Getting Ready for Competitions

This past weekend I competed in The King of The Grommets. This is a contest for the kids in the Winter Park Competition Center. I took this opportunity to work on my skills and also to tone in my competition mind set. Also, during this contest I worked on training my run multiply times before I competed which helped me later when I had to stick my run.  I plan to use this strategy next weekend so I can be prepared for the start of my big competitions in Breckinridge.

The Color White Poem

White Empty Ski Hill
No color to be found
White Empty Ski Hill
No one is around
White Empty Ski Hill
Nothing but a frost covered mound
White Empty Ski Hill
Always snowbound

Pictures of the color White for a class assignment

My Photography Class Goals

During this class, I want to incorperate skiing in to my photos and I also would like to incorperate Video inn to some of my projects.

My goal for writing is to use discriptive words and of photos to get the point I am trying to make through.

The Dark Territory

This weekend was the first full weekend of Winter Parks Dark Territory being open. This was awesome because the Dark Territory has not been open for a while because the lack of snow and now it is. So, on Saturday I mostly worked on doing cork 7s and blind 450's out of a blue cannon rail. Then after lunch it got very snowy and we just worked on 360's with grabs. Then on Sunday I woke up to a perfect blue bird with about four inches of new snow. So, in the morning my team and I skied the park for a run and then headed to shred some powder. After that, we skied the park and I worked on my cork 7's with grabs. Finally in on my last runs of the day the ski patrol dropped a rope in a new run and I finished of the day skiing untracked powder.   

Winter Break

During Winter Break, I was not able to ski the first week because I was in Florida with my family. So during the second week I stayed up and my family’s condo rental and skied at winter park. During the first three days I was there Winter Parks jumps were not open yet so I mostly focused on rails. The main thing I worked on was to get blind 270’s consistently on down rails because I think the blind 270’s are very stylish and they are very good for competition. Then after three days of Winter Park I headed over to keystone to better my rail skills in nice weather. When I was at Keystone I learned urban 270’s on to down rails. I am proud of learning this trick because I have been working on doing them all year and I finally landed a few.

After skiing Keystone for a day, I headed back to Winter Park to hit their newly made jumps and compete in a rail jam. The first day however was very windy and our team was cancelled so I headed over to the Frasier Rec-center to swim before the rail jam. Following that, I headed out to Hot Sulfur Springs to complete in a rail jam for the 100^th anniversary of their winter sports festival.        

Going into the rail jam my plan was to do blind two’s, blind switch up’s, and 270’s on because that’s what I did in practice before. When it started I decided to do a few tricks on one of the two features the box. I now think this was a mistake because I think I should have hit the rail first because there was no one sliding it and I think I could have caught the judges’ eyes. Then after doing a few 270’s on and off the box I set about hitting the rail a few times until I did a 270 off of it. After that I pretty much did the box the rest of the time except for a blind two on the down rail. I had a ton of fun at this rail jam but next time I want to be more creative and utilize more of the features.   

The next day was New Years and there was no team because of the holiday. So I went up to the mountain to ski with my friend Birk and hit the newly opened jumps. During the day I hit all of the jumps and even did a cork seven on the first which was a big accomplishment for me because I have never done a cork seven on a jump that was that big. Now my goal next weekend is to start doing grabs in my cork and regular sevens and also in my switch five’s. During this break I improved the skills a ton and I can’t wait to work on doing them with style next weekend.