A Day at the Hill

Today was a busy day for us coaches with sessions at 8 AM and 6 PM for the Comp Team athletes, and 4 PM for the Prep/Devo summer crew - all at Birch Hill.  It was a good day too - lots of sun, lots of fun, and - most importantly - lots of good training.

I'll let the pictures tell the story:

We started the morning off with some technique drills for bounding

Then we did a few passes without and with poles for power and speed

We had a special focus on adapting our technique - turnover in particular - to changes in terrain

The group looked pretty good (reference Eliza here), but we accept that there is always room to be better

Then we finished off the morning session with some L3 ski-walking intervals from the bottom of the Comp Wall and up tower direct. 

The intervals took 4-5 min and the crew did 3-6 of them.

Prep/Devo athletes on their warm-up run around - get this - warm-up loop.

Crawling exercises as part of our warm-up - to engage the core and increase mobility in the legs

We then split up into two groups - one at the bounding station focused on technique and power, the second doing ski-walking with some technique working into intervals.

Eloise shows how it's done

I was at the bounding station so I took some shots of the 'Cruisers' (one of our two groups) as they did the work.

We (coaches) finished the day with the Comp Team athletes.  After a 30-40 min run and some strength, we got out the frisbee for some ultimate.

The late day sun was at the right position that we all looked like we were in the spotlight - it looked really cool, but I'm not sure the camera did it justice.

Rainbow Basin Ski!

Friday evening a group of 8 athletes along with Nick and I split from Fairbanks for our first OD of the new training year.  Our destination was Red Rock Canyon near the Canwell Glacier and Rainbow Ridge in the Eastern Alaska Range.  Our goal?  Hike in and go crust skiing on the lingering snowfields.

It's difficult at this time of the year to get a good freeze, so we had our fingers crossed and made plans to maximize our chances.  Two years ago, we'd tried to do a quick day trip (starting with a sleep over and a 4 AM departure), and while the weather was spectacular we were breaking through the crust in short order already at 8 AM and were forced to break out the klister to shuffle around for the rest of the day.  With that experience in mind, we decided to camp the night before and get up at 4 AM in the hopes of hitting the crust at the coldest part of the day.

Despite our best intentions of having everything packed and ready to go, it still took our groggy group 50 minutes to actually hit the trail, but that was OK as the crust seemed to still be hardening as we hiked in.  After a little over an hour we reached skiable snow and strapped on our boards, and while the crust wasn't great, it was enough for our lightweight group to stay on top of the snow(yours truly excepted).

We skied for a couple of hours, ending our trip in a big bowl a few kilometers up the valley.  After playing in that area for a bit, we turned around and sped back down to where we'd left our gear, hiked out and headed home. 

Pics below:

Burgers in Delta on the way down

High Stoke in Camp!

We camped at the end of the accessible road - a five foot snow drift blocks the way in the background.

The girls and Nick went for a hike right out of camp

And the boys played pranks on the girls with moose nuggets...

4 AM Wake-up

Hiking in

  

Bears!

  

At the stream crossing

 

Getting up there

Not too shabby a view at 6:15 in the morn

Getting ready to ski

Climbing up the valley...

Playing in the bowl at the end of our ski

Zipping back down as the crust softens

Refueling and packing up for the trek back to the van