End of the winter season
Finally spring has arrived, and with vengence. It didn't take it long this year. My yard is practically bare, just a few very small patches of snow remain. The jump is pretty much the same.
After jumping on Saturday, Dan and I planned on jumping Sunday morning. We thought that it would be a wise idea to get it in early so we wouldn't have to deal with the slush again. We forgot one thing...the cold temperatures that were forecast for overnight Saturday night. Actually we had remembered them, we just react to them like we should have. Instead of raking/smoothing out the slush on the outrun before we left on Saturday afternoon, we did nothing. Mother Nature came in overnight and froze everything solid. I figured it would probably stiffen up, I didn't figure it would flat out freeze over and turn rock hard. It did turn rock hard and the ruts that were left from jumping and the pond skimming on Saturday also turned rock hard. Dan and I took a look at it on Sunday morning and decided against jumping, it was definitely not the safest of conditions, even for crazy guys like what we are.
I checked it out the jump on Monday and Tuesday afternoon. I had figured that the inrun would probably lose all its snow on Tuesday. I was wrong. 90 percent of the snow on the inrun was gone by Monday afternoon. I guess the dirt that was mixed in with the snow helped to melt it quicker than what I thought it would. By Tuesday afternoon it was 99 percent bare, there was just one real small patch left in the transition on the inrun. The landing hill was still holding up quite nicely, better than I thought it would. The outrun was melting at a pretty decent clip. You could still do a hockey stop in the outrun though, the saving grace for the outrun. Still I figure with today having been in the 60s, tomorrow forecast for the 60s, and Friday forecast for the low 70s that by the time the rain arrives on Saturday everything will be down to plastic.
I would have to say the winter of 2006 was the best winter I've had so far. 60 days of jumping with 441 jumps. An amazing 204 jumps on the 50. Their could have been quite a few more if not for the lack of cooperating weather most of the winter and Lebanon josting Junior Olympics. Both of these factors alone probably cost 5-7 days of jumping and close to 60-70 jumps that I could have taken otherwise. Granted with Lebanon hosting JO's it probably help me get more days of jumping then I would have gotten otherwise. I highly doubt that their would have been as much of a push to keep the 50 jumping as what there was this winter if it wouldn't have been for JO's.
I did finally manage to get another personal best on the 50 as well about a week or so before JO's. It had been two or three years since I had jumped that far. Other than that one jump all the rest of the jumps ended up in same area where I normally land.
As I mentioned a long while back one of the coaches/former jumpers that I have spent quite a bit of time around has been Roland Tremblay. He coached the Newport high school team for 30+ years before he retired at the end of last winter. Heck the last time Roland jumped himself was over 30 years ago. He was instrumental in getting the 30 meter tressel that used to be in Lake Placid brought to Newport. This past Sunday was the payback day for all the work that he has did around Newport.
This past fall Ron Beaudet, several other, and myself all helped to build a lodge right beside the tressel at the Newport jump. As Ron said Sunday, now that Newport has a lodge it can be called a ski jumping complex. Well, this past weekend was the cermonies for the renaming of the facility, formely called the Newport Ski Jump. Now it is called the Roland Tremblay Ski Jumping Complex. Hopefully in the next several days I will post some pictures that I took during the ceremony.
I have managed to get the other three videos up online that I had trying to put up.
Run #2 down the K120 giant slalom course: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2723482123635415009
Yes, as you could only guess, it wasn't any better than run number 1.
An end of season tradition at Storrs Hill has been jumping the hoop of fire. On occasion the hoop manages to make its way to the 25 for other major occasions. It was setup for the torch relay when the Olympic torch came through Lebanon back in Decemeber 2001 heading on the journey to Salt Lake City. It again was setup for opening ceremonies to the Junior Olympics earlier this month. In usual fashion it was it setup right at the conclusion of Mud Meet on March 18th. This shows me jumping through the hoop right from the takeoff, and it also shows us doing a rapid fire jump through the hoop.
Just a few more jumps left for the winter of 2006. I shot this video on March 25th. You can see that the conditions weren't the greatest down toward the bottom. Looking carefully you can tell that it was slushy in the outrun. The inrun has dirt all over it due to shoveling buckets upon buckets of snow up on the inrun to get it ready for Mud Meet. The groomer had piled up the snow near the stairs leading up the inrun and a big group of us started shoveling. There was enough dirt mixed in with the snow that it started showing once the snow started melting.
Crash
posted by Ryan Crawford at 10:39 PM
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