Jumping Journal: January 13, 2009

Lights, groomer, action!  Well...sorta.

 

After the great conditions on Saturday, what more could you ask for.  How about anohter 4 inches of snow on Sunday.  Well...it happened.  Yep, it managed to get yet another jump meet this winter postponed here in the east.

 

The New Year's Eve meet in Lake Placid was actually three meets between December 29-31.  The December 29th meet went off as scheduled.  December 30th got postponed to the 31st due to high winds.  The 31st meet was kinda rescheduled.  Actually the day of jumping started an hour earlier than originally scheduled to the make up of the meet from day before.

 

Lebanon Winter Carnival had pretty much already been postponed by one week due to the groomer breaking down.  This allowed the Hanover meet, scheduled for Sunday, the day after Lebanon to be float between being on Saturday or Sunday.

 

All of a sudden the snow arrived overnight Saturday into Sunday morning with the forecast for anywhere from 5-9 inches of snow.  Late on Saturday evening Tim Norris, the coach in Andover, decided to postpone the meet thanks to the forecast and also because of a big power outage that occured early in the morning on Saturday that affected most of Andover from what he said.  I guess just shortly before he postponed the meet the power did come back on.

 

It turns out the storm wasn't all that much of a storm afterall.  Most of the snow fell overnight but it was simply a case of when you have jumpers travel 3-4 hours to get to a meet you want to look out for the jumpers travelling safety.

 

Now the plan was to have Hanover on Saturday and Andover on Sunday.  More on this after bit.

 

This afternoon, with the onset of the upcome cold snap, I headed of for Lebanon to run a few errands and then do some jumping and try to tie up some loose ends on some other obligations I had managed to get myself talked into.

 

I arrived at the hill about 6:15PM.  The lights weren't on on the jump.  I got out of my car and decided before I even pull any of the equipment out of the car to walk up and see if there was still any plans on jumping.  As I started walking up toward the lodge I heard a rather familiar sound.  It was Monique.  I said "YES, it's back!"  Monique is the name they have given to the groomer.  Turns out the company decided to ship it VERY early this morning to get it delivered before the snow and cold snap arrived.

 

Jay had already been grooming the hill and the outrun of the K25 looked wonderful.  A little while later Cannonball arrived from his other coaching endeavor at Vermont Academy that he is doing this winter.  A whole big group of us suited up and head on up the jump.  In all there was four adults, Mike, Bill, Esky and myself jumping.  Their was at least five kids, maybe six.  It was one of the bigger nights I have seen quite a long time on the K25.

 

I made my way up the inrun and put on my skis for my first night jump in close to 10 months.  It was strange thinking about jumping the K25 under lights with snow on the ground.  It's been a long time since I remember doing this.  Normally I only jump the K50 at night anymore during the winter.

 

I put on my skis and everything seemed fine.  I got the signal from Cannonball and started down the inrun.  I jumped at the takeoff, not quite as good as Saturday but respectable, nonetheless.  I landed and quickly found myself catching on the snow.  It was a bit sticky thanks to the fresh snow from Sunday.  The groomer can do the very bottom of the landing hill through the outrun but since the jump has plastic on it and has no easy access up top to get the groomer to the top of the landing hill the groomer can't groom the whole landing hill like it can on the K10 or the K50.

 

I managed to ride it through without any trouble.  I turned around and came to a stop back by the stairs.  I walked up for the second jump and that's when things changed quickly.  I put on my left skis and everything was fine and then went to put on my skis.  I noticed the top screw in the front throw had worked its way out.  I had been noticing it was loose the past few times I was out jumping so I tightened it up after jumping Saturday.  I noticed right away that the odds of getting it go back in without moving the front throw and redrilling were almost zero.  I took the left ski off and walked back down the jump.  My night was over almost before it ever started.

 

Turns out it seems the kids were having trouble sticking on the landing hill as well thanks to the fresh snow.

 

As I was getting ready to leave Mike asked me if I had any wax.  I said none on me.  He asked if there was any in the jump inn.  I said there should be.  We ended up walking over and he grabbed some wax so he could wax his daughters skis.  While going over to unlock the door I noticed the big mound of snow sitting on the K50 landing hill right outside the jump inn.  It appeared they did a real nice job of making snow on the landing hill.  I heard Cannonball ask Esky about something which I believe he was asking if Esky thought their was enough snow on the landing hill or not.

 

Right now it is looking more up all the time.  Finally got the groomer back, the snow making is working, the lights on the K25 are working.  Granted two problems...the lights on the K50 aren't working yet and the weather forecast...

 

Like I said above a cold snap is in the forecast.  Yes...COLD.  Friday night, right before the early morning start of the rescheduled Hanover jump meet the low is forecast to be -10 to -15 Fahrenheit.  Hold it, did I -10 to -15 and Hanover in the same sentence???

 

2003, if I remember correctly I jumped at Hanover Friday evening before the jump meet.  The full moon was shining VERY brightly.  As I walked back to my car I thought, "just shut off the lights and let me jump under moon light only."  I've wanted to do this ever since, and still would love to jump under only moonlight.  As I drove home I noticed the temperature was already at zero.

 

I went to bed with the forecast for 15-20 below overnight.  I woke up the next morning to 15-20 below.  I drove on up to Hanover and found at the low point between my house and Newport it was a balmy -25.  This was the coldest temperature I had ever seen personally, prior or since.  I got to Hanover and put on the jumping clothes, I wasn't jumping in a suit at the time I was normally jumping in ski bibs.  I hadn't put on all that much underneath the bibs.  I started jumping and found I was actually staying rather warm.  Then the pause came, as the competition started on the small hills.  This was also the year they built/dedicated the new warming hut at the jumpsite.  Everyone that wasn't jumping went inside the warming hut to warm up.  It wasn't working for me.  I was staying warmer by staying out jumping.  I was practically standing on top of the furnace and I still couldn't stay warm.  I finally started to warm back up when the competition got underway on the K32 and I was walking back up the stairs inbetween jumps.

 

The next year the forecast was for somewhere right around zero for an overnight low and Tom cancelled the meet ahead of time as he didn't want to put anyone through the extreme cold weather again.  He didn't want to lose anymore markers on the hill.

 

This year...could be interesting.  12 degrees tonight, -7 Wednesday night(Hanover High School meet is tomorrow night), -12 on Thursday night, roughly -10 on both Friday and Saturday night.  Could there be two more meets that get postponed/cancelled.  Given the nature of jump meet schedule they would pretty much have to be cancelled unless they were try to schedule for late in February.  From this weekend on their is a meet scheduled every weekend through February 21st-22nd weekend.  How much longer can this craziness last.  I haven't seen it this bad in the nine winters I jumped.  Hopefully I won't see it this bad ever again.

 

Now to get back to fixing the skis and taking care of a few other ski jumping related errands that I need to get taken care of.

 

Crash