NZ: Day 14

The finish of the morning DH came right down the bunny slope.

Plenty of sun today.

The snow was immaculate all day.

Recovery walkers.

Kea: The mischievous mountain parrot.

Great day for a photo op, but most of them are down here...

It’s so hard to believe our camp is almost over, but it is… one more day of SL and we pack up and prepare for the long flight home.

Today, we skied a lot. Recently, we’d taken a lighter schedule (day off, two days on, day off again) in anticipation of good weather and good snow for our final three days of SL and, boy, did it pay off in a big way. In terms of weather and snow quality, today was our best yet, and if you’ve been following the blog, you know that’s really saying something.

Right off the bat, as has been our practice most of the camp, the girls free-skiied for an hour before coming over to the course. During that hour, they are encouraged to do drills and ski on one ski while Libby and I set up the SL drill courses. When we are done setting, we go to the free-ski lane and watch/help the girls with their skiing. At around 10am, we all headed over to the courses: three short sections with varying drills in each. We ran those courses until around noon, then Libby and I went back up, reset each of the three courses and after a break, the girls came back up and ran until around 1:30pm. It sounds like a ton of skiing, and it is, but the girls took frequent breaks for water and food and to watch the Austrian and Canadian women’s WC teams soar close to 60 meters off the DH jump.

Oh yeah, that’s right, the Austrians and the Canadians trained two different DH courses today on different parts of the hill. From 7-9, they ran one DH and then they set on a different part of the hill, utilizing the jump, and ran that one from 9-11:30. It was inspiring watching those girls send it off the jump; they were going pretty big.

All in all, today was terrific. The girls worked very hard on their skiing and were generally pleased with where they ended up at the end of the day, especially considering it was everyone’s first or second day in SL gates.

Hope all is well back home and at Mt. Hood and La Parva. We’re thinking about you guys, checking the blog and loving the pics!