Dog Days

I have been training out in Park City, Utah for the last three weeks.  It has been a solid block and good cameraderie with the boys in the gym has made us stronger and made us long for the ski hill more than ever.  Midweek has looked a lot like this.

And the weekends have looked more like this.

We have a place right on the Jordanelle so we have been taking advantage of the nice weather and the location and TJ's boat to get out on the water and rest our muscles.  Last week we went on a hike, and we were trying to make it to the top of this.

Unfortunately there was no trail so most of our hike ended up looking like this.

We did find some cool stuff along the way like some snow

And some really green plants.

And some snow tunnels.

Fish forgot his water bottle, AGAIN, so he got some sustenance from the snow melt

After the week of training I took off for Jackson, Wyoming where my sister lives with her husband Trevor.  I showed up in town and we went to watch our buddy Jim in the rodeo.  He is a team roper and he killed it but unfortunately his partner did not. Better luck next time Jimmy!

We went up to the top of the tram and checked out some still skiable terrain off the backside.

Thanks to Jason Rolfe and his hair stylist for hooking us up with some tickets

Chelsea posing with the tram

And a Corbetts Couloir plank in honor of Anna Goody

Thanks to Chelsea and Trevor for another great weekend, We got in some fishing, tubing, biking, and touristing.  We finished it off with a ferris wheel ride at the carnival, I definitely missed Anna on that ride, ferris wheels just are not the same when you are the third wheel!

Heading to NZ on Tuesday, ready to get back to work!

Kings and Corn

Sometimes there are opportunities that appear out of nowhere.  A few weeks back I was on a bike trip with my ski team on the California coast and I got a phone call asking if I would have the dates free to be able to come up to Alaska and hit up the Kings and Corn at the Tordrillo Lodge with Tommy Moe and Daron Rahlves.  Suffice it to say that my calendar was quickly cleared and we made it happen!

This blog is just to share a few pictures from that 5 days we spent doing nothing but trying to find the nicest  corn snow left in Alaska and the biggest King Salmon that were still running.

The Lodge is about a half an hour float plane ride out of Anchorage

A warm greeting from the staff that chills out there for months at a time.

Our command post for 5 days

Our transportation, unbelievable to have the heli pad right outside the front door

Still a lot of snow up high in AK in July, even though this was a thin snow year

Chilling out on the glacier

Heli drop at the Talachulitna River, getting the raft blown up for a float

King a ling, oh yeah 

Daron, stoked!

Tommy showing off a pretty little Rainbow

This shot was taken at 12:30am , gives a good perspective on the light situation, the sun would go down for about 3 hours but it never got completely dark. Kinda missed seeing the stars.

One of my favorite shots, Tom Day leaning out of the heli over this little pool on the glacier, the white bottom made the water the coolest aqua blue color that I have ever seen.

That is all the evidence that I have for now but it was a great week.  We were filming all the action for a ski movie so hopefully they can capture the epicness of what they have going up there in AK!

Quick Winter

I have a bit to catch up on.  I had a short racing season this past winter due to a DH training wreck in Bormio, Italy on December 28th.  Luckily I walked away and can now say that I have a clean bill of health.

Although I did not return to racing I was able to enjoy the last couple months of winter with a ton of pow skiing and hanging out in the mountains with good friends.  A luxury that is not often afforded to the traveling ski racer.  A week in Jackson Hole, one in AK, a handful of days in Snowbird and a ton of ripping at home in Squaw Valley salvaged my winter.  Here a few pics from along the way.

A day after I was released from the hospital in Austria.  My face was a little mangled and my head pretty rattled.  

It took me two months to get cleared to ski again but when I got the go ahead I went directly to Jackson Hole to visit my sister and Trevor.  It snowed almost every night for a week.  

Trevor introduced me to Teton Pass, we would hike in the early AM and then ski the resort all day.  

Trevor, Chelsea and I enjoying  a blue Wyoming day.

This view never gets old

Early morning hike

More fun skiing 

from the top

Got to do some touring with a whole new Tahoe crew that I rarely see in the winter, this is Jack Wolf an old ski racing buddy.

Squaw during an amazing streak of skiing. 

Nate and I smiling after an afternoon of snow machining in AK

This is a shot from Arctic Man, can see the hoard of RVs in the enter of the shot out in the distance.

Looking forward to getting back to this.  

I am now in Mammoth with the rest of the US Downhill Team.  The conditions have been a lot of fun. We actually had a pow day on Thursday but since then the weather has mellowed out and we have accomplished a couple days of Super G training.  For me it is great to get back to work and feel the adrenaline that you get when you put a pair of race skis on your feet.

Hope that everyone is enjoying spring.  I am looking forward to a bit more skiing in Mammoth and then spending time with this lady.

RESPECT

After he won the World Cup GS in  Alta Badia yesterday, An Austrian Eurosport reporter asked Ted Ligety what were his plans,” I am going to go home and ski some powder and take out my snowmobiles.”  That really resonated with me as being the US Ski Team in a nutshell.  We are known for being more laid back and enjoying skiing for all of its benefits rather then just the racing side.  The only difference with Ted right now is that he is still laid back and humble but he is absolutely dominating the Giant Slalom World Cup.

Ted just won his third straight World Cup GS race, a feat that, as far as I can tell, has only been done by four men in the last 20 years.  The men to accomplish the feat are Alberto Tomba, Michael Von Gruenigen, twice, Hermann Maier and now Ted.  The only man to Go 4 in a row was Tomba back in 1991, a streak that spanned two seasons.

Giant Slalom is the core of ski racing.  It is the event that requires the most finesse and the most control.  All great champions have had GS success in their careers, Hermann Maier, the greatest of our generation,  used to crush the event. Bode Miller was at his most impressive, in my opinion, when he could put time on everybody in else in GS in between massive mistakes and still win races.  Michael Von Gruenigen was like a dancer on skis and was by the far the most consistent GS champion in my memory.   

It is an event that is not determined by fast skis or the size of the competitors, it is straight up skill and in that department Ted has been putting on a clinic this year.  

I am really stoked for Ted and his humble attitude, his skiing has been a great motivator for our team in a season where most of us have struggled to find our stride.  Keep it up buddy, it is fun to watch!

The FroMan

Robert Frohlich, a friend of my family and a friend to Lake Tahoe passed recently after battling cancer for the past two and a half years.  I first met Fro when he laid the tile in the entryway of my families house in Ward Canyon when I was 8 years old.  At that point in my life I was really falling in love with skiing and I remember religiously taking the Tahoe-Truckee weekly from my Dad to find the frequent articles that Fro would write about the local ski community.

As I grew older I sometimes became the subject of his articles because of my ski racing success and I was always proud to be mentioned by him in the paper.

I once had a long stretch of time where I could not ski because of knee surgeries.  I remember seeing Fro in the village at Squaw where I was becoming a too frequent customer of Mamasake where he worked serving drinks.  We had a beer together and it was all fun, but the second time in less than a week that I set up to his bar he was not smiling.  He asked me what I was doing and if I ever wanted to accomplish my dream of returning to the US Ski Team.  It was a poignant moment because I knew that he was proud of me for what I had accomplished and he had the heart to tell me that he thought I was about to throw it all away.  At that time it had a big effect on me and I credit Fro for helping me buckle down and become strong enough to overcome my injuries.

The next season I came back strong I still have an article where he claimed my World Cup Downhill victory in Chamonix was the most notable accomplishment of 2008 for Tahoe based athletes.   Coming from Fro it was real!

The last time I saw Fro was a few months back.  We talked a lot about skiing and how he was sad that he had to leave these beautiful mountains behind, he knew he was on his way out.  We were mutual fans of each other and we made a trade that day, I gave him my Nike puffy jacket from the Vancouver Olympic Games and he gave me one of his rugby Jerseys from his days at the University of North Carolina.  We snapped a couple of photos, he kept telling me how beautiful how my girlfriend Anna was, he always loved the ladies!

I will miss Fro, as will many.  The way he could put into words what people were feeling was amazing to me.  I will be traveling with his rugby jersey in my bag this year on the World Cup tour and every time I look at it I will remember the FroMan and ski a little bit faster!

Tahoe Ski Report

Took a little hike this morning with my friends Jesse and Bernie.  It snowed two nights ago and has remained really cold so we decided to go explore and see if those peaks were really as snowy as they appeared to be.

As we left the road it did not look promising, a lot of cars were laughing as they saw us booting up.

As we continued on the snow did not get much deeper but we were treated to some nice views!

At the top the snow was DEEP........ relatively speaking!

So as it turned out we got in a few turns and then of course we were stoked on it so we tried to milk it all the way back to the car which turned into a great stone grinding for all of our skis.  But as Jesse said today "skis are tools" and as such they are meant to be used and abused as long as they can get us to where we want to go.

More snow is in the forecast so hopefully I can get some more turns at home before heading out to Colorado next week where the race training begins.

Go Giants!!