Jumping Journal: February 20, 2008

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.  Or should I say what's that white ball in the eastern sky that's slowly disappearing.

 

Yeah, I managed to get away with another day of jumping.  Most of it daytime/early evening.  I guess I better get ready for time change since it is only a couple of weeks away and it will make for plenty of early evening/twilight jumping.

 

I arrived at the hill pretty much right at high noon.  I headed off for the lift on a partly sunny day that was about to change BIG time.  The temperature wasn't bad, mid 20s or so, or maybe it was the sun shining down on me that made it feel like it was warmer than what it really was.  Things were going about like normal, then 2PM arrived.

 

The clouds moving in and out consistently but a look toward the north did want to indicate that their might be some snow in the clouds up that way.  Sure enough one of the ski patrollers came down and said that it was snowing to beat the bandit up north of us.  In a matter of a couple of minutes the snow arrived at the bottom of the ski runs.  The rest of the afternoon was full of off and on snow squals.  Some squals were quite heavy.  It seemed/felt like the temperatures dropped through the afternoon as well.

 

After the ski area operation shut down at 4PM, Dan and I made our way over to jump.  Dan checked both the inrun and landing hill while I was finishing up on the lift and both looked fine and he didn't think they would need any work done to them.

 

We suited up and headed on up to flag each other for a daylight weekday session on the K50.  He came down first and it didn't appear that he stuck anywhere on the track.  The snow was starting up again.  And boy did it ever start up.

 

I had head games trying to make me think I was going to stick on the inrun for my first jump.  I haven't had that hard of a time getting into my inrun position in ages.  I was about 1/3rd the way down the inrun before I finally got settled into my inrun like I should have been from the very beginning.  It wasn't much over 30 meters for the first jump.

 

Dan went back into the jump inn for a quick cord fix on one of his skis as I walked back up top. The second jump went smoother on the inrun, at least I managed to get into the position much sooner.  The snow was still coming down heavy but the track didn't seem to be slowing down any.  I was down the hill another meter or two on the second jump.

 

Jump three and four were about the same.  I was working on keeping my shoulders up on the inrun while keeping my hands up as well.  Generally I was ever so slightly dropping the left hand around the transition.  The right ski was still getting a bit out of control on me but not nearly as bad as last night.  I was amazed that the falling snow was causing much worse head games than what it was.  Normally I really think about the falling snow and let it control my inrun position.  Today it didn't seem like it was happening that way.  Instead I was riding the inrun like it was nice and sunny out.  On jump two and three I was beginning to have problems seeing the track so that may have actually been working to my advantage.  Dan did turn on the light after jump three but beforehand the lighting was limited enough that I couldn't really tell much of a difference between the track and the other snow on the inrun much more than 15-20 feet down the tressel.

 

Walking up for the fifth jump I noticed the snow was starting to taper off and looking right above my head I could see blue sky.  Looking off in almost any direction I could see blue sky until just above the horizon and the ground met.  Storrs Hill was in a big blue hole.  By the sixth jump the snow had stopped completely for the rest of the session and the sky was getting bluer jump after jump.  The full moon was starting to come up as well.  Yeah, tonight is the night for the last total lunar eclipse until December 2010.  It is looking like I might get to see a bit of this one if I'm willing to withstand the cold temperatures.

 

Dan called it quits after about six jumps but he continued to flag me for several more jumps after he changed out of his suit.  By my seventh and eighth jumps I was getting down close to 35 meters.  It seemed like the only thing inflight that was really going wrong was the lack of holding the flight position all the way into the hill.  I did seem to be dropping the ankles just before landing.

 

Jumps nine and ten were the best jumps of the evening.  I decided to focus on one thing and one thing only for the jump, jumping on time.  I figured I would let everything else take care of itself and just put my focus on getting the timing down.  The inrun position was pretty much taking care of itself and so was the flight, at least as could as what I normally do.

 

On both of the final two jumps I managed to jump pretty much right on time.  It was on jump nine that I noticed that I was dropping the ankles early.  I tried to correct it on the final jump but it seemed like I ended up having the tails hit the landing hill and it forced me to uncock my ankles.  On both jumps I was getting down to 35 meters.

 

Strangely enough for what seems like the first time this winter I actually didn't bomb the last jump.  It has seemed all winter like my next to last jump is always better than my last jump.  Tonight that wasn't the case.

 

I did notice on the way home the temperatures had dropped down into the upper teens by the time we finished jumping.  I'm not so sure they wasn't in the upper teens while I was working on the lift late in the afternoon.

 

On the drive home I also noticed something rather unusual.  Compared to yesterday's snow squals that stopped just a few miles from Lebanon today's did as well just in the opposite fashion.  Yesterday as I drove up to Lebanon it wasn't until I got four to five miles from the hill that the snow stopped.  Today I made it halfway home and I found dry pavement the rest of the way home.  It almost seemed like the interstate was the dividing line between the snow and the dry pavement.  Rather weird.

 

This week does seem to going quite a bit like last year at this time.  Granted I did miss Monday this year thanks to the rain but I still am averaging 10 jumps per day, one jump per day lower than last year. Admittedly, to reach either of the three goals I'm hoping for right by the end of the season I am definitely hoping for decent weather for the next month.  I need at least 14 more days of jumping to get 50 days on snow this winter and at least 88 more jumps on the K50 to have a two year total of 650 jumps on just the K50.  I am hoping though to pull off my third season in a row with at least 400 jumps, as can be seen at the bottom of the blog, I have a ways to go yet to reach that target.  I'm hoping for one or two more nice long weekends on the K50 with 30 or more jumps in a weekend.  That could set me up to get ready for summer jumping on the K25 and take a ton of jumps on the K25 toward the end of the winter.

 

Hopefully tomorrow will be another ten jump day once again.  I guess time shall tell.

 

Crash