Date: 3rd of January 2008

Hi All,

Wake up was at the regular time of 7.30am and there was a dusting of fresh snow overnight

The free ride group headed out this morning and had a good warm up and stretch, Coach Chris mixed up the warm up to keep everyone on their toes. After that the group was doing laps of the six, which included the park. They hit some tree trails up top that had some good drops and were quite nice with the fresh dusting of snow on their way through the park the crew rode the new boxes up on the beginner line, there was also a couple of rollers that will soon be jumps. Lauren and Amy were trying 180’s for the first time.  Erica, Kate, Mike, and Marine were all practicing their pop and timing off the lip.  Conrad and Hamish were playing with switch stuff and butter on the nose and tail of the skis. The group also took advantage of the nice groomed terrain after the park and worked on their switch riding.

In the arvo the group headed to the air site to finish preparing the jumps, including the brand new 40plus footer that the cat pushed up that morning. The girls also worked very hard to build another small jump that they will be hitting in the next few days.  The crew got one jump shaped for jumping tomorrow, they still need to fix the landing and shape the other three before everything is fully up and running. The free riders plan to hit up the small one tomorrow morning unless it dumps snow and they have a powder day.

Ridley and moguls group headed straight for the skills course this morning for some hard training. Again the group was slightly hampered by poor weather conditions. This however, did not stop the group from working extra hard to get as many runs in as possible. Both Kate and Alex E made some fantastic progress this morning. Bryn, Brodie, Alex C and Alex W all worked on their 360’s while Ridley worked on a drill to ensure they stopped drifting on the jump. Brighid and Airlie put down a few good runs before having a quick rest. A number of runs later some small rocks popped through. Unfortunately the pitch where the moguls course is constructed has very little grass on it and is mainly sharp rocks, after all, we are just outside the Rockies. The group put in some work and a great slip to ensure the course remains in excellent condition and headed in for lunch just short of  midday. 

The group spent the afternoon with Phil’s Snowboarders working some edging drills in the form of human slalom. The crew also made a couple of sweeps through the park to get up close and personal with some metal and boxes. The whole crew had a great afternoon with many laughs and sharp turns.

This morning some of the snowboarders were feeling a little tired after the last few days of hiking and jibbing so after a quick chat a group decision was made to session the jib run on the frontside. We welcome two newcomers to the group Emma and Dave who came out for the first time today and spent the day getting their feet back. Jordy came out in full force this morning and was riding hard and fast and really pushing himself he nailed a heap of nice ollies and even stepped back up to the small boxes in the park. Rowan learned another new trick today adding the melon grab to his repertoire and starting to go for mutes as well. Oli now has his backside 180s on lock and threw them off every cat track they could find. Kane was a little tired and kept close to the ground but managed to throw an impressive 720 butter combo, Jay also did some nice butter combos off the smaller cat tracks. Nate and newly arrived Emma were also impressive off the cat track with some nice cab 180s. Today it was decided that the Skullcandy daily award which was a sweat band, would go to the most creative rider leaving it wide open to the whole group. Kane was impressive finding lots of little log jibs on the sides of runs but the Jack stole the prize today with his creative gap ollie to perfect transition at the bottom of the park.

This afternoon the guys teamed up with the freeride skiers to go and shape the jumps on the aerial site and get it all set after the cats got in there and rebuilt it yesterday. After moving tonnes of snow around the group left at 3:30pm with two jumps almost done and another two not far away from completion.

This morning, the alpine snowboard group headed out for some tech runs. The grooming was perfect today but the visibility was average, it got better the lower the group got down the mountain. Ash and Julia kept improving on their technique getting their carves better and working on their body position. Chrissy made big improvements in her carving starting to use her lower body to her advantage. Jack changed his body position for the best and his speed and control immediately got better. After lunch we partnered up with the mogul team for an afternoon of human slalom everyone had a great time riding through the virtual human gates. Some of the girls got scared from the coaches carving so close but everyone was able to adjust their line to each moving gate. It was a little snowy all day, which made it pretty nice to be outside and very comfortable hopefully it will keep snowing for tomorrow.

The Alpine skiers rode the comet express today and had a mini course of stubbies set up down the side of Big Dipper they spent the morning doing runs working on completing the course and focusing on their line. Both James L and James P had no problems with the course with no falls or bailouts all morning. In the afternoon they worked on their technical free skiing riding the comet express.

Pinky today goes to Michael Remilton for pole planting himself in the eye and awkward injury to say the least… he ok and has two scratches and a band aid for his troubles (he might even have a good black eye tomorrow).

Tonight’s activity was pool and table tennis Rowan and Loz were on fire and almost made this finals in both events proving to be quite the duo. The final results were Min and Michael Remington came out on top in the pool tournament while Rowan and Loz were successful in the ping-pong.

That’s all for today.

Stowie

P.S. As mentioned yesterday, Conrad Lucas made the cover page of Vernon's newspaper The Daily Courier. Click here to check out a scanned image of the paper.