Standing in the starting gate waiting for
an arm wave from Grayson that would signal he was ready with
the video camera, I realized that I was actually nervous. In
fact, the knees of this gate virgin were shaking a little before
my first ever race course run. What's up with that? I shoved
off and barely skated for the first gate...not even a real gate,
just a "brushgate", a thing that looked like one of
my 2 year old daughter's weird little toys...after a couple of
turns I realized "hey, this is just skiing." Relaxing
a bit I tried to concentrate on the things I'd been learning,
shoulders level, feet apart, hips moving like working a hula
hoop...OK, cut this next one a little closer now. Whoa, this
is fun.
It was day three of the USTSA Summer Telemark
Clinic at Mt. Hood and the place was going Richter. The camps
were full and everybody was having a sun-drenched good time.
The seismic activity that has been reported lately at Mt. Hood
was no match for the energy given off by the hundreds of stoked
kids--ski racers and boarders--heading off in all directions
to get after it. It made us want to go off too...try new things.
And so we were.
The first day we got up to the mountain after
a really crummy night's sleep following an evening of flying
up from California, doing the rental car thing, staying up way
to late, drinking too much Ketel One and waking up at Still Creek,
on the ground, with a million mosquitoes trying to get at any
and all exposed flesh. It was so bad it was every man for himself.
And it was hot and muggy. I got up and crashed from 5 to 6 in
the front seat of our Dollar Rent- A-Car Subaru, leaving a snoring
Big Tim out on the ground as bait. It worked, I actually got
about an hour of sleep.
We met Jimmy Ludlow and Grayson Davis, our
coaches for the clinic, out in front of the day lodge at Timberline.
Neither BT or I knew what to expect. All we knew about these
cats is that they were into racing, they were both high level
tele instructors and that Jimmy was a member of the PSIA Nordic
Demo Team. Hmm, racers, PSIA.....PSIA, racers. Despite our outwardly
open minds I think visions of spandex coated kooks with uptight
attitudes were probably lurking somewhere back in the deep recesses
of our slightly hungover and sleep deprived brains. Nothing could
have been further from the truth.
|
Grayson, the more outgoing one (his siblings
probably call him loud), was smiling, laughing, joking around,
and it was apparent that he was jazzed to be getting out on the
mountain. Jimmy was more quiet, definitely the technician, but
with an obvious enthusiasm all his own. We had to go back to
the car to get some more junk to take up on the hill and BT turned
to me and said "these guys are cool," and I agreed.
We liked them both right off, sensing they'd make a complimentary
coaching pair. We were right. |
 |
On the hill we began with a few freeskiing
runs that served to both loosen us up and take the edge off the
turn jones. Then Jimmy and Grayson began to introduce us to some
of the visualizations and movements that would form the basis
of much of what we would focus on in the next few days. One or
two were familiar, like holding our poles out in front parallel
to the slope to work on facing down the hill and keeping our
shoulders square, most were not familiar at all, like when Jimmy
had us standing at the top of the run rotating our hips like
we were working a hula hoop to get a rhythm going down the fall
line and to get us feeling what it's like to initiate turns with
side to side hip motion. This one really worked for me, right
off I was getting my skis more out from under me and getting
them higher up on edge, with more upper body angulation.
The next day, before starting out, we stopped
down and did some side slipping exercises. Sounds boring and
simple, but they had us looking at this basic move in a whole
new way. I couldn't wait to get back to applying some of what
I'd learned the day before though. Grayson showed us a variation
on the vertical poles thing. Instead of holding them out in front
cafeteria tray style, he had us hold them straight up in each
hand, framing an object or group of people below. This was another
exercise that rocked for me. We've all been told a thousand times
to look up, way ahead, and let the skis do their thing. Well,
I thought I was, but try framing a group down at the bottom of
a run with your ski poles and you will really, really be looking
up and far down the run. Guess what? Your skis, feet and body
know what to do, if you look up, way up, they will find their
own way like you would never imagine.
We did this, and tried did that. Jimmy and
Grayson giving each person in our group tips, both the National
Team racers and the recreational skiers alike. We all got lots
of individual attention and on the 3rd day we were ready to hit
the gates.
|
Everybody helped prepare the course by sideslipping
the lane to smooth it out while Grayson broadcast salt from top
to bottom to firm up the snow. We took our first runs, the racers
looking sharp and the rest of us, well, making it down ok and
raring for more. The course was a short one so rather than ski
down to the lift and wait in line (for some reason Friday was
a busy day and the lines were pretty long all morning, the rest
of the days we barely had to wait) we took off our skis and booted
it back up. |
|
Each run, skiing fast while making turns where
required rather than where I felt like it, became more natural.
I tried to remember all the things we had been working on. The
hardest for me was to try and ski with my feet in a wider stance--our
coaches wanted us to move our skis apart into a shoulder-width
stance and after years of tele skiing with my feet close together,
it was a hard to change this part of my tele skiing style. Other
changes weren't so hard, some were things I had been trying to
work on anyway, like relaxing my front ankle and loading the
boot tongue more.
Some runs were better than others. On one
I totally blew it. The course had become pretty rutted and I
was tired and ...well who knows why we fall apart on one run
and not another...I wasn't looking forward to seeing the video
tape at days end! Still, I was having a blast and when we were
done I couldn't wait for more the next day.
We all met up, as we had been doing every
afternoon, in a little alcove off the main hallway of the Timberline
daylodge. Jimmy fired up his lap top computer with a special
program called "Swinger." No, this wasn't an x-rated
piece of software...this was a video analysis program designed
for golfers who want to check out there swing. The crossover
to tele skiing this program made was perfect. Jimmy could overlay
one run on top of another, measure the degree of upper body articulation,
slow things way down or speed the tape up and a whole lot more.
He ran through several runs for each skier, telling us what we
were doing right (he was good at emphasizing that) and giving
us stuff to work on. To my relief when he got to the run I kooked
so hard on he just kind of chuckled a little and said "well,
that's a bad run there," and everybody laughed, nobody more
than me. It was true and it was a funny moment among all the
more serious coaching.
Not that there weren't lots of laughs.
After the video session I went over to the
Timberline marketing offices to borrow a desk and a phone line
for my laptop to see if I could upload a report from the mountain
and drop in on the forum. Big Tim told me he and Andrew Minier
were going to head up to the main lodge bar for a beer or two.
It took me a little longer than I expected and this fact, combined
with a little miscommunication meant that BT was left alone with
Andrew for nearly 3 hours. Sounds OK except for one problem,
Andrew had come out from Buffalo, NY with two goals in mind,
one was to get some good practice in at the clinic and the other
was to drink Big Tim under the table. I don't know how much beer
they'd had before I finally found them tripping lightly down
the steps of Timberline Lodge, but it had to have been a lot.
|
They insisted I join them for another round so
we went in to the Ramshead and no sooner did we get our drinks
than BT pushed his beer across the table towards Andrew and said
"I give up." He then muttered something that sounded
a lot like "my daughter is a really good soccer player...I
love my wife" (when he says those words, historically he's
definitely done) and promptly went to sleep for a few minutes. |
 |
Neither Andrew or Tim were drivable, of course,
so I took them both back to camp where we ate some snacks and
went for a cool, sobering swim in the Trillium lake. Later, Andrew
and I wanted to go into Government Camp for a visit to the Rathskeller,
Govie's number one hangout for more than 25 years, but BT was
still feeling a little, umm, under the weather and couldn't rally.
It's too bad because as it turned out having him along might
have come in handy. Sometime after midnight, as Andrew and I
were holding up one end of the Rathskeller's heavy oak wood bar,
a large group of young snowboarders came in and ordered up several
"tall Hamms". OK. Then we noticed that 3 of them were
wearing terry cloth headbands, in assorted colors. Now to Andrew
and I this seemed rather odd, so when he suggested we go over
and ask them "what's up with the headbands?" and in
my judgment impaired state I replied "good idea!"
So we did. I'm not sure if it was the question
they didn't like, or if it was Andrew's reference to Bjorn Borg
(huh?), but the next thing I knew one of the skinnier ones was
asking Andrew if he wanted to take "take it outside",
which was hysterically funny to us, especially when Andrew said,
"well, ok" to which the thin one replied "you
realize that 20 of my friends are going to follow me out."
We laughed so hard our sides hurt. I felt bad that these guys
thought we were giving them
crap over the headbands (really, we just wanted to know if we
were missing out on a new fashion trend or something) so I offered
to buy them some more of those "tall Hamms" but unfortunately
the bartender told me "you two can have more drinks but
those other guys are cut off." Needless to say this didn't
go over too well with our new friends, who disgustedly adjusted
their terry cloth headbands before heading off into the dark
Oregon night, leaving just Andrew and I at the bar with a lone
local shooting pool by himself across the room. We had killed
the place.
It was just the kind of weirdness that can
put a perfect cap on a great day of skiing and socializing.
|
Back on the snow early the next morning,
Jimmy and Grayson had laid out a new course while the rest of
us took some warmup freeskiing runs. This course was longer,
with more room between the gates and a little roll-off part way
down. Before we hit the gates our coaches gave each of us some
tips, based on things they'd seen in the videos. Once again the
racers in our group flew through the gates while the rest of
us worked on taking it up a notch from the day before. It was
fun and challenging. |
|
This is how our days went. We listened carefully
to Jimmy and Grayson, picking up loads of information that we
could take home with us. Techniques that not only helped us run
gates but tips that would make us stronger, more technical telemark
freeskiers too. This was evident each afternoon when we would
wrap it up and head out for some plain old turns.
|
It's often been said that running gates
will make you a better skier because it teaches you to turn when
you have to, not just when you want to. But skiing trees does
that for you too. The difference between skiing trees and gate
running is speed. Having to turn at certain spots without the
luxury of adjusting your speed downward when needed (as in the
trees) really pushes most skiers out of their comfort area and
into the learning zone. It gives you a new reference point and
when you return to freeskiing everything seems so much easier
and effortless. |
 |
On the plane ride south and back towards home,
BT and I talked quietly about the week, all we had learned and
all the fun we had. We both agreed that most skiers have no idea
what they are missing and that a summer tele clinic should be
on everyone's list of things to do, at least once. Tim and I
returned with a bag full of new tricks, sun tans and great memories.
We were stoked to have gotten a ton of mid-summer turns to get
us through 'til the snow flies in the fall. Before that Alaska
Airlines 737 passed over the Oregon-California border we were
already making plans to return next summer.
Hey, where's that 2003 calendar?....