sibhusky

This just in. She got within a point of yesterday. So far we only know the FIS points. The USSA translation of those points will take a couple of days. The combination of these two results from a FIS perspective could worsen her points by about 10 points. But she has a couple more big races coming up in January that could help and by then she will have loads more training in, PLUS NEW EQUIPMENT.

MSU has a race team, but she is not on it, she is still racing for Big Mountain. She needs to lower her points to be within the NCAA range. But, it would be a lot to be a freshman AND ski NCAA. She wanted to wait a year as well because she wanted to be able to keep up her grades. So, she is getting some training at Bridger when she is at school and training here when she is home. I forget what I ate when I was in Bozeman. That's what six hours of driving and three snow storms along the way will do to you. Then the same in reverse the next day on the way home. Update. Another SL today. Course was in better condition. She started in 68th place today, but midway into the course her pole fell off her hand and was dangling from her wrist. As you all know, they whack the gates in SL, so the precious knuckle protection wasn't there. It was two gates before she regained her pole so she lost a lot of time. We are still awaiting results at this point, but she thinks she finished worse than yesterday overall. She says the wind is horrible...so horrible that she actually LOWERED A BAR on the chair and was hanging on for her life. They had closed the whole mountain except the chair the racers were using. They discussed cancelling her race, but held it I guess as SL as not as impacted by wind as a speed event. Tomorrow is GS, thank goodness.

Well Siblet is out racing at Mammoth this week, as is another former CAT team member, Andrew Ginnelly. Right from the bat I knew in my heart that this was utter folly to send a kid who has been at college, with only a few days on snow and only two of them in gates, off to a major FIS race. Add to that the fact that we could not book air tickets at the time the coaches wanted without having to mortgage the house and well, the stage was set. Siblet arrived in Reno (closest airport to Mammoth) around 5:20 PM last Saturday. She was meeting other teams from across the division there (division includes teams from a wide geographical area, so they were arriving on other planes) so they could form up van pools. Anyway, she throws all of her stuff on the "luggage van". EVERYTHING. Money, underwear, cell phone, toothbrush...you get the picture. Van leaves. It turns out that the team they are sharing a van with HAS MISSED THEIR CONNECTION and they don't arrive at the expected time. It'll be four more hours of waiting for them to show. Finally, they arrive and they get their rental van. It has no snow tires. (Now you have to ask yourselves what kind of brains the coach had at this point.) They take off into the Sierras in a raging blizzard which was to drop three feet of fresh snow on Mammoth over the next two days. More on that later. Anyway, needless to say, their vehicle is not making it. So (thank god) they pull off at a Budget Inn for the night. (Of course, I've already paid for lodging in Mammoth. AND all of her stuff is IN MAMMOTH!) Next morning they are on their way BACK TO RENO for another vehicle. Of course the rental of two different vehicles was also not included in the initial estimate. Finally, they are on their way again and arrive in Mammoth about 24 hours after landing in Reno. Next day, the races are cancelled due to too much snow. They've been trying to pack the course with groomers and having the racers run over it and over it and injecting it with chemicals, etc., but the fresh stuff is too deep. So, here I am thinking that the training day she lost GETTING TO Mammoth (oh, yeah, I had already paid for that ticket, too) will be returned to her. BUT NO, the coaches don't want kids wearing out or getting hurt so they ski for all of three hours. Finally, yesterday, they run a slalom. Fortunately Siblet survives, but the course is still really too soft and she can't ski the gates, she can only ski the ruts and hang on. It's like a boblsled or luge run by the time she goes, 70-some people ahead of her. Her former SO, another team member, also finishes, but with a hike. For him it's a success, his first FIS SL race he didn't DNF. For her, well, she skied in her normal points area. Not bad for her first race of the season with no training. And she's in one piece. But from a budget point of view, no payoff since no points improvement. She has perhaps two more races before she comes home. We still didn't know last night if it was going to be SL or GS. Papasteeze, skimom, once your kids are racing FIS, this is the stuff you will sweat bullets about.

My understanding is as long as you stay in your region (as opposed to your division which is PARA) you can enter him in any J4 race. You should have received a competition guide which covers all that. If not, going to the USSA site and looking for Publications should take you to the comp guide page.

20 minutes tops to my mountain (allowing for snow delays). About an hour and a half to Blacktail, I am guessing, maybe less. About an hour 45 minutes to Fernie. Three hours to Snowbowl, six hours or so to Bridger and Big Sky depending on weather. Maybe two hours to Schweitzer.

There's a difference between altitude sickness and a normal reaction to lower oxygen levels. Most people will experience a shortness of breath for a few days and tire more quickly. But some of us get SICK -- horrible headaches, pounding hearts, nausea, etc. I'm one. The only way for me to prevent or reduce the problem is to overnight in Denver.

And $81 a day lift tickets. Hopefully you've gotten some discount tickets.

Hey, I thought he was letting you share hot tubs with strange men. A race suit is nothing compared to a hot tub.

So, did you see him? Did he enjoy it here or was it too cold and insufficiently open?

Okay, I admit, I am dying to find out if she's talking about her son or some other man.

So, I ski up to this guy with a brown coat with a fur hood. He's with two friends/relatives/whatever. I say, "Are you guys by some chance from the East Coast?" They say, "How'd you know?" I say, "I recognized your jacket." Then I ask the jacket if he's got a friend who calls himself Lineski on a PA skiing message board. He says yeah, but frankly I wasn't sure he'd really understood what I said -- it was kind of an off the wall question. I tell him to tell you that "Sib says hi". Total blank look of course. Then one of the friends says again, "How'd you know we're from the East Coast?" I say, "His friend told me." Then I say "Just tell Lineski that some strange lady came up and said Hi." And I skied off. They were probably still scratching their heads an hour later.

There is a temporary park set up on the backside at the moment. I don't know when the superpipe on the front is opening. The area it will be in is out of my normal travel zone. I imagine when it opens there will be a description.

I didn't see the description of LineSki's friend until I got home, so I couldn't look for him. (What should I say to him assuming I want to talk to someone who is loud, by the way?) Today was absolutely frigid, but outstanding. The temperature was either side of zero depending on where you were on the mountain and if the clouds were blocking the sun and I had to ski with a novice skier today (who got a workout from me), but it was just an outstanding day. Get ready for some "screensaver" shots, gang! The first few are about midday, but you'll see that I hung out at the top as the sun was getting lower on the horizon until the ski patrol chased me along (they wanted to go home). Consequently, I got some great golden hour shots. Here's a link to a screenshow (which works a bit better if you hit F11 before starting): Golden Hours at Big Mountain

I was wondering that myself. But, I don't think you'd confuse him with being a "guy" like he's a teenager or something. As I recall the owner was maybe in his late 40's or so, blond hair, handsome? Didn't act like a shop rat, that's for sure.

I think you should have taken it up with them at the time or at least found out what exactly happened so that we have the facts and not guesses.

Personally, if someone treated me like that, I'd demand to see the owner IMMEDIATELY.

They are both good guys. I would have given the nod to Brad for technical prowess, except for the complaint from Atomic, which has me worried. Mark is a SUPER SUPER guy to deal with and Siblet and I owe him a lot.

Yeah, I'd like to thank him for showing up and bringing this nice snow. BUT, he's in for some really cold days. Wednesday the HIGH is supposed to be 5 degrees. What's he wear? Maybe I should keep an eye out for him.

Well, it's begun snowing in earnest. Twelve inches at my house in the last 24 hours. The mountain is reporting 21 inches in the last week, but that must not include today! I loved the ski reporter's first sentence this AM: "Hey all you weekday powderhounds, that low pay part time job is going to pay off!! " That describes me these days. Anyway, I have some pictures. It was definitely snowing all day, so no sun and plenty of low flying clouds. First two pictures are on Russ's Street, a long flat run coming off the top of the mountain. It's a green run, so had been groomed last night: Looking "down" Looking "back up hill" This is part of the way down Toni Matt, looking back at the main chair. Visibility had improved enough to take this. This is on another "groomed" run, Goat Haunt, about mid-day: My leg, you can see the snow is just below my knee. Yes, I am on a ski. (I discovered the K2 XP's are good to about boot top, then get to be a bit too narrow as we approach knee deep snow.) Looking back up Ed's Run, an ungroomed blue. This was the run that showed me my ski's limits. I started trying to turn in other people's tracks.:

I am saving the use of my Recons until my husband "gives" them to me on Christmas. Besides, it's still early season conditions here. But my XP's are still super skis (grandpa to Recon). Only issue is they are not created to handle a lot of boilerplate. Some is fine, but they have to be kept tuned.

Big Mountain is still not fully open, although we opened in mid-November. The back side is open and has great powder. When I skied there yesterday, they had left about 8 inches of fresh on most of the runs, which was nice. BUT, since there is not much open, it was pretty much tracked out by 10 AM. (We open at 9:30). I went down Moose the day before. I question whether it should have been labeled an open trail as it was in backcountry shape. Lots of trees, bushes, and a gully down the middle I never knew existed!!! I got suckered into it because at the top it just looked like a few trees, but once past the "no return" point, the gully, bushes, rocks, etc. were lying in wait. The guy I was skiing with was not happy at my suggestion of trying the thing. We both survived, but there were no high scores on form. I don't get off again until Monday. But the last I looked I was ranked 37th in terms of vertical there (that won't last, I'll start slipping as the season wears on.) The kid has finals coming up and was just home, so the last thing she needs is mom distracting her. I MIGHT try to fit in a Bridger visit when I go down to bring her back for Christmas (she leaves me the following day for races in Mammoth), but Bridger would depend on when her exam is over that day. No sense dragging skis and boots down if I can fit in less than 3 hours of skiing.

I have warmer sticks. THERE IS NO WAY I am going to remove the liner every day. That is a major undertaking. The boots sit on a radiant-heated floor with sticks in them whenever there are not feet in them. Since I am not going to pull out the liner every day, they DO stink. But only when my feet aren't in them.

I don't know, they also added this ridge under my arch, so I took them out in the middle of the second day. It felt like I had high heels on. I already have heel lifts under my liners because of some calf issue and the boots have a high arch and I don't. The existing heel lifts move my foot up relative to the arch. The Superfeet made the lift ridiculous AND added back in arch that I spent a lot of time flattening. I just returned them during the honeymoon period. Feet were warmer today because I dressed warmer.

I tried a pair of those Superfeet inserts, the green ones, not the molded ones, and they added way too much heel lift!!!! I felt like I was carving great...with the tails of the skis. I was looking for more heel stabilization (I have custom footbeds, but they are totally under the foot, no wrap around the heel). I returned the Superfeet on their great return policy and got Scholls conformables instead, just to cut down on some packed-out boot issues. They are still a bit too much "extra stuff", but things are sure snug now. Trouble is, my toes are getting cold fast. Not sure how much is weather (9 degrees on the summit yesterday, excluding any windchill) and how much is lack of blood circulation.

I have some heat molded things I got at the loft years ago -- don't know the name, they have a red rubber top sheet. Frankly, I didn't USE them for the first four years I had them. They didn't feel right. Then last year I need to take up some space in my well-packed out boots and did some trimming of the footbeds and stuck them in. What a revelation! I can't take them in and out, tho, without a massive effort, so the boots don't really dry out underneath of them. They are just too stiff to take in and out without tearing up the inside of the boot.