On Snow at Craftsbury!

The skiing this weekend at Craftsbury on their manmade loop turned out to be fantastic!  I didn't get there until Saturday and it was still reasonably warm and soft skating, but it was cooling down and some snow flurries were in the air.  Everyone who had been there since Friday was starting to get tired and Eli had done 70 laps at that point!  The snow was reminiscent of skiing at Weston, but with hills and woods!  Woods with wildlife too as a bobcat, a snowshoe hare and a deer were seen.  Don't get those at Weston!  Several college teams were there including Williams, UVM, U Maine at Presque Isle and several other groups.  Janice held a masters clinic in the afternoon and there had been a race in the morning, so the joint was jumping!  In the afternoon we slapped on some Toko Red and Silver klister for classic skiing with marginal tracks in places and good tracks in others.  In the evening, while the kids were hanging out socializing with each other the parents and coaches had a great game of charades with lots of amusing acting out. 

Overnight 2-3 inches of nice, fluffy snow fell making the place look very wintery indeed. Couple that with low temps below 20F and a nice gusty wind and darned if it wasn't suddenly winter!  About half the group got in a skate ski while I skied classic before breakfast.   Everyone did about 90 min. of classic after breakfast and we fired up the two iPads so each skier could get some video instruction out on the course.  The iPads are a great tool so you can look immediately at the video.  They need a hood so you can see better in the brightness!  Then we switched to skate for a final session, also with some video.  At this point some were getting very tired, including several coaches, and we finally broke for lunch and then the ride home.

This was a really successful mini-camp and I think everyone was happy to finally get on snow and off the rollerskis, even if only for a couple days.  Everyone is skiing well and seems to have made the transition to snow quite well.  A few photos:



Liza



Jack Dawley

Zoe

Julia

Leah

Nate

Jacob and Eli

Hadley

Rosie