Super Weekend

Friday night we went to see High School Ski Jumping under the lights. It was awesome. I took a video clip with my phone which just doesn't do it justice. My 10yr old, D3 and I worked the jumping comp. as landing spotters to be able to let the officials know how far each jumper flew. We were about 6 feet from them as they either landed in front of us or flew past. What makes this even more cool is that I am told the New Hampshire is the last state in the Country that still has ski jumping in High School. A great Tradition for sure which I guess whichever school is the state champ can also lay claim to the title of National Champs as well.




Saturday we had some amazing weather for January in Pinkham Notch when my wife and I went to Great Glen Trails and took a skate-skiing lesson. We had a blast. You go so much faster than on classical skis. DEA can attest to my limited X-C skiing abilities but I found skating to be more intuitive and I liked the amount of speed you got for the effort you gave. I guess I have some more gear that I need to be on the lookout for. Maybe DEA has some in his garage??????

After 3+ hours of skiing we were wrecked. One problem with skating is once you are cooked there's no easy way to just shuffle along like you can do on classical gear. It's either skate or walk.

We left Great Glen and headed down from Pinkam Notch into Jackson where we stopped at the J-Town Deli where we had a wicked good lunch made fresh by the Anzaldi's who are very nice people and have some of the best food in the area. It's worth stopping in for lunch.

Sunday we had an early morning as D3 had a J5 Giant Slalom race at Wildcat Mountain. We lucked out again with a second bluebird day in Pinkham Notch. The skiing was great. The fresh snow earlier in the week had been expertly groomed into some fine cord. After a while it had broken up and we were just cruising around on the loosened up packed powder. Add temps in the low 30's and the sun and it was almost perfect. D3 had a descent first run in the GS race and was standing in 10th place. The times were pretty close together so that if he laid down a fast second run he could move up a few places. Unfortunately that was not to be. About a third of way into his run he ended up crashing onto his inside hip. It scrubbed all his speed but luckily he didn't have to hike or lose a ski. He got back up and finished the run but the fall had killed his shot at moving up and he dropped instead.

We tried to tell him that crashing is OK, (I've gotten pretty good at it) as long as you were giving it your all and having fun. Hope to have some pics up shortly as we had some awesome views of Mt. Washington and Tuckerman Ravine from Wildcat.

Too bad the forecast for today is 2 inches of rain with temps in the 40's.

JJ