Jumping Journal: March 25, 2008

Day 50...at last. Chalk up another year of 50 days on snow.  The third latest in history and maybe even the latest on another front.  A big day of jumping in western New Hampshire.

 

After two nice days of spring, err it sure felt more like winter, weather today was going to be yet another carbon copy.  Each of the last three days have seen highs in the upper 30s even touching 40 today.  The sun has been out like its mid summer instead of late March.  Their were a few clouds off and on yesterday and around 4PM today it finally started to cloud with the incoming storm front but otherwise grabbing an early start to the summer suntan would have been quite easy for the past several days now.

 

I arrived at Storrs Hill and found Cannonball bringing the groomer down to do some grooming on the K25 and K50 jumps.  The ski area itself has shut down for the season but the ski jumps are still active.

 

I walked over to the jump inn and after dropping my stuff off I headed on up to take a look at the inrun to see how well things had held up over the past couple of days.  I figured not much had happened and I was right.  A little bit of snow had melted out where you would drop over from the house down into the track.  I think a fellow could have went out of house today if he wanted to, but no one chose to.  Otherwise a few, strange, ice chunks had fallen into the track down near the takeout that I removed and did a little tracolating.

 

With no shovels or anything, other than the tracolator, up on the K50, I walked back down to the jump inn as Cannonball was finishing up grooming the outrun.  He asked if it looked like the landing hill would need it.  I told him yes and he came on up and picked me up for what would be his first time running down the K50 landing hill in the groomer.  I hadn't been down one of the landing hills myself as of yet so I was a little apprehensive under the circumstances but I figured this was as good of a time as any.

 

After a successful pass down the landing hill I headed back up to help Dan on the takeoff.  It was pure ice thanks to the snow that has melted and refroze.  We did some work and managed to get the takeoff back into shape by the time Cannonball parked the groomer and walked back over to the K50.

 

He said he was going to flag us for a couple and see how it looked and then maybe suit up and take a few.  We talked him out of that crazy idea and instead we got him to suit up right off the bat and be a real jumper.

 

We headed up the K50 for the third latest day of jumping on the K50 as its known. The only two days later than this that the K50 has been jumped would be April 13th and 14th, 2007.  We jumped it on March 24th last year as well.  It hasn't been jumped any later in March though.

 

I ended up being the first one down the inrun and decided to go from the top bar.  Like I said earlier the drop over point from house looked a bit questionable so I decided to not even mess with it.  I could look down the inrun and see the icy patch at the takeoff.  Not knowing whether to expect any possible surge in speed I decided to play it safe for the first jump and would love to kick myself for playing it safe.  I ended up jumping late and not very aggressively as a result.  I still managed to go 30-32 meters.  I could tell the inrun wasn't as fast as what it was on Saturday but it still had good speed for late March.

 

I stuck with the top bar for the second jump and did manage to improve the timing.  I still jumped around the 32 meter mark.

 

The rest of the jumps on the K50 I took from the second bar down.  Dan and Cannonball was going from that bar and I decided not to be the one to be moving the bar around.

 

The remaining five jumps of the afternoon got progressively better with the exception of the fifth jump of the day when I jumped rather late.  By the end of the session I was jumping down around 34-35 meters.  Again, not bad for late March.  I won't cry about it any.

 

As I was coming back to the bottom of the landing hill from the seventh and final jump of the session I had already decided I would go over and help get the K25 in shape and join the kids for some more jumps.  I think this is the latest the K25 has ever been jumped by newbie jumpers.  Seasoned veterans have jumped it each and every week on the calendar but newbies typically don't jump it this late.  This year things have changed.

 

Last Tuesday the problem on the K25 was the landing hill was rock hard and when the jumper landed their skis were going every which way and then they would hit the soft snow Cannonball had groomed at the bottom of the landing hill into the outrun.  When they hit the soft snow they would loose control and end up crashing.

 

First thing tonight was going to be shoveling some snow on to the landing hill so it could be raked onto the icy snow that was already present.  Then we managed to get a little more snow onto the takeoff of the inrun where some small holes/divots were forming on the inrun.  I went on up with the skis and a shovel to the top of the inrun and did a bit of quick repair up top to make sure a couple of nails would be completely covered over with snow.  I didn't see the nails sticking out today like the last time I jumped to K25 but I did it mostly as a precautionary measure.

 

I put on the skis for the first jump of the evening.  It has been a LONG time since I have jumped the K50 and the K25 in the same day.  I did one jump on the K50 last year at Mud Meet and then took several jumps on the K25.  The jump on the K50 was my first jump since I had taken the digger on the K90 in Lake Placid several weeks earlier.  I don't really count that day for much of anything thanks to the mental influence the digger was having on me at the time.

 

On the first jump it seemed like I was really squated down in the my inrun position with one leg higher than the other.  The left leg seemed much lower.  I did notice the same thing once or twice more.  Where we shoveled the snow on the takeoff everything seemed fine.  As a result of the conditions the first jump was rather timid.  I didn't go very far.

 

The second and third jumps were better and by the third jump I was easily getting back down near 20 meters once again.

 

As I walked up for the fourth jump Cannonball decided to see if he could get me to do a V or not.  I decided I would go for it.  As I was up top waiting for the signal from him he yelled up and said "Stay out of the brook".  On the K50 I would expect this but not on the K25.  The K50 outrun goes across a bridge over a brook.  Yeah, jumpers have went into the brook before.  I almost have...the trees stopped me.

 

I started down the inrun and jumped and amazingly enough I spread out into a V.  It almost seemed like I held onto it a little longer than what I should have.  I actually ended up sitting back when I went to land and ended up going down on my butt as a result.  I slid, heading right toward the brook(not a chance I could ever make it that far) and I ended up coming to a stop after hitting a couple of shovels that were laying on the far edge of the outrun that some of the parents had been using when doing hill work before we started jumping.  After I came to a stop I yelled back up to Cannonball "You just had to tell me to stay out of the brook, didn't you."

 

I walked back up for my fifth and final jump of the evening.session.  I decided to go for the same jump again, except to stay upright this time.  I headed down the inrun and jumped and spread my tips into a V.  I landed around 18-20 meters and rode out the outrun to a smooth stop. 

 

Today marked two milestones, not only did it mark yet another year of 50 days of jumping on snow the last jump today also marked the 1300th jump I've taken on snow since the start of the 2006 winter.  Not bad...averaging 433 jumps on snow each winter..  It gets kinda difficult to ask for much more.

 

I still need three more jumps on the K50 to mark the 650th jump on the K50 since the start of last winter.  Hopefully those three jumps should be coming on Thursday.  The forecast right now is saying 1-2 inches of snow tonight into early tomorrow before turning sunny and remaining sunny Thursday with highs n the mid 40s both of the next two days and then turning colder.  Who knows we may end up jumping the K50 in April again this year.  Who said we are in a Greenhouse Effect???  It seems more like an Ice Age Effect to me.

 

Crash