Skiing on campus

Snow in the North Country has been...nonexistent this year. We've still only skied at Higley once, but thanks to a grant we received earlier this year the team purchased a snowmobile and some equipment for a campus loop on our soccer fields. It proved to be pretty useful yesterday and today. Everything in sight is snowless and bare for miles, but in the far corner of the soccer practice fields is a patch of snow that has sat in the shade all winter and retained some of the white stuff. Yesterday Bob took out the new gear and groomed us up a small but very skiable stretch of fresh corduroy. The perfect amount of snow for some fast relay races and speeds, and it was refreshing to ski right from the equipment room without any van time. It'll be even better when we have enough snow to make a full course on campus.

Impressive breakthroughs for Caroline and Eric

The UVM races/Eastern cups were once again probably about the largest field of xc ski racers in North America, nearly as many entrants I think as US Nationals, it is an impressive event to be sure. As for our team Caroline demonstrated that she can ski with best in both disciplines and at the shorter distances posting career best 11th place finishes both days and is now solidly in qualification contention for the NCAA championships, Leah also showed some improvement after a rather frustrating day on Saturday to place in the top 25 for Sunday so she still may find the form she had last year. On the men's side the biggest story was Eric's breakthrough race in the 10K classic on Saturday where he finished 15th. While he was not able to repeat this on day two he still fared well in the mid 20s. We are headed back to Trapps tomorrow for Dartmouth carnival which had to be moved. Weather looks interesting with temps in the mid 30s the next two days before plummeting overnight on Friday and staying in the single digits for Saturday. Our skiing has worked out during the week with trips to Paul Smiths to ski on some really great trails, skating only but very fun and challenging. Travel time about 1hr each way. I am starting to give up on seeing much more snow, just glad we have somewhere reasonably nearby to train.