The end of the ski season is a bittersweet time as many athletes transition from the on-piste adventures and daily racing training to spring time and the surf season. For many it has been a great year of improvement, one allotted with injury and struggle, or maybe it was your first time racing competitively. The experiences are there to last and to build on for next year.

End of the Ski Season for some!

Warner Nickerson, professional alpine racer, from Copper Mountain, CO, tells about his relief at the end of the season when “Fat April” sets in. Fat April is when all the hardships and struggles put on your body during an intense race season die down and one is able to relax. Caution: Don’t get the idea that ski racing at Penn State is super intense day in day out. I’m just spreading my thoughts and readings from Ski Racing magazine. However, if you’re an athlete or once competed, you can relate to the relaxing feeling of ending a season and chilling out for a bit.

Nickerson

While many mainstream sports never seem to end nowadays due to year round seasons, skiing does take a break due to obvious limitations. In a sport with constant pressure on your body, Nickerson calls it “the most intense and grueling industry in the world” (Ski Racing). However, many athletes continue the training to be the best by traveling to the southern hemisphere where the months of June, July and August are not all palm trees and beach weather. There are many camps in Chile and Argentina. There are even full seasons of racing during the summer months. In early August, The Southern Hemisphere alpine Continental Cup starts up at the southernmost ski resort in the world: Cuerro Castor, Argentina.

Cerro Castor

Although I don’t see traveling to Chile or Argentina to get runs in this summer, my good friend Connor actually did travel south last summer. He excels as a freshman on the Penn State Ski Team and has taught me a lot of the skills over the past season. Hopefully we will train together over the summer by mountain biking, lifting, running and surfing for the upcoming season.

http://www.skiracing.com/?q=node/21858

Well, the weather is warm. Finally! Although I am a ski fanatic with a huge SKI the East sticker across my computer and a sticker of a racer on my fridge in my dorm, it is nice to feel spring.

While the next ski season is far away, the Penn State Ski Team is still active. Next week there is a hayride for ski team members as well as a rope climbing competition. During the competition you get a partner and have to navigate a ropes course. In addition, there is a formal at the Ski Haus this Friday. Overall, the snow is gone, but the fun rolls on with the Ski Team.

With no snow comes the reality of dry land training. In the fall I did not take advantage of dry land training due to pledging a fraternity, so this summer I need to get into proper training techniques. Daily running, squats, and lifting will be essential to hitting the swift, nimble turns in GS and Slalom next winter.

Dry Land Training

In order to pay for my attendance on all ski trips during the sophomore year, I am getting a summer job as a swim coach. This year I had to miss the Seven Springs trip because of inadequate funds at the beginning of the semester. Looks like I should have donated plasma at BioLife that week.

On another note, I realized I got an email from the Ski Team that Red Bull rep Hans Vriens is speaking to Penn State in Sparks tonight! If you’re interested stop by with me and we’ll hear from the man that coined the phrase: “Gives you wings”.

Stand by for next week’s review of Penn State’s Ski Team and my experience with a life committed to skiing.

Freestyle skiing may have taken on a new face with new school, park and pipe and urban rail sessions. However, the formal event dedicated to freestyle skiing incorporates a swift bump run with aerial maneuvers and is timed for speed. Now the FIS Freestyle skiing World Cup refers to the event as Moguls.

You hear the start gun and go straight down through a series of moguls almost 3 feet high and 6 feet in diameter. Yeah, I said straight down. Freestyle skiers point their chest and face straight down the mountain the entire race. The only way to make it through is with quick shifts with the knees allowing the boards to shoot in and out of the valleys of the bumps.

The trick is, two jumps are in the middle of the mogul field! In the air, racers are expected to throw spins ranging from 360s to 1080s, flips and rodeos. My favorite aerial to watch in this race is an iron cross backflip!

Here’s what it looks like:

2010 Winter Olympic Course

Along with time being a considerable influence of points in the event, turns through the moguls are judged based on technical skill, and of course the tricks are scored for different levels of radness and technicality.

The USCSA, the same league Penn State Ski Team is in, has this event and held them at nationals during the first week of March in Sun Valley, Idaho. During Spring Break I witnessed a form of this event happen at my local mountain, Blue Mountain, near Allentown, PA. In the next few years while I have a chance to explore my skiing disciplines, I definitely will get involved in this form of racing. As of now I’ve never thrown a backflip on skis, but will have to learn for this event.

Have you every done a bump run when skiing? Have you ever competed in a freestyle/mogul event like this?

Since I was young, my dream as a skier has been to compete in downhill. Downhill is the largest race in alpine racing; basically a straight shoot from the top to the bottom. As you can imagine, this race is not for amateurs. Downhill races are one of the most dangerous events in all of sports and see some of the fastest speeds put up without powered acceleration.

Skier rips his bindings off

In a typical professional, international race, skiers will hit speeds upwards of 130 km/h. For all you Americans, that’s a typical speed of 81 miles per hour. And that’s only what the average racers do! The fastest has been 100 mph which was set by the crazy Frenchman, Johan Clarey. To put the speed of the race in perspective, the winner traveled 2.75 miles in around 30 seconds!

Check out this video of Clarey hitting the 100 mph mark!

This race would be great since it’s based off pure speed and the mindset to go balls out down the mountain. It’s less of a race based on technique compared to slalom or GS and more fit for crazy individuals without the fear of being on the fringe of no control. This race is gnarly. Imagine shooting down a 30 degree slope and hitting jumps that let you fly 260 feet through the air. As Picabo Street, a downhill gold medalist, would say: “That fat speed that I love, that sensation, that’s what I want”

Bode Miller 2006

Coming from PA, there aren’t opportunities to try my skills on a course like that. If I could re-do high school, I would have attended a racing academy in Vermont, New Hampshire or Colorado and train to ski race at a top notch level.

Lindsey Vonn

The only time I’ve seen a downhill race was at Jay Peak in northern Vermont. I was too little to try it and was blown away by the speed that these guys were going. They literally went for it from top to bottom and looked like they were about to whip out of control the entire race.

The scary part is that people do wipe out and it’s not a great sight! Falling at a speed of 80+ miles per hour left Picabo in rehab for two years after snapping her femur bone into two! Ligament tears in the knee are common such as the one experienced by star Olympian, Lindsey Vonn this past winter.

I want to go check out the World Cup downhill race in person and see the insane individuals with an insane desire to win go at it next year.

Did you know that tomorrow, March 20^th, is in fact the vernal equinox: the first day of spring? What’s up with the 8 inches of snow on the ground and the snow expected tomorrow and Thursday?

Many of you may be disgruntled as you expected to return from the Caribbean and beach vacations to a warm, sunny State College.

Don’t count ski season out yet!

In fact, the same day that spring starts, so do the 2013 U.S. Alpine Championships in Squaw Valley, CA. More than 500 U.S. skiers and snowboarders will flock to the world renowned 1960 Winter Olympic resort for the race.

Course layouts at Squaw

The champs are a finale to an exhausting racing year of the U.S. Ski Team and hundreds of rising stars in U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association programs.

-On NBC you can catch the athletes battle in Super G (Super Giant Slalom), giant slalom, slalom and combined.

If you want a real life look through the astounding Go-Pro HD view, check this out. Stunning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGTAxkysJc8

It’s a shame that so many Penn Staters whine and whimper from a little bit of snow. Skiers, racers and boarders like to call themselves the “Children of Winter.” When I hear fellow teachers and colleagues complain about a winter wonderland, it shocks me. Would you rather have rain? Snow not only transforms the campus into a new world, it provides laughs and smiles from snow men, snowball fights, sledding and skiing of course!

Live a little and enjoy the snow like the racers do every day. The warmth will be here soon enough.

If you need a break from your studies, I’ll even race you down Tussey!

The Penn State ski season has unfortunately come to a close. The 6 qualifiers who raced both giant slalom and slalom in Sun Valley raced quite well and landed a 15^th team spot for GS and the 12^th spot for slalom.

Although I was not at Sun Valley, I received some great feedback from my first ski race season.

It turns out that after racing in the NASTAR format competition at Blue Knob, I was invited to their national championship held in Aspen/Snowmass, Colorado during the dates of March 20^th-24th. It’s a shame I have class.

During spring break I made the trip to visit my friend in Boulder, Colorado, where we spent a day skiing Eldora and then had a nice powder day at Vail. Eldora is a local mountain to the town of Boulder since it’s only 45 minutes away. They groomed a lot more of their trails, creating a nice racing feeling on the mountain. The difference was, the trails just kept going. Compared to any trail on the east coast, I felt that these trails were extremely longer.

This allowed for substantial  speed to build. On one of the trails, I used a speedometer app on my iPhone which read that I was traveling 55 mph. That’s pretty fast for riding on freestyle skis.

While I was in Vail, I took note of how early they start their racers in Colorado. The first lift we rode, from the Golden Peak lodge, went right over the sl practice courses. These kids could not have been older than 4 years old. They were tiny groms blasting down the course, fearless of the gates and steepness.

Overall, I had a great experience in Vail. After sleeping in a mountain house twenty minutes away, we were on the lift by 10 AM. The powder in the back bowls was superb and it was a great conclusion to my most productive ski season yet.

Vail Back Bowls

Look next week for reviews of professional racing and the U.S. ski team next week!

If you’ve ever witnessed the Olympics or the Winter X Games, you may have taken a glimpse of an event where 6 competitors go head to head down a mountain, through turns and over jumps. This event is called skier cross. In the USCSA offered in local races, this race is not held due to lack of proper conditions and elevation. However, in a week my teammates will be racing the rest of the nation in skier cross at nationals!

X Games Skier X Competitors

Sun Valley Resort

Over Spring Break the A-Team or the top 6 qualifiers from Giant Slalom and Slalom races will be flying out to Sun Valley, Idaho to take on the best racers from around the country.These are all USCSA racers of course, not scholarship driven NCAA racers. At the event there is freestyle snowboarding in slope style format, freestyle skiing, slalom, giant slalom, downhill and skier cross.

After hearing the stories of skier cross, I am committed to making that team next year. It’s one of my skiing dreams to get the rush of taking part in a Skier X comp. Jimmy Privvoto, a senior on the Penn State Ski team, has told me stories about the race. He says there are no rules, it’s all about toughness, balance, speed and positioning. Since the course is exceptionally skinny compared to what one might witness on TV, there is positioning strategy in that you need to get out front early and not bang into other competitors. He said last year he was part of a massive spill in which he took out the side gates after flipping out of his skis!

I feel I would excel in this format due to the balls out mentality it offers and absence of rules in its structure. Since I’ve been a freestyle skier for most of my life, the challenge of hitting jumps full speed would be something I am comfortable with.

This race at nationals is my inspiration. Next year I’ll be there.

This past weekend I spent my Saturday at Blue Knob Mountain Resort which is a little bit south of Altoona, PA. Rather than racing within the UCSCA league, Penn State traveled to compete under NASTAR. NASTAR, short for National Standard Race, is the largest recreational skiing competition in the world.

In my past, I have raced under my family’s NASTAR team name, The Funky Monkeys, and this weekend was the first time I signed up under that title in 9 years! I raced NASTAR until 6^th grade, after which I became extremely committed to swimming during winters. Signing Funky Monkeys under the Penn State team name brought a resurgence of childhood memories and forecasted a fantastic day of skiing!

The “fun” embodied the lax attitude where our coach, TK, blasted jams from his heavy duty boom box at the top of the run. The A-Team racers on the Penn State team sported hilarious costumes such as the hillbilly outfit, the pillow under the jacket to look like an overly obese skier, and even a convict who raced with his skis on backwards. I’ve never seen that before, but my friend Adam Drobish clipped into his bindings by putting the toe in the back of the binding and having the tips facing behind him as he tucked down the hill. Pretty dangerous if you ask me.

Skis on backward

I, on the other hand, raced the course for time and practiced getting as close to the gates as possible. After a few runs I was able to pass the gate and let it run smoothly up my arm. Plus, racing’s always a good time when they’re blasting classic rock from speakers along the sides of the trail.

After the racing, it was time to hit the powder! Yes, powder in PA. We would slip below the “Closed” signs and carve the untouched snow under the lift lines. What a treat. The best part is we never had to buy a lift ticket since we were with Penn State Ski Team!

When you hear about east coast skiing, people usually degrade the thin, icy conditions of many resorts. Avid skiers claim they can only go out west for the supreme powdery conditions and excellent service. From what I’ve experienced, racers challenge that idea completely.

Compared to recreational skiers, Ski racers have odd approaches to the sport. On the first lift ride during practice this past Sunday, my friend Connor explained to me why ski racers look forward to icy conditions over the unpacked, fluffy conditions. He explained, “With powder and loose snow, the snow gets piled up in the course, causing less stability and causes you to get out of control.” What in the world? These kids are crazy. With snow dumping on Tussey Mountain and a solid natural base of snowfall already covering the wimpy hill, these kids were complaining!? Tussey is lucky to have a twelve inch base of granular, man-made snow at best on most days. I decided I would have to find out for myself why racers don’t like racing in the powder.

During my first practice run, I lined up at the gate and analyzed the hill below me as I pictured myself sweeping through the slalom gates. Through the white haze, it looked as if the poles were sitting upon slightly curved moguls. Once I started the course, it hit me why they were afraid of un-packed conditions. After a few gates I was out of control and began floating through the spots of powder on the course. Each turn my edges slid out due to the absence of a sharp surface to dig my rails into. Finally, I shot out of the course just to save myself from catching an edge on the buildup of fresh snow. We ended up pulling the gates early and strapping on the twin tip skis to hit some jumps in the terrain park.

While I’ve been on the ski team, I’ve been shocked at out how different their mindset of skiing is compared to the recreational athlete. When they pay for a lift ticket, these racers are paying for two inspection runs of the course and two races. It’s almost as if they don’t enjoy skiing without the challenge of a race or the challenge of gates in their path. Maybe years of training on the snow made skiing feel like a job to them.

All I know is that I’ve never heard someone complain about powder on a run before.

When you hear about east coast skiing, people usually degrade the thin, icy conditions of many resorts. Avid skiers claim they can only go out west for the supreme powdery conditions and excellent service. From what I’ve experienced, racers challenge that idea completely.

Compared to recreational skiers, Ski racers have multiple odd approaches to the sport. On the first lift ride during practice this past Sunday, my friend Connor explained to me why ski racers look forward to icy conditions over the unpacked, fluffy conditions. He explained, “With powder and loose snow, the snow gets piled up in the course, causing less stability and causes you to get out of control.” What in the world? These kids are crazy. With snow dumping on Tussey Mountain and a solid natural base of snowfall already covering the wimpy hill, these kids were complaining!? Tussey is lucky to have a twelve inch base of granular, man-made snow at best on most days. I would have to find out for myself why racers don’t like racing in the powder.

The gates are set on the far right trail named Tuscarora.

During my first practice run, I lined up at the gate and analyzed the hill below me as I pictured myself sweeping through the slalom gates. Through the white haze, it looked as if the poles were sitting upon slightly curved moguls. Once I started the course, it hit me why they were afraid of un-packed conditions. After a few gates I was out of control and began floating through the spots of powder on the course. Each turn my edges slid out due to the absence of a sharp surface to dig my rails into. Finally, I shot out of the course just to save myself from catching an edge on the buildup of fresh snow. We ended up pulling the gates early and strapping on the twin tip skis to hit some jumps in the terrain park.

After a few training runs, we put on the twins. Here’s my friend Carl doing flat ground tricks at the top.

While I’ve been on the ski team, I’ve been shocked at out how different their mindset of skiing is compared to the recreational athlete. When they pay for a lift ticket, these racers are paying for two inspection runs of the course and two races. It’s almost as if they don’t enjoy skiing without the challenge of a race or the challenge of gates in their path. Maybe years of training on the snow made skiing feel like a job to them.

All I know is that I’ve never heard someone complain about powder on a run before.