Everybody's Doing It

 We are well into the best time of the year in Alaska.  The best time of the year in Alaska spans from February 15 to June 15.  There can be no debate about whether this is the best time of the year in Alaska or not. There are a bunch of reasons why this is the best time of the year in Alaska. Here are a few of them:

There's more daylight each day.
Around February 15 is the first time you can really feel the warmth of the sun for the first time each year.
There's always plenty of snow for skiing between February 15 and June 15.
It tends to be the sunniest and driest part of the year.
Most of the summer tourists haven't arrived yet.

For local skiers, there's a logical progression of ski outings that begins close to town and close to sea level in late winter and gradually transitions to more exotic and higher elevations as summer arrives. One of the first classic trips of the spring ski season is the Arctic to Indian traverse, a 30 kilometer trip in the front range of the Chugach, above Anchorage. I skied Arctic to Indian with a couple of friends last weekend. The UAA Ski Team skied it earlier today. If I didn't have to be on Kodiak Island for work, I'd have joined in with the Seawolves today for a second round. There is plenty of snow, and I've never seen better trail conditions than right now.

Success!  And I'm not talking about Toom's broken ski.  Or his intact Triac poles. I'm talking about the fact that, despite his broken ski, Toom is standing in the Indian Valley parking lot, at the end of the trip, and isn't stranded high in the mountains somewhere, postholing his way out of the wilderness, sleeping under trees at night and eating birch bark for sustenance.  It takes real guts to take a pair of lightweight racing skis over the Arctic to Indian traverse, but Toom isn't easily intimidated. 

I think we have a lot of great outings ahead of us this spring!

Fourth

Saturday.  The final day of NCAA's. It ended with some skating.  The downhillers had finished up the slalom on Friday, so they came out to support us. Everyone was feeling good and the vibe was right. Sunny and warm, and we were confident and rested. We were pretty sure things would go well for us. 

Here's Espen at around the nineteenth kilometer of the twenty kilometer race.

And here he is a little earlier in the contest.  And me, trying to stay out of the way.

Here's Sparky, giving Tuva a little pep talk with 500 meters to go.

Sigurd.  And the alpiners.  And Astrid.

Sigurd:

Astrid:

Astrid, Pascale and Tuva post-race.

It's been quite the year!  Sparky was clearly very happy and relieved to get his mitts on this.

Trond and Sparky at the end of a successful week.

The coaching staff - all of us.

Maggie, Mikey and Siggi

Roommates Espen and Moro

The trophy got its own seat on the plane ride home.  And why not?

If you compare and contrast our new fourth place team trophy to our most recent (2009) fourth place team trophy, you will quickly notice several differences.  For one thing, the trophy has grown larger over the years.  That's only natural, due to inflation.  Also, the 2009 trophy is a lot dustier. (But perhaps I have to take some of the blame for that.) Most disturbingly, however, you will notice that the cross-country skier has been removed from the trophy, leaving only the alpiner. You might think that, considering the larger size of the trophy, there would be no need to remove the cross-country skier. On the other hand, you may have thought there was no need to remove the alpiners from our ski team earlier this year, either, so maybe it's only right that the nordies get left off the trophy now. Or maybe I've got it all wrong; maybe the skier is actually a nordie descending a hill. Looking closer, it does appear to more of a nordie tuck than a downhiller tuck. 

But the more important thing is:  Look at how much snow there is in Anchorage now! It's going to be another great season of spring skiing adventures in Alaska!

Mittersill

 I had an opportunity to take the minivan for a spin up the road to Mittersill for a little slalom action today. I was eager to get out on the hill with the alpiners because Coronavirus has kept us separated this winter. It was nice to reconnect!

Looking North

Sparky & Morten

Rebecca picked up some hardware this afternoon.

The group

Sparky put me to work at my usual job - video guy on the hill. Most of the footage that I got is on the alpine team's video camera, so I can't get to it. But I did manage to save a little of today's footage, and I've included a link to it here, in case you're wondering what a day on the hill looks like for our alpine skiing counterparts. If you've never been to an NCAA alpine race, you'll probably be interested in checking it out!

Nordic Day 1

 We put in a solid day of work today, and it looked a little something like this:

Pre-race strategy talk.

The boys put in a solid night in the boiler room

Magnus Noroy. Bib #1. First man out this morning.

Maggie in the gate.

Astrid in action.

Tuva, Astrid, Pascale

Tuva and Astrid on the podium

Astrid, Espen and Tuva.
Four of us became NCAA All-Americans.
Some of us won trophies today.
We'll try to get some more on Saturday.

In Appalachia

 We are in Jackson, New Hampshire, in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, for the NCAA Championships.

Tuva, Magnus, Pascale, Astrid, Sigurd, Espen

Astrid and Tuva, out for a tour in North Conway

The boys are ready!

The girls are ready!

The coaches are ready!

The skis are ready!

The Recruit (Chapter Two)

When we Seawolves go off racing in Europe, we always try to get other ex-Seawolves involved in some kind of supporting role. So, when our Tuva Bygrave qualified for the World Championpionships, it became obvious that we'd need to get a Seawolf embedded with the Australian Ski Team - and fast!

In due course, certain forces were brought to bear, and we got our man where he needed to be. And just like that, Seawolf Lukas Ebner was all lined up to make sure Tuva would have the skis she needed to take care of her business in Oberstdorf. 

Lukas in action in his new clothes.

As for me, I didn't know for sure that we had Lukas in place until I heard from Lasse Moelgaard-Nielsen, who put the word out via special channel, that everything was in order.

The tall guy second from the left is Lucky. The one third from the right is Tuva.

In the end, it all worked out, and Tuva had a successful week on fast skis at the World Championships last week. 

Thanks, Lukas!

The 2021 Seawolf NCAA Team Fan Guide

It's that time of the year again.  Rain or shine.  Worldwide pandemic or not.  It's NCAA Championship time and the Seawolves are here in New Hampshire with a full team and everyone's feeling good! This year the alpiners will be at the Mittersill ski hill while the Nordic team is at Jackson. Here's an introduction to your 2021 Seawolf Championship Team.

Pascale Paradis - Nordic

Astrid Stav - Nordic

Moro Bamber - Alpine

Adam Verrier - Nordic Volunteer Assistant Coach

Rebecca Fiegl - Alpine

Toomas Kollo - Nordic Assistant Coach

Trond Flagstad - Nordic Head Coach

Didrik Nilsen & Mike Soetaert - Alpine

Tuva Bygrave - Nordic

Georgia Burgess - Alpine

Sparky Anderson - UAA Ski Team Head Coach

Li Djurestal - Alpine

Anna Berecz - Alpine Assistant Coach

Magnus Norøy, Sigurd Rønning and Espen Persen - Nordic (all three of them)

Morten Kjerland - Alpine Volunteer Assistant Coach

The racing kicks off tomorrow.  You can watch it all, live and in real time, at this website.