Uncle Kevin

As my friend Lucy recently told me, ski racing is all about the friendships you make along the way. And so it was that we found ourselves in Uncle Kevin’s on-again, off-again hometown last week. I’d been eagerly looking forward to seeing young Finnigan working his magic on the slalom hill, but it was an unexpected surprise when Uncle Kevin was free and willing to show us coaches around Sun Valley’s various trail systems. True to its name, Sun Valley was sunny, and with snow depth at 150% of average, our afternoon explorations of Ketchum’s copious corduroy were blissful. I’d forgotten that Kevin had spent several winters “looking for trouble, and finding it” in Ketchum thirty-plus years ago. No wonder he seemed to know all the secret spots.

On our last day before returning to Alaska, even Little Brother Finnegan came out to shred some corduroy with us. After a full week of alpine racing (starting at the back of the field as a first-year FIS skier with 999.99 FIS points, but winning runs and finishing among the top ten), he’d wanted to finish the week off with some Nordic racing at the SuperTour. But his doctor advised against it, on account of his recently broken elbow which hadn’t yet fully healed. Nevertheless, he made it out for some post-race touring with the boys in the afternoon sun. 

Happy Holidays From Moondog

It was with great pleasure and minor fanfare that we discovered that the Moondog had found his way into our lives during our recent swing through Utah and Idaho.  You will recall that it was less than two years ago when, needing an extra set of hands on the wax bench, the Moon Dog, on essentially no notice, took a couple days off from his engineering job and jumped on a flight to spend his weekend concocting magical klister potions and slippery flouro surprises for us in Soldier Hollow.  This time, though we didn’t have the pleasure of his company or his ski-waxing wizardry, it was nice to see his smiling face looking up at us from the wax bench shelf.

Utah Recon

 This team is going to be spending a significant amount of time in Utah this year. We'll be here for a mini training camp in late February / early March. And the NCAA Championships will be here immediately afterward. As a bonus, Pascale might end up here in late February for the Junior World Championships in biathlon, though that's not a sure thing yet because that team hasn't yet been named. 

Anyway, we've got our first Utah trip in the rearview mirror and it was quite a success. We had lots of smiles and a few laughs, and our race results weren't too shabby, either. We had a few firsts around here: JC won his first college race and his second college race. He also won his first national championship. His teammates Espen, Magnus and Sigurd joined him to take the top four places in a college race. Apparently, no Seawolf Ski Team has ever done that before. 

So we're in a good place at the moment. Tomorrow we drive five hours north to Sun Valley Idaho for our second set of RMISA races this season. 

Trond and Toomas spent a significant portion of the past week here.

Hey guys! Listen, we shared a wax cabin with Jan Buron, Seiji Takagi and the rest of the Alaska Winter Stars.

Meanwhile, the team tried to figure out how the jacuzzi tub worked.

Typical Utah

On the Olympic trails.

Tuva felt ill for a few days and was sequestered at the coaches' house. We brought her some skis to help her feel more relaxed and comfortable.

I don't know what we were laughing about this time. But it was always something...

Back to business in the wax cabin.

As for me, I spent my week here in the mobile studio, with Yuriy Gusev the producer.

At my desk job.

Former Seawolf Hannah Rudd was really fast this week!

Team meeting.

With the racing week over, we were able to go out skiing at some new places in Utah.

Loading up to go skiing.

But first another team meeting.

Here's Sigurd. And Mount Timpanogos.

Magnus

James Clinton

Espen

Astrid

The girls at Sundance.

Pascale, Astrid, and the Tuvas

Espen & JC

It's been a good week. Now on to Sun Valley!

Now We're Really Flying

After everyone's final exams ended, a lot of our team boarded airplanes and left for distant parts of the world. I boarded a bunch of airplanes too, but I stayed in Alaska.

I flew out to Unalaska / Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, which is rarely easy at this time of year when daylight is short and winter storms are frequent. There are no trees on Unalaska Island. It's too windy there.

I flew on a jet to Kodiak Island. And then I got in a small plane and flew around from village to village. This is near Port Lions, coming back to Kodiak around sunset.

I flew to the southern end of Kodiak, to a village called Akhiok. I'd never been there before. We spent about 10 minutes on the ground. It was nice. But kinda short.

Kodiak Island has more mountains than you might think.

Here's that town, Akhiok, that I was telling you about. This is the whole town.

Here's where Akhiok is located. Right next to that gravel airstrip in the middle of the picture.

A couple days later, I flew to Naknek and Dillingham. This is the Nushagak River. If you like salmon, you'll be happy to know that this river is chock full of them.

I also flew to Cordova. On the way home, I took this picture of Girdwood. 

A couple days ago, I did the grand tour of the Alaska Peninsula in the copilot seat. Nelson Lagoon, King Cove, and Sand Point. About 11 hours of flying. And the whole time I was admonishing myself: "Adam, just don't touch anything!"

It wasn't the greatest flying weather.

Here's the coastline near King Cove.

Here's Iliamna Volcano. You can see it from Anchorage if you know which direction to look.

Here's the backside of Iliamna volcano. You can see some steam coming out of the left side near the summit.

Landing in Nelson Lagoon. Rain and wind. 300 foot ceiling. Gravel strip with ocean on both sides. I like Nelson Lagoon. It's very peaceful there.

We got more gas in Nelson Lagoon.

The approach to King Cove. Coming in over the ocean under a low ceiling. It's good not to let your copilot fly the plane when it's like this. 

The morning after my Alaska Peninsula marathon flight, Trond, Toomas, Astrid, Peter and I got together at the Anchorage International for a quick easy flight to Utah for our first RMISA college races of the season. Departure time was scheduled for 8am.  But our plane was late coming in to Anchorage so we departed two hours late. This necessitated a rebooking of our connecting flight to Utah from Seattle. And so it was that we were on final approach into Salt Lake City airport a couple hours later than planned. But there was a snow squall that arrived at SLC at the same time that we did, so we missed the landing and the pilot was directed to go into a holding pattern for a little while while the snow squall blew through. But we didn't have enough gas to hold, so we made a little detour to Grand Junction for a splash of gas. By the time we were refueled and back in the air, the weather in SLC was fine, so we got in with no problem. The original plan was for us to drive over to Heber City, where we're staying for the week, and then I'd go back to the airport late, to pick up Magnus and Tuva, who were coming in late from Europe. But we were so late that Maggie and The Deuce came in right behind us.  After a slow drive over the hill from SLC to Heber City, everyone was in place and in bed by 2:30am.

At this point, everyone who's supposed to be here is here. We all went out skiing today. Tomorrow we race. All is good.