Wrapping up Mt Hood

IWe have been going non-stop here at Mt Hood! It has been great to see some solid progress on the hill each day, and as great to see the teamwork and focus each afternoon in the tuning room, at study hall, and for our afternoon workouts. Here's some photos from the last few days. Tomorrow is our last day on snow and then we head home! See you all soon! 

Sophie and Bay after our hike to Tamawanas Falls yesterday afternoon. 

Tamawanas Falls, kids behind.

Sam and Parker talking business 

Yale at the falls. 

Eve Routhier (CAN) and Hailey Duke (USA) both slalom specialists, catch up at the top of Palmer. As you've read here, Eve is coaching at the FIS women's camp here this week and she has been awesome to have around.

A visit to Santiago

This year was my first year ever going to Chile to ski.  This whole camp has been amazing and productive, and like work out schedules, rest days are necessary for good beneficial days on the hill.  Today (Monday) we went down to Santiago and were hosted by Kai Horwitz and his family for a delicious BBQ!  Even though we had to get up early, it was worth it because when we arrived we were greeted warmly by Momo and Peggy Horwitz.  We all had fun playing on their trampoline and then walked to a nearby soccer field and had a very intense game!  Tired, we all walked back to the house sat down and ate large quantities of the absolutely delicious food provided.  After a great afternoon we headed back to La Parva and prepared for another great day of training!

Christopher O'Brien

Many thanks to the Horwitz family for the great day!

More from Chile...

Scenes from over the weekend...

Amber and Greg lead the warm-up

1GB Fiber Connection!

Sovernet is here today installing a 1 Giga-bit-per-second Fiber Optic Cable to the school.  This is the "fat pipe" that will allow BMA to improve our use of technology over the long-term.

The technology committee has been working hard over the summer.  Expect better WiFi coverage and internet to arrive over the next few months.  Along with the fiber connection to the outside world, we have ordered a centrally managed WiFi network that will allow us to give students better access to WiFi when and where it's appropriate, and allow us to restrict access when and where it's not.

Good things are happening and there is more coming on the horizon.

- DI

 

The past few days in Chile...

Steven Nyman and Travis Ganong visit

We got Steven Nyman and Travis Ganong to give a short uplifting talk to the kids. It was awesome! They said some really meaningful things about loving the sport, not taking little things to seriously, and the value of "being a team." It was a hit!!

Happy Birthday Matt!

Cutting the cake

Friday was Matt Hanus's birthday! We surprised him and the rest of the guys when we walked into his condo with a delicious tres leches cake singing the birthday jingle. 

Every night down here we look out at an amazing sunset. The colors have been so intense and the clouds make every one so unique. Pictures can’t do it justice! 

Bryna

An update from Aleck and Jake (Sunday):

Day off

 After four days of epic GS and SG training the boys were excited to get in the pool.  By the end of the night, it was very clear that Freddy has the best belly flop on the men’s team. During our day off tomorrow we plan to resume our snowball game. The snow ball game was invented by, Dre, who drained a snowball from our fifth story balcony into a trashcan 200 feet away.  There are now at least five trashcans of varying size scattered around the hotel’s premises.  Unfortunately, not everybody’s aim is as good as Dre’s, which was made clear when one of Freddy’s errant throws came dangerously close to a little girl’s head. For all the worrisome parents, your children are skiing fast and having fun.

Smiles and Hard Work

More scenes of the U14-16 Hood camp. Many smiles, and lots of hard work.

 Tory, Lucy, Corey

 Olivia teaches the U14 girls a new drill

 Making changes - if Abby doesn't make a change, she does push ups - above, if she does, Silas does them - below.

 Heading up to the mountain - U14 girls - Julia, Ava, Jennette, Kate

Typical day at Hood - sunny on the mountain and clouds below

Fuxi time - Fuxi is quite the character and he's been sure to find time to tell his stories to the Burkies.

Sunset! 

More Mt Hood

All the Hood Rats want to shout out to our teammates waay down south - psyched you're having a great camp and we love the updates! Here are, as promised, more pics from the U16/U14 crew here. The most notable part of today was the enormous run count these kids were tallying: we started tracking runs, and many of the kids were at or over 30 runs on Palmer today - the snow held up and their legs are TIRED this afternoon! Study hall in a couple hours, and one more day before our rest day.

Another update from LaParva, Chile

This is a great shot of a bunch of boys heading up for an epic run down the slopes of LaParva. We have had 5 perfect days out here with two great days of jumping and a total of 14 to 18 leaps off a really nice jump. The kids worked on their tucks the last two days on a speed track we set up on a decent pitch leading into a nice flat with timing feedback to see what really works. We also had challenging GS in the early AM the last few days where the guys are really starting to get a handle on the new GS skis. They still prove to be a challenge but these boys are working hard to master them.   We are looking forward to two more days of speed elements before our next day off. We have Super G lined up for tomorrow morning. Then, in the early afternoon, sectioning the DH track that the World Cup teams are training on. The kids get to work on glide turns, tucks, air time, and gain confidence at speed. We are expecting a little snow tomorrow afternoon evening, about 6-12 inches but we are predicting it’s going to be around 2-6 inches at most. Maybe we will be getting a little powder skiing Saturday. All in all it has been a really good camp thus far. Time flies when you're having fun!!!

Bryna

Scenes from Mt. Hood

Some photos to show you the happenings at the U16-U14 Camp:

 The U.S. Europa Cup girls are here for the rest of our camp.

 Kirk talks technique with Megan. This is the public lane, sans salt. Our lane was great!

 L to R: Liam, Yale, Chase (with a bloody nose), Matt, Cole, Jack

 Our volcano paradise - a big patch of snow

 Tory's girls: (L to R) Julia, Tory, Ava, Kate, Jennette

Parents: yes, your kids CAN get up early. Morning warm up at sunrise!

FIS Women Learning From the Best

The FIS Women's Mt. Hood camp is going well so far. We had very good conditions for the first 2 days of skiing thanks to 9 bags of salt yesterday, and 10 today. For a split second today I was wishing we'd thrown a full 15 bags instead, but right at that moment there was lightning in the distance and we hightailed it out of there in the oncoming rain. It was a wet walk back to the van, but we're back drying out in the Govy sunshine once again. I've seen lots of textbooks out, and even had a chance to jump in on some quadratic equation questions yesterday afternoon.

We're super luck to have Eve Routhier, a Canadian World Cup skier, along with us this camp. Eve brings a very up-to-date top end perspective to the group, and I'm really psyched to have her here to show the girls how it's done. Here's a photo of an on-hill discussion about lateral balance and edge control. More to come!

PS: check out Eve's blog and bone up on your French! http://routhierski.blogspot.com/

-Sam

Lateral balance/positioning has a huge impact on turn shape and edge control. Eve Routhier discusses the finer points. L-R: Liam Mulhern ('09, Midd.), Jordan, Alli, Anna (hidden), Moriah, Dani, Lexi, Eve, and Madison.

August camp study hall

Many of the U16s and U14s are back at Mt Hood, and we're getting more than our daily dose of Vitamin D, that's for sure! We had an incredible day up on the hill today for day one. Despite the tales we had heard about there not being very much snow, the conditions (salt-assisted, of course) were ideal and it only took a run or two for everyone to show all the progress they had made earlier in the summer. We finished up, had lunch, went for a lovely walk around Lake Trillium, and now we're in the middle of study hall. Unfortunately, study hall is the only part I've documented today! More pics tomorrow...

Greetings from Chile

Our hotel is on the right

Well the weather has been amazing down here. Sunny, not too hot but not too cold, for most of the morning training. The kids have been enjoying their time here, getting to ski in winter conditions. We have had three sessions of GS gates with a few sessions of drill work and free skiing. There are many trails to choose from for training so the kids are getting a wide variety of terrain.

Yesterday as we were starting our second session of GS gates we had a little push up competition with our skis on. Picture this: your tips in the snow, balancing on the tips and your arms, as you go down into a push up, the forces are a bit more than if you didn't have skis on doing a regular push up. If we get a chance we will send a photo. The internet is a bit challenging here. 

Today is our day off so everyone slept in after three days of hard work. The food is phenomenal as we have had chefs in the various condos cooking us amazing lunches and dinner. There was a mix up for a few days about breakfast but we have it squared away now.

Tomorrow we are back on snow, GS in the morning, possibly SG elements/jumping in the afternoon all depending on the availability of hill space. We are all looking forward to picking up a little speed, working on our tucks and good form in the air.

Bryna

Burkies on the Beach!

Enjoy the surf while you can, the snow is not far away!