Kid Stoke!

My kid is so stoked for powder days.  This past week he came to me at my locker at the end of the day and had this big crap eating grin on his face because his NYSEF coach took them on Bubba's.

He is now training on Friday's as well so he will have more ski days than me this season.

My girls in the woods on Sunday.  Platty's biking trails are fantastic for taking little kids off trail as an introduction to tree skiing.  

My 6 yo:




And my 9 y.o. (soon to be 10), who was really into the soft powder on Northface and Plunge.

 

I was at Gore on Saturday skiing Barkeater Glade.  The woods were silent, the snow was incredible, the place was empty and my husband and I could not believe our luck.  Two guys caught up to us and warned us that we better get moving because a mob was coming down the trail.  They continued on and we heard the crowd approaching.  It turns out that the "mob" was my daughter and her little group.  Four tiny girls came flying by us, all talking a mile a minute at the top of their lungs.  No sooner had they arrived, then they were gone, like a flock of birds.  Their Coach was in hot pursuit with a big smile on his face.  We were left in silence, with the woods all to ourselves, chuckling about the "mob".  Love kids on skis!

Laurel, tearing it up at Prospect Mt over New Year's.  She stayed out longer and skied farther than previous winters.  She not only nailed two technical downhills, she hit the ups too.  Very proud dad here.

   Knew the day would come just didn't expect time to fly by so fast. Youngest of my four children decided its time to ride the chair by himself .Time flies

And soon he'll be ditching those Line's for a snowboard !

Last night was my daughters first race of the season. She is not the fastest of racers, not real aggressive and very small for her age, and at this age - weight matters, interesting thing about this is she is a 7th grader sking High School Varsity. Now that may sound impressive but you have to realize that the HS team is small and weak so they will take anybody who has good racing skills, my daughter is the minimum age, it was not a gimme. She had to pass a physical ability test to qualify. On her first attempt in Sept she failed the standing broad jump. She worked on this doing squats and situps every night for a month and then passed. So now she is out on the course mixing it up with the big kids.

Anyway - back to the race. She skied a solid line and came in in the middle of the pack. High school is not NYSEF (which she does as well). It is more laid back and fun. In NYSEF she is in the bottom of the pack for her group - the fast NYSEF kids ski incredibly strong. However our goal was never to be on the olympic teams or even to get a college scholarship, it has always been to make a strong skier out of her. Just watching her and how solid and technical she skis has been worth the investment. To see her develop the self confidence and friendships has been so rewarding.

Note: Image not from race but from last Sunday.

They put a radar gun on my little racer today - 54mph down twister. Sure glad she's not old enough for a drivers liscense.

My son came in 2nd in his first race of the season.  He got low in the first run and lost some time and nailed the second run.  He told me that he wasn't happy with his first run and "skied an aggresive high line" second run  - his exact words so looks like NYSEF is coaching him well.

Really cool. They do a great job with them. My daughter really enjoys NYSEF. This past weekend was Super G speed camp at Gore. Conditions were so poor yesterday she told me she went down on her first of two speed runs and ended up in the netting, a lot of kids were loosing it so they canceled the second run. She was all smiles though and it didn't scare her. Tomorrow night she has a Slalom race with the high school team and  a GS race Wed night. Unfortunately I will miss both due to work

one from smuggs from the week before last. this was the last day of the wedge for my kid. its parallel from here on out. so i say it, smuggs ski school and ski camp is pretty terrific, they do a great job.

High line - check
angulation at age 9 - check
matching edge angles - check
on new edges well before apex - check

Nysef is worth every penny!

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My son Zach won the 50th edition of the Hovey Memorial GS for U-10 today. This was the biggest race on his race docket this season.  He won both runs and had a 1.3 sec margin on the 1st run and 1.4 sec in the second run. He said that his legs were burning on the drop at the end because this race was twice as long and much steeper than his age group normally runs. He tends to do really well on harder races on Draper Drop compared to on the former Nastar hill.

In the 1st run he had to make one footed turn on his inside (little toe) ski on the key gate just after the drop. His coach calls that a dog leg turn as in a dog lifting up his leg to pee. Big time turn that almost caused me a heart attack watching it.

He gunned it in the 2nd run because he said the coaches told him to race to win.

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Platty hosted the Catskill Mountain Series Snowboard Race on Sunday.  All Abby wanted to do was poach the course all morning long before the race got under way.  Who was I to stop her??

Talk about mixed feelings. My 12 yr. old daughter is scheduled to have her last HS (JV) race of the season at Plattekill on Fri. With the storm moving in, the odds are a cancellation w/out a make up date. Her 4Frnt twin tips are always ready, but she'd rather run a GS Fri. and ski powder on Sat. As the parent I say, things could be worse.

LOL. That's a BAD lookin racer. (Good bad).

Icy race conditions are much easier to come by then POW.

Would love to get some reports this weekend from Roxbury.

Go Abby! Go Zach! Go Kids.  

Those first moments of parallel are the best lemmy.

Roxbury school canceled, GS race canceled, "The trees will just have to be my gates dad, w/ a rock drop after the transition." Plattekill Fri./Sat./Sun.