Date: 31st of December 2007

Happy New Year Back Home!

A regular training day for the ‘six weekers’ meant that a new arrivals didn’t manage to get much of a sleep in this morning. Probably not really a problems as most that I spoke to this morning said they were wide awake between 3am and 4 am anyway….are jet lag, got to love it!

Today the snowboarders headed to the park to enjoy their first sunny park session with Beggsy and new coach Matsey. On the way to the park the group went and checked out the top section of the Red Bull mountain bike track which Nath found a few days ago. The group agreed to save the big section of the track to come back and shoot later in the week. The headed into the bottom section of the track for a while and Beggsy, Kane and Jack boardslid the wooden berm while Jay tried a few frontside wall-rides. Jamie was definitely a standout with a few nice melon handplants at the bottom of the wall-ride (see photo ofg the day). After the bike track session the group spent the rest of the morning hiking the park. Rowan was doing some nice tailpresses on the up flat box and Matsey and Kane were working 180 to nose presses 180 out while Jay was perfecting getting his boardslides to 90 degrees. Nath was also doing some nice boardslides and Jamie was on fire doing boardslides, frontside boardslides and even hitting the box with 1ft out. The standout of the morning had to be Jordy Cozella who hit his first box doing a 5050 and even hitting the small up flat box with a few nice 5050s and winning a skullcandy lanyard from Matsey for his efforts.

In the afternoon the group went to the airsite where everyone rode strong. Jack and Kane were leading the way doing some super smooth frontside 360s on the big floater. Jamie was doing some nice backside 360s off the little jump and Rowan got some nice air before sitting out to rest. This afternoon Nath hit the floater again and proved just how tough he really is sending it about 60ft showing everyone in the group what big air is all about.

The moguls crew had an early start this morning to avoid the NYE crowds at the bottom of the 6-pack. This worked to their advantage as they were able to sneak in a few runs before it got really busy. The group hit the rollers on Whiskey Jack for the first time in a week or 2 followed by a couple of runs of regular and switch human slalom got the edges working before the crew moved over to the park for some hiking while the lines were bad. Brighid made some excellent progress on the boxes while Kate moves onto the Up Flat box. The boys hit the rails at the bottom of the park where Brodie continued to work the Flat Down bar with Bryn. The group then headed for the air site for a couple of jumps before lunch. Thanks to Chris and the freeride guys for preparing the site.

Chris and his freeride group headed straight to the air site this morning under sunny skies.  The group worked hard to prep everything up since the cat was there the night before pushing snow around and left death cookies on the landing.  Conrad and Hamish were up on the big jump working on their 3’s.  Conrad was working on his take offs so he can progress into 7’s soon and Hamish was working on being patient and setting his rotation according to the size of jump.  By the end of the session Hamish had some good feeling happening.   The girls all pitched in and helped Chris build a bigger jump which was higher and further back from the knoll then they had before.  Amy and Lauren had a great morning and had some of the best jumps so far this camp.  Lauren was throwing down some very impressive safety grabs and looking very comfortable on the jump.

After lunch Ridley took all the ‘6 weekers’ while Chris and I took all the new arrivals out for the afternoon to do a tour of the mountain. The lift queues were pretty crazy so we didn’t get too many runs in but at least the weather was clear so everyone could get their bearings.

Meanwhile Ridley and the ‘6 what, 6 week’ crew headed out together for some more human slalom on Attridge in the afternoon. With no lift lines at all, the group was able to get a few runs in before having to help Mike from the Silver Star Freestyle Team with the construction of the new mogul course. Thanks to Brighid, Bryn, Kate, Brodie and Alex for helping out. The course will be built and will be ready for skier’s tomorrow afternoon. Big thanks must go to Mike and Jeremy from Silver Star for getting the go ahead to put the course together on New Years Eve.

I’m currently writing this update while were in the middle of our New Years celebrations.  Let me run you through our evening so far! At 4.00pm we all piled into the vans and it was a convoy down to Kelowna for dinner at the world famous “Mamma Panda All You Can Eat Buffet”. Well the groups certainly pushed the boundaries on the all you can eat part as they absolutely tore apart the buffet. From there with bellies full (or overfull for many) it was off to “Planet Lazar” for a couple of hours of lazar tag. Running around for a few hours on full bellies did not sit well with a few kids and there were a couple of quick trips to the bath rooms. We’ll be leaving lazar tag in an hour or so and it’s back to Vernon for a movie at the cinemas. We’ll be done just after 11.00pm and it will be back in the vans and up to Silver Star to see the New Year in.

Hope everyone at home had a great NYE and here is to a fantastic 2008!

That’s all for today / tonight

Stowie