Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Crushed the Level 2 Ski Exam yesterday!

   Wahoooo!! Any doubts I had about passing vanished quickly, and wasn't the least bit nervous the entire time, after the examiner told me my skiing reminded him of a friend of his who was trying out for National Demo Team this year. That, however, was a major surprise! This was before lunch time on the first day; by the end of the day I had figured out I was apparently the best skier in our group of 6. Some of the others started getting pretty negative toward the end of day 2, because they presumably had started with expectations of being able to pass. I felt bad and tried to give some pointers on the chair now and then, but so much seemed to rest on prior preparation and knowing the expectations of the exam that I felt a little awkward being in that position. I was having a lot of fun showing what I was capable of doing on skis and had worked hard on all season, and was enjoying the further coaching we received.
   On my evaluation sheet I had exceeded expectations on all but 3 task/demo aspects, and had lots of positive comments on my bump and steep skiing along with some things to work on for Level 3 (still a ways off). I have to give a lot of credit to the trainers at Alpine who helped us prepare fully throughout the season, and other instructor mentors who took the time to ski with me and give feedback. After all, it was pretty obvious who had not been prepped to the same degree! Alpine went 3 for 4 on passing this exam, which was a pretty darn good percentage for the Level 2, and I am already making plans with my co-workers to study and prepare for the L2 Teach exam next season.
   With 10" of fresh snow at the mountain today I feel like a bum not going skiing, but my legs are in need of a break after 5 days in a row of work/skiing, and I have to go to work tomorrow... rest days are good!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Wallowing in the sniffles again, oh well

   I'm not entirely sure what's going on with my immune system, but it seems to dislike me a lot this winter. I find that a bit strange since I'm no longer living in a trailer in the back yard like last year; perhaps having a warm cozy house is a good incubator for germy things.  Who knows? It would be nice to finally have clear sinuses again someday.  In the mean time I have plenty of spare minutes for blog blabbering :)
   Pondering on my race schedule again: I'm thinking Sea Otter is definitely a go for this year, even though it seems like my first race every season is a little wishy-washy, maybe this will be the year to break that pattern.  It'll be fun to finally race with the pro girls, and hopefully improve on my dismal performance from 2010, when I botched a jump right in front of Kit and got caught by the winner before the bottom of the course.  The dual slalom actually looks like more fun than the pedally downhill that my V-10 is going to be a tank on, but I might as well race both just for experience.  I would really rather go to the Pro GRT in Port Angeles the following weekend, but money-wise that's not going to work out since traveling will cost a lot more than Sea Otter. Hooray for being a ski bum.  With 3 of the GRT races this year within reasonable road tripping distance it was a little tough to make this decision, but I might just take this season to do all of the different fun races I've always wanted to try like Ashland and Downieville, and save the gravity series chasing for next season (when I hopefully will have more sponsorships and a good job situation figured out).
   In the skiing realm, I passed the teaching portion of my Level 1 Telemark exam yesterday in the rain at Alpine.  Now I just have to complete some basic questions and get checked off on skiing skills and I'll be certified to teach intro to telemark lessons, hooray! If only I had more time this season to ski tele--it's so much fun, but between working in alpine gear and Level 2 Alpine training there hasn't been much free time to free the heel.  With my Level 2 ski exam coming up next Monday and Tuesday I'm going to cram in some practice time in the mornings before work, hopefully with some friends who can tell me if I'm on the right track.  I'm not too worried about it though, from everything I hear the ski portion is a breeze as long as you're decent, but the teach is where things get hellish. Thankfully I'm not taking that part of the exam until next season! Upon passing that, I will be able to guide guests into the sidecountry areas at Alpine thanks to my Avy 1 course, and see if I enjoy it enough to move more into backcountry guiding.
  Time to get off my butt and bake some goodies for the work week ahead, and make some more tea. Hoping I wake up tomorrow morning with a much clearer head!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Miracle March?

   Wow, last week was craaaazy! I think I was at Alpine Meadows every day for 12 consecutive days thanks to work, training, and the avalanche course.  Which was excellent, by the way.  Being an avid backcountry skier who has gotten by so far on common sense and instincts mixed with a small amount of knowledge, it was good to go in-depth on the specifics of terrain selection, snowpack analysis, and the ubiquitous human element.  An avy fatality in Tahoe the previous week was sobering to consider, but provided much good discussion as a case study of typical human behavior in relation to this year's sparse winter snowfall.
   The winter weather pattern in Tahoe, with the exception of last year when it snowed continuously from November to June, seems to consistently lack snow in December-January, and then the storms roll in with a vengeance from late February through March.  Now that there's only about a month left in the ski (resort) season it seems as though winter is here for a little while. Very funny mother nature!  As far as backcountry skiing goes, hopefully the season will go a little bit longer so I can increase my dismally low number of vertical feet hiked this season.  Or, if things do melt out sooner than normal, I can just go ride my mountain bike a lot sooner.  Either way it would be fine by me!
   Fortunately due to all this nasty rainy and windy weather here at lake level, Kit and I got memberships at the local climbing gym High Altitude Fitness just 10 minutes away in Incline Village.  They take pride in their climbing wall as the tallest indoor gym in Nevada, and have good route setters that re-set on a fairly regular basis.  Now that my shoulder is fully healed (minus some annoying crackly scar tissue) I can reach, pull, and push in any direction, aka start climbing hard! And that's just what I'm doing, trying to work back to where I was over a year ago leading 5.11 sport climbs and 5.10 trad.  The first 3 or 4 times at the gym were frustrating, seeing moves I should make and then not being able to actually do them from lack of strength, but last night felt like a breakthrough when I was able to complete a 5.11a on lead without falling! I am amazed and encouraged by how quickly strength is coming back--luckily technique never goes away or I'd be a lot farther behind.
   I am excited for climbing outdoors again this summer with Kit and all my other friends, getting back to pushing my boundaries to a new level.  Of course this all has to happen in between riding and racing my bike during free time, but luckily I feel like climbing is an excellent complement to mountain biking, especially downhill which requires so much upper body/core strength and balance.  So much that I'm going to keep it as a main part of my alternative "training" plan year-round.  Sure, I could be lifting weights too, but until I have a personal trainer telling me what to do this is a lot more fun. I'm lifting my own body weight--see?  If any mountain biker girls out there in internet land are interested in trying rock climbing just give me a holler!!

Monday, March 5, 2012

Back to business as usual

Starting on Friday, things got a little crazy again in Tahoe. A beautiful bluebird powder day always brings the folks out to the slopes, without exception, so I made sure to leave the house just a little bit earlier than usual to avoid getting caught in traffic. Little did I know that I barely missed a huge backup by only a few minutes--an instructor that left Kings Beach 10 minutes after I did wound up barely making it to lineup at 10. Yikes! Nobody expected that!
Aside from missing traffic, my other goal was to be in line early for the lift opening so as to maximize my pre-teaching powder runs. It worked on all counts, and I had a grand 3 runs before all the crowds really hit. Then, off to teach the beginner class! Turns out I only had one student for the day so that made life really easy. She even got so worn out that she quit early...well, I did explain that doing "just one more run" when you're beat can lead to injury...so I don't blame her. Skiing uses all kinds of new muscles that can tire out easily with the inefficient movements of a beginning skier.
3 PM and I'm off, what to do next but go for a hike? One of my favorite sidecountry stashes beckoned, hopefully still reasonably untracked, so I shouldered my skis and plodded onward. Caught up with a group of guys who were going out that way and asked if I could tag along just for safety's sake, so we all headed out together. It made for the best run of the day, as all 5 of us managed to find untracked lines through the deep fluffy powder! Satisfied with the day's finale I headed back to the locker room just in time for the evening CPR class I had signed up for. 4 hours of classroom learning ahead of me, I snacked and settled in to refresh my mind on such an important lifesaving procedure.

The rest of the weekend was a blur of teaching mainly kids in private lessons; mostly fun, sometimes a little trying. This morning I went to Level 2 ski training at Alpine--countdown is 3 weeks to the exam and I feel just about ready (if I can find some decent skis to use for the exam). Tomorrow through Thursday I'll be increasing my avalanche safety knowledge in an Avalanche 1 course offered to us ski instructors at a greatly discounted rate. Hooray!! Stay tuned for updates on the experience!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Ummmm, snow?

Well, it appears as though winter is finally here - in March no less - and we're all hoping it sticks around for a little while! Squaw yesterday was amazing, making laps on KT-22 and finding all sorts of stashes and fun things to jump off of. Alpine today was also good, though the lift line on Roundhouse grew to incredible proportions by midmorning and pretty much killed the vibe for me after 4 runs. Grrrrrr. I guess everybody is so hungry for pow it doesn't matter how hard the wind blows this season. If I wasn't on the schedule to work I would have probably been hiking up some nice sheltered, treed slopes for some untracked turns, like in my backyard here in KB.
If I hadn't gone to Alpine, however, I would not have randomly ridden the chair with the rep for Whitedot skis, a guy visiting from my home state of Washington. He convinced me that I needed to try a pair since he had some demos in the car, so he grabbed those and set them up for me while I went to ski school lineup. Luckily, I didn't have to teach, so we took another run. He wasn't kidding, those things rip! A small ski company, handmade in Chamonix and ridden to recent freeskiing world tour wins, I would hope they ski well! The Preacher is their all-mountain fatty and despite being 112 underfoot it also carved some fine turns down the groomer back to the chair--after shredding the bejeezus out of the pow on the way down. FUN!! The only downside? $420 for the skis, a screaming deal, but an amount I'd have a hard time coming up with after missing 5 days of work during the biggest ski week of the season. Crud.
On that note, at least it's still snowing! Tomorrow should be good, but knowing my luck I'll probably be teaching beginners all day.