Jumping Journal: March 18, 2008

400 at last.  Talk about weird, wild, and wacky.  What more can I say?

 

Sunday, the day after...the weather wasn't bad.  Still on the mild side.  The high was 41.  The temperature did drop down nicely Sunday night into the low 20s and then rebounded into the mid 30s yesterday.  The sky has remained dry even into today when the high temperature reached 44.

 

Monday afternoon I received an email from Dan asking if I was planning on being at the hill at 2PM on Tuesday to jump with Jon, suppose him and I were planning on jumping then.  I knew nothing about it.  I sent an email back to him saying that I knew nothing about it but heck yeah I would be up there.  I figured I would be jumping tonight but I wasn't planning on jumping this afternoon.  I guess plans can change when the season is coming to a close.

 

Turns out some of hill managers friends had rented the hill for the day and Jay was hoping we could put on a bit of a spectacle for them and jump the K50.

 

I headed up to the hill a bit early figuring the inrun would need to be tracolated before we could jump.  I arrived around 1:30PM and after fnally finding the tracolator and a pair of crampons I headed on over to the K50 to get the inrun in shape.  The temperatures were already in the low to mid 40s so I figured I wouldn't have any trouble tracolating.  Was I ever wrong.  Turns out the bottom was soft enough to tracolate but the top, the exposed part of the inrun, was already rock hard.  It would take a cutting a new track to get it back in shape.  Dan arrived as I was choppin away some of the ice at the takeoff and replacing it with snow.

 

We gathered up the drill, track cutter, and extension cord and headed on up and managed to cut a new track on the inrun.  We finally got around to suiting up and heading up the hill somewhere around 3PM, maybe a little later than that actually.

 

Knowing that it is now the time of the season where the conditions can become tricky Dan and I both decided to play it safe and ride the outrun to make sure their wasn't going to be any trouble areas.  Granted Jay had groomed the landing hill and outrun as we were cutting the track so it shouldn't have been bad but before he groomed it did looked like the normal spot right after you get across the bridge could be holding some water that would cause us to come to an abrupt stop.  It turns out everything was great.  As we walked up the steps to take our first jump we noticed a pair of skis leaning against the jump inn.  Turns out Cannonball had arrived.

 

I decided to go from the first bar down since much of snow had melted out of the house and very little was lef.  I took the first jump of the day and I was surprised to find the inrun was actually quite fast.  I ended up going 34-35 meters on the first jump without putting much into it.  I also made it all the way out to the end of the outrun and I wasn't expecting to make it anywhere near that far out.  Generally I don't when the inrun speed is slow.

 

The crowd from the ski hill party came over and watched us take our next three or four jumps.  I think their was more spectators watching us today than there has been at any other point in time, including any of the jump meets I've been to.

 

I ended up going on up to house and jumped the rest of the afternoon from house with Dan and Cannonball.  It wasn't as bad up there as what I initially thought it would be.  I don't think I have ever come down out of house when there has been little snow up in house.

 

With the exception of the last jump the rest of the afternoon I was going 34-35 meters.  I still am having trouble believing how fast conditions were.  I would never have thought it possible.

 

The fourth jump of the afternoon also marked my 400th jump of the winter.  It makes three years in a row that I have taken at least 400 jumps on snow.  I ended the afternoon with seven jumps and 403 jumps for the season.

 

I was planning on sticking around and jumping the K25 with the kids this evening...at least that was the plan.  We finished jumping on the K50 around 5PM and I went over and helped Cannonball and Esky get the K25 ready.  As we finished up Cannonball went over the jump inn with one of the kids to give him a lesson in waxing skis.

 

Esky and I walked down the landing hill stairs and into the lodge.  We talked with each other and after a while my Team Sticky Sticky Quack Quack teammate showed up and we all congratulated her on her 1st place finshed in the 5K cross country skate and 3rd place in the classic competition up in Alaska at Junior Olympics last week.

 

After talking for a bit Cannonball came back from the jump inn and the talk turned to jumping.  I figured more than likey, as normal, that she was planning on helping coach the kids on the K25.  She has been doing a lot of this winter instead of jumping on the K50.  Typically she would jump one day on the K50 and coach the other day on the K25.

 

She asked Cannonball how the conditions were on the K50.  I immediately started thinking I might be looking at another double session on the K50.  Turns out I was right.

 

We headed on over and suited up.  We walked up to the knoll and as I walked up the inrun she rode the landing hill.  I decided to once again go from house for the first jump.

 

Now the crazy thing, this jump was no more than 1.5 hours after the last jump I had taken.  WOW!  What a difference an 1.5 hours can make.  The temperatures didn't feel like they had really dropped but they must have dropped quite a bit.  I headed down the inrun and long before the takeoff I knew the inrun had picked up a considerable amount of speed.  It was at least 3-4 mph faster than what it was just a time earlier.  I ended up jumping close to 37-38 meters.  I was surprised by how far I went.  I didn't expect to see a jump that long until next winter.

 

I walked back up and her mom had already taken her place in the coaches stand ready to flag us.  I went back down to the judges tower and turned on the hill lights.  As I walked in front of the inrun I yelled up the inrun and suggested that her decision to come from a bar start was a good decision but she should come from one more bar down.  She listened and I don't think she regretted it as she continued to jump the rest of the evening from the same bar.

 

My next jump I came down one bar and still went 35 meters.  I decided on the next several jumps to come from the same bar as she was jumping from instead moving the bar around.  I figured it would make me jump harder/better if I wanted to get down the hill.  My distance did drop back to 30 meters but it did give me the chance to try to work on maintaining the shin to chin.  Granted it didn't seem like it was working as well as what I would have liked.

 

On the sixth and final jump of the evening I did go back up to house for what may very well be the last jump out of house this winter on the K50.  Once again I was back down in the 35-36 meter range. 

 

For a day I figured would be only jumping on the K25 to find myself taking fourteen jumps on the K50 instead it was a nice surprise.  To find the conditions as good as what they were on the 18th day of the March was even sweeter.

 

It did turn out that the lack of grooming ended up letting the conditions deteriorate quite rapidly on the K25 as the temperature dropped and the slushy conditions started to turn icy.  They ended up calling it quits early due to the conditions.  Several jumpers ended up crashing, and I guess some of the crashes were a little on the ugly side.

 

Now it appears the weather forecast is not in our favor for the nice couple of days.  Tonight it's supposed snow, 1-2 inches, and then change to maybe an inch of rain tomorrow, before changing back to rain by Thursday.  After that things look great, highs in the low 30s through this time next week.  If the K50 survives the next couple of days, very questionable, than we should be able to jump it on Saturday before the end of the year party.  I guess we did that last year...I don't remember it, guess I'll have to check out the blog post to see if I did or not.

 

Dan and I may try to jump on Thursday depending on the weather, but right now it is sounding like that may not happen.  Saturday is sounding good if the rain doesn't kill the inrun.

 

I finally reached my first goal for the year, 400 jumps for the winter.  Now I need two more days to hit my 50th day on snow this winter.  I also need another 18 jumps on the K50 to give me a nice round two year total of 650 jumps on the K50.  Time shall tell whether either one of the two remaining goals occur.

 

Crash