April 3, 2007

We skied 7 out of 9 days. After our three day holiday weekend, we planned a ski outing after work at Hilltop, the little ski area in town. We had some coupons and we hadn’t been there this year, so I let all my ski friends know that we were going to be there on Wednesday last week. We actually had a bunch of people interested, but at the last minute the last few bailed out on us. Kris and I skied alone at the silly little hill. It reminded me of skiing at Alpine Valley in Ohio.

We had fun working on skills. We both worked hard on smooth edge engagement. Kris made significant progress at waiting for the turns to happen instead of making them happen. I took advantage of the beginner terrain park area. I always wanted to learn how to slide on rails and they had a simple beginner one set up. I immediately crashed and landed on the rail on my hip, leaving a bruise that I still feel now almost a week later. I didn’t try again.

Then the weekend arrived. We took a day off on Friday and spent all three days at Alyeska. The big event was the USSA Nationals, a real ski competition right here on our home mountain. Friday had the downhill events. We watched as Olympic medalists and other Olympic caliber skiers screamed down our mountain at crazy speeds. We enjoyed watching the races and skiing down along the course to different vantage points. We slept in on Saturday and missed the men’s Super G but arrived in time to watch the women compete. The slalom events were run on Sunday and this was the most fun from a sport standpoint since each competitor gets two runs. The second run is done in reverse order so the leaders are the last ones down the course. It was exciting to see the best skiers in the country making short turns even though this course was the least accessible for spectators.

The weekend really combined three great activities. We watched these top athletes. I took lots of pictures. And we skied. The photography was a unique opportunity. Knowing the mountain, the lighting, and the terrain really helped me find the best places to take pictures. The sun was bright every day although the courses had challenges. Max’s Mountain puts a shadow on much of the racecourses until early afternoon. The access was very limited on the sun side of the courses which forced me to find reasonable angles to avoid shooting directly into the sun. The challenge of shooting subjects moving at 60 mph required high shutter speeds and the bright snow gave me many challenges on getting the exposure correct. The camera proved its worth with responsive focus and 3 frames per second shooting rates. I ended up shooting over 700 pictures this weekend. Some of this is because we usually had little idea who was coming down the mountain next and couldn’t read the numbers on the fast moving skiers until I got the pictures onto a computer. That left me the fun challenge of figuring out who I had captured in still images.

The slalom was the most difficult to photograph. We tried several locations, constantly confounded by the tall netting along the course. I figured it out for the end of the men’s race, although my timing was a bit early. The chairlift had the best viewpoint. I should have waited until Bode Miller finished and enjoyed as much of his awesome second run as I could from the finish area. Instead, we got on the lift just as he was finishing. He was in 7^th place after the first run so we watched the last 6 from the chairlift. This worked out very well except that we got to the top of the course before the leader left the start gate. I could only get a picture of Ted Ligety from behind, but he fell to 2^nd anyway. We waited a little longer for the women’s finish and I got great pictures of the final competitors in the middle of the course.

The skiing was fun too. It was the first weekend of spring conditions. The temperatures and the bright sun provided wonderful pina colada smooth late afternoon skiing. The mornings were a little crunchy, but that probably worked perfectly for the races. It was also a fun challenge to ski the icy bumpy stretches along the courses, but the afternoon skiing was the best. We kept making laps on the same south facing slopes, looking for steeper and scarier lines in the soft creamy snow. My legs were burning every evening.

Friday evening we stuck around after skiing. We had a nice dinner in Girdwood before heading to the opening ceremonies. The opening ceremonies were OK. The crowd was pretty small, but the athletes were gracious and the entertainment, a couple of native music/dance groups, was very good. We didn’t stick around to get an autographed poster but it was nice to see all these famous athletes in person even if they did seem frighteningly young.

The spectators for the races were also a little disappointing. I was hoping to see big crowds at the finish line, but we could always ski right up to the fence anytime we were at the base. The upper spectator areas were sparse as well. The parking lots were as full as I have ever seen them and the lift lines for the post race, sun softened snow were above average for springtime, but it was never even remotely crowded.

It was a fun weekend, but it was exhausting.