Date: 22nd of January 2008

Hi All,

Tuesday January 22nd, and the countdown to the final day has begun. Today was the beginning of our last training block and we were greeted with an absolutely amazing day, blue sunny skies and a relatively warm minus 7 degrees.

Phil and his posse of alpine girls headed out to upper Big Dipper this morning to find some of the best snow and course conditions of the camp so far. The snow was firm and fast and with awesome visability all was set for a great days training. The girls were straight into and easily had their best day in the gates so far. Chrisy was carving beautifully and was right on her line and worked mostly on early pressure and the sharpening her turns. Julia had really good carving all morning and really stepped it up with her speed and mainly focused on straightening her line as much as possible. Ash definitely had her best day of the camp so far and made large improvements in her lower body usage. In the afternoon the group headed out on soft boots and mainly hit whiskey jack and the big dipper lower section working on lower body absorption.

With amazing conditions Beggsy and Matesy planned a full day in the park. The usual laps over the whisky rollers and down through the park were the order of the day. Nathan was working on his frontside and backside 180's finally getting his rotation perfect on a few after lunch. He managed to do some very nice combos on the boxes with 5 o's to nosepress on the upflat box and they were followed by 5050 to frontboard on the flat down bar. Rowan stepped it up and started doing frontside boardslides on the upflat box, and hopefully tomorrow he will 5050 the flat down rail. Jordi was as usual hitting every box in site, with nice boardslides and 5050's on the battleship and the flat down bar. Dave was stomping his 5050's on the battleship and consistently landing the box to box gap with smooth style. Jay made some huge improvements today finally boardsliding the whole flat down bar and even looking rather stylish, good work Jay! Rider of the day though definitely goes to Jamie who landed his first backside 540 and he even surprised the coaches with how well he landed and executed the jump.

Another glorious day for the bumps crew, with them making a b-line again for the skills mogul course first thing this morning. The gang headed over with the same things in mind as Sunday. The boys were working on delaying their pole planting while Alex E was working hard on getting his weight forward and positioning himself in a more comfortable stance. Kate and Airlie were working on putting together a top to bottom with no airs. Brighid rejoined the group to work some moguls again. The group also had a number of additions in James L and James P. That made for 3 Alex’s and 2 James’. Fun for Ridley! The crew got some video footage and Pez joined the group to get some great shots. The moguls course tuned into somewhat of a duals competition by the end of the day with Brodie and Alex W showing their strength.  The group headed for the park in the afternoon to grab one last lot of footage before Ridley puts together the athlete DVD sections. This was also a great opportunity for the group to get out of the moguls and relax in the park for a couple of hours. Kate, Brighid and Airlie were all doing extremely well sliding almost every box in the park. The James’ were also doing well with James P attempting rails for the first time.  A special mention must also go out to Alex E who attempted his first rails this afternoon with great success on the flat down.

With the park super groomed and looking the best it has all camp Chris and his freeski group headed straight there.  After a good warm up run and stretch everyone did laps off the six pack hitting the park on the way though.  Chris and Conrad took advantage of the jump lines and were hitting them up all day while the others were determined to nail their 3’s which everyone was practicing on the way down.  By the end of the day Kate had nailed her first full 360 – well done!  Nick Shea joined the group for the afternoon and had the rail session of his life nailing every big rail in the park.  Hamish did a switch 540 on the little half pipe jump, but since it was his first one he was super stoked.   He was also hitting up the jump line and the big rails.  The group had a great session and looks forward to getting out in a big crew again tomorrow.

Tonight’s activity was movie night down in Vernon. Myself and Min drove two vans down at 6.00pm (yes we had an early dinner) to see ’27 Dresses’ the true definition of a chick flick. It was funny in a few places but definitely one for the girls. The movie was done by 8.30 and we were back up on the hill by 9.00pm.

Pinky goes to Nathan fell for sliding on the flat down box and landing on his flip phone and smashing it into two pieces……. Mmmm!

Big shout out to Emma for an amazing Japanese night. The Teriyaki Chicken noodles and three choices of sushi rolls were amazing.

Until Tomorrow

Stowie