From the front lines - High School Ski Camp - 2004

Load the bus. Drive 3 1/2 hours to Giants Ridge, unload the bus. Ski,
eat, ski, whine a little about the cold, ski, eat, ski, sleep - a
little. Repeat for 3 days. Go home. What a way to spend Christmas break!

Actually, we had a great time. We took 22 kids, 6 'alumni coaches', two
chaperones/cooks (thank you, thank you) and 3 adult coaches to Giants
Ridge for a 4 day camp ending this morning. We had a ball. I logged
18+ hours of skiing over the 4 days, although a good part of that was
'coach time' (lots of standing around or skiing slow). We had a range
of kids from brand-new-never-been-on-skis-before-last-week to kids that
skied the Silver trail 4+ times during their 'free ski' afternoon. The
real fun is seeing kids improve dramatically over the 4 days. I love
hearing kids talk about '[Silver] wasn't has hard today' and see them
actually 'get' V2.
It's also interesting to see the differences in kids. We had a couple
that would find almost any excuse to duck out of a session, and a couple
that were injured and were heartbroken that they had to sit out a
session or two. It's also a lot of fun to see 300 or so high school
skiers of all abilities from 6 or 8 different schools share the trails
for the day, with half of them 'day camping' in the common area at the
Giants Ridge dorm (and the others living in the dorm), sharing one
bathroom, and no fights, arguments, or problems. Were more groups like
this!
Oh yeah, the skiing. The trails were in great shape. A couple of
inches of snow fell on Christmas day and also on Sunday night, making
for great skiing. Temps ranged from around -20C up to about -2C during
the 4 days, making for a couple of wax changes. I actually skied
FastWax Turquoise on my skate skis and felt great on the really cold
snow, and then slapped a little Swix F4 on top for glide as it warmed up
(NO time to re-wax for coaches). Kick was great on the Swix VR family
(VR30-45) depending on temp.

Gotta love these kids.

Marsh Jones
New Brighton, MN
Asst. Coach, Irondale HS