NYSEF-Whiteface Alpine Blog: One Down

Checking in from Chile.....

We're a little over halfway through our two week camp. Over the last few days, we've had unbelievable skiing and training. After four days of free-ski drills and paneled SL, we started our GS progression and have had three AWESOME days of GS training. Our main focus has been to develop good pressure on the outside ski above the gate and create good turn-shape. We've used various locations for "helper" brushes to teach turn placement, where to maximize pressure, where to release pressure, etc.... With gate training in the morning and continuing work on free-ski drills in the afternoon, each athlete is great making progress.

Just so y'all don't think we're slacking off down here, here's a recap of our typical day: 5:45am wake-up... 6:45 shuttle up to the Vegas poma lift in the dark.... Course is set and we're warming up on snow before sunrise!

Overlooking La Parva

Valle Nevado in the distance

The morning warm-up.

Then we get right into training time... La Parva gives us plenty of time to get training in with the poma lifts providing a lightning quick turn-around (just ask coach Smith how fast the poma lifts go...). On Thursday and Friday we trained 30 gates of GS on Tòrtola Sur and got upwards of 10 runs each day. Today, Saturday, the crowds come up from Santiago so we have to pull the course at 10am - we still got 8 runs of 30 gate GS in on Nevada Bajo. (Check out the trail map here for a reference). Here's some pics from GS training.....

Alex Akoundi

Frenchie Neron

Sunny Sheffield

After training, it's lunch at noon and back out skiing/drilling at 1pm for an hour or two. Then, dryland usually at 4pm for an hour, dinner/meeting at 6pm, and we jam video, ski tuning/waxing, and even a call home once in a while.... Needless to say, our days are packed with activities - but extremely productive.

Here's a few more random pics - be sure to check NYSEF Snowsports on Facebook for more.