Date: 6th of January 2008

Hi All,

Clear sunny skies greeted everyone this morning, only the second sunny day of the camp. The clear weather meant it was a little colder than normal but that didn’t seem to bother anyone as they were just happy for the sunshine.

The boarders headed straight for the air site this morning, and with all the kids stoked on their new tricks learnt from the day before they couldn’t wait to get some serious air time on the new jumps. Olli finally started nailing his straight airs with smooth style while Jordi's confidence was sky high and he was launching himself off the little jump. Kane and Jack were working on trying to smooth out their frontside 3's and  Jack managed to pull his best frontside 5 for the camp even throwing in a clean indy grab. Kane had stack off the day, somehow he came down tail heavy on the jump and blew his back binding off his snowboard. A rather freaky incident but he came through with a smile on his face, and rather happy he could purchase himself some new flux bindings. Jay was hitting the medium size booter, and was working on his ollie's and grabs. Jamie was nailing his best backside 360 for the camp even managing to grab mute which had the coaches super stoked. The afternoon was spent hiking the park as the lift lines were rather long. Jay and Jordi seemed to be coaching each other and finally Jordi was hitting the boxes on his own for the first time which was good to see. Emma was working on her frontside boardslides, and cab boardslides which she had on lockdown at the end of the day. Dave got the skullcandy award for the day for his super smooth 5050's and he managed to get a couple of boardslides in towards the end. Kane was sessioning the down bar, working on his backside lipslides.

What a glorious day for the moguls group. Up nice and early they headed straight for the air site to work on the great progress of the past days. Again, Bryn and Alex W where into the 720’s while Brodie worked on his 360 mutes. Brighid, Kate and Airlie all worked hard on the T sets and will progress onto spreads in the coming days. Alex C and Alex E also stuck a few jumps with Alex C taking a rest with sore shins. Alex E worked tirelessly on getting his feet a little wider on takeoff ensuring he has max balance while in the air. Bryn was forced to take a break after a hard fall (he’s fine Mum and Dad) while Brodie continued to work on his 3 mutes. At the end of the session Bryn, Brodie and Ridley all got the opportunity to hit the big jump, (49 footer) which was recently completed on the air site.

Ridley structured the afternoon to be a competition simulation on the large course before it gets ploughed to make way for the new 3 lane competition course. The group headed out at 1pm with a simple plan. 1 lap to slip, 2 training runs and 1 competition run. The last few days have taken their toll on the athletes and Ridley could see in their skiing that they were very tired, notably Bryn and Brodie.
After the training runs the group assembled at the top of the course for the competition run. The run was scored out of 100 with 50 points allocated for Turns; 25 for Air and 25 for Speed.

Results were as follows:

Notable mentions include:
 
Alex C: Skiing like a world champ in training, then crashing twice in competition.
Alex W: 360 top air, 720 bottom air.

The alpine racers had a day off today so no report from them but they will be back on snow training tomorrow.

This morning, the alpine/snowboardcross group headed out on boardercross boards for some technical soft boot drills. They started on easy runs just to get the basics right and have a solid base to work with. Ash dialled in her body position and her pressures while carving and also worked well on her heel side carves. Julia also improved her body position and made some solid gains today. In the afternoon they used whiskey jack run for some fun in the rollers and the girls were absorbing and getting air off the natural rollers. They also went through the rail to hit more rollers and practice going over them with speed to get ready for bigger jumps and landings. Julia improved her confidence so much and is ready to hit the big jumps again. Ash managed to feel more comfortable in the rollers and hitting features with more speed. Chrissy manage to improve her stability and speed on the rollers. Tomorrow is a day off and they all need it after this week’s great work.

Toasted ham and cheese sandwiches plus the regular sandwich buffet and tomoto soup – mmm just about perfect. To make the day even better it was Sunday night roast with chicken the unlucky animal today and it was served with all the vegi trimming. Just when we thought things were not going to get any better Emma rolls out the apple crumble and ice cream.

The unluckiest girl on the camp so far has to be Chrisy Richardson who has been without her snowboard gear since she arrived here on the 30th. Air Canada has managed to completely loose her bag and it does not look like turning up. I suppose on a positive note though she gets to go out and buy all new gear.

Tonight’s activity was swimming down at the Rec centre in Vernon. Min took a van load down for a couple of hours of fun. The diving boards, spas and even the water slide had a good work out.

Pinky today goes to our resident web guy and photographer Sam (aka Pez). He was over at the air site this morning and thought he would get his hands dirty and give the crew a hand chopping the landing hill. He was swinging the shovel beside Chris and lost his balance and in the frenzy to try and regain control managed to kick Chris in the leg with his ski boot and whack him in the head with his shovel and then slide to the bottom of the hill……maybe manual labour is not your forte Pez!

We say goodbye to Legs (Jussi) and the 7 members of the Ski and Snowboard Australia development mogul team who have been here for the past month. They fly out tomorrow to Colorado for a few weeks on the Rocky Mountain circuit before heading home. Good luck guys!

Until next time.

Stowie