed middle this week before too large of a new ice rink was formed and all good.
Warmer temps and softer conditions, I keep Carlos off the trails as much as possible. Good reason to head up to the Sugarbush forest road for the first time with the fat bike. Riding on the singletrack is hard. But the forest road with more gradual hills, previous packing by snowmobile/atv with fresh snow made for ideal conditions for the fat bike. I didn't get all the way down but riding the downhills with no worries definitely a huge advantage over the ht and no way could ride those conditions without the big wheels. Would be good to incorporate this road in to a race and still trying to figure out a course and date for March.
Frosty tunnel on North Loup Tuesday. Welcome winter!
1 comment:
you two look great in the winter gear.. so glad that it snowed for you.
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