It's Been A Long Time In The Making

Ever since I fell back in love with winter in the early 1990s one of the things I thought would be fun to do was ski jumping.  While living in the Ohio ski jumping wasn't really feasible.  It would have been a five hour drive each way to get to Norge, 6-8 hours into southern Wisconsin, and 10 hours up to Ishpeming, MI.  Too make matters worse the weather around the lakes region during the winter months wasn't the best thanks to lake effect snow which would make driving not all that great.

 

I never really thought I stood a chance at ever getting into ski jumping.  Heck, I figured the only way I would ever see ski jumping was on television. Boy...was I ever wrong.

 

Even when I started ski jumping back in January 2001 I couldn't have ever imagined jumping as much as what I have since then.  Typically, unlike this past winter, I have been getting fifty or more days of jumping on snow each winter.  Heck, I have been generally getting 400+ jumps on snow each winter.  This winter has humbled me BIG TIME.  I'm SO glad it's over!

 

During the summer months I have always been jumping at least once a month.  Sure I may only get 80-85 jumps in each summer, unless we decide to be crazy and try for 52 consectutive weeks of jumping at Storrs Hill.  Even though I don't get all that many jumps in during the summer I still jump at least once a month.  Yep, I've jumped them all since I started jumping.  99 consectutive months.  April 2009 will mark 100 consectutive months of ski jumping for me.

 

I know of only one other ski jumper, Sam Burke, who has put together any kind of lengthy streak of consectutive months.  Sam's streak ended somewhere around month 60-65.

 

What is it that makes this so hard accomplish?  Could anyone ever do it again.  What would it take to do this again?  Let's take a look.

 

Hill availability

 

Storrs Hill Ski Area in Lebanon, New Hampshire is pretty much the only ski jumping site in the world right now jumping 12 months a year.  April 2009 will mark its 140th consectutive month of ski jumping on the K25.  In the past Lake Placid, NY had jumped year round, but due to budgetary constraints they cut back to 10 months a year.  Park City, UT jumped 12 months a year for a few years until the 2002 Winter Olympics were over and they had their budget cut as well.  Now they typically jump 9-10 months a year.

 

The two months that seem to be the hardest to jump is always April and November.  Both April and November provide the challenge of having to get snow made or melted, and having water pipes being thawed out so you have a source of water to wet down the plastic.  Granted you can always jump in the rain...I did that to keep the K25 streak alive a few years back in December after a warm up came and shut down any snow making chance on the K25.  We had already been jumping on the K50 but no one had jumped the K25 for the month of December, so on December 23rd I jumped it with light rain falling.  Who said it had to be warm to jump in the rain?

 

Two years ago we jumped all snow on the K50 on April 13th and 14th...less than two weeks later we jumped the K25 on all plastic.  I've also jumped all snow on the K25 Thanksgiving weekend 2005.  I typically jump April and November on plastic but will jump either month on snow if their is snow available.  Your best bet is to be able to jump both months on plastic and not worry whether or not its going to get cold enough or if a snow storm is coming so you can jump on snow.

 

Having a group of volunteers running the hill instead of a paid staff also makes it easier to have hill availability.  You could pretty much say its a requirement...when money speaks people listen...they don't jump.  In Lebanon it's totally a volunteer staff.  Heck several times in the past it has been just two of us out jumping/flagging each other keeping the streak alive.

 

Most places have to put chicken wire, lathe or something along those lines on the landing hill to keep the snow from sliding down the plastic all the way to the bottom of the hill.  The one nice thing that helps Lebanon out is we haven't ever had to do that.  This has helped us out to be able to jump 68 consectutive weeks and 140 consectutive months.  We don't have the extra hill work to do in April and November.  We just have to wait for the weather to melt all the snow or get cold enough so we can make snow.

 

Having someone like Cannonball that has been a ski jumper and still ski jumps really helps out as well.  Without someone with an active interest in ski jumping makes the feasibility drops off dramatically.  In this day and age the sport is so much about kids that the adults don't/won't put on the skis and do any jumping.  They may want to encourage the kids on but it isn't the same as when you are out there jumping yourself and wanting to be out there jumping.  The desire to be out there jumping always has a tendency to get you to help out on the hills to get them ready so you can jump.

 

Having a location where the snow melts fairly quickly helps us get down to plastic within two to two-and-a-half weeks.  From what I've heard Ravenna, Finland used to, or still does, host the Finnish National Championships in April.  Due to the weird/slow snow melt because of being so far north they don't jump there in May.

 

There have been several months over the past 8+ years when I have been the only person to jump in November.  April seems to bring quite a few jumpers out to try out plastic for the first time ever or for their first time of the summer.  November on the other hand tends to have very few jumpers come out to jump.  November typically has everyone sitting around waiting for snow to be made so they can start jumping on snow.  Typically out west, Park City or Steamboat ends up jumping on snow in November, not always though.  It depends on what Mother Nature has to say about it.  Neither one of the jump sites jump in April.

 

You almost have to jump a small hill in April which causes another problem I'll talk about down below.  The bigger the hill, the longer it takes to get the hill ready to be jumped, both in November and April.  This means the easy way to assure yourself of being able to jump either month is to be jumping on a small hill.  I'm more willing to take a bigger risk on a smaller hill than a bigger hill as well so if conditions get to the point where they are between snow and plastic.

 

The bigger the hill, the faster the inrun, the more that can go wrong when you have dicey condition.  I've seen some pretty wild conditions while jumping on the K25, conditions that I wouldn't even consider jumping on the K50 if the conditions existed.  The risk simply isn't worth the reward.  Hence why I say you pretty much have to go back to a smaller hill so you can feel comfortable jumping no matter what the conditions are like, even half snow/half plastic or water puddled up on the ground right about the fall line.  I jumped the K25 under both of these kinds of conditions.

 

2. Age requirements

 

Okay, that sounds rather strange/stupid to say their is an age requirement.  With the tradition of ski jumping their pretty much is an unwritten age requirement if you want to pull off something like jumping 100 consectutive months.  You pretty much have to be an adult jumper to achieve it.  Their are many difficulties with kids trying to obtain something like this.  Let me explain.

 

First, December through March and then again May through October you pretty much have it made.  Hills are open all over the place, all the time.  On the other hand in April and November quite often you only have one day in the month when you can jump.  If your parents are too busy with work or have too many other things going on you will end up missing your chance to jump that month.  I have seen it happen with quite a few kids over the years.  Having to rely on someone else is a major problem.  As an adult you can make your schedule ahead of time and unless an emergency creeps up you'll have no trouble keeping to the schedule.  Having to rely on mom and dad to get you to the hill is a major set back for any kid ever being able to pull this off.

 

Second, as I mentioned above you pretty much have to come down to a smaller hill.  Right now the only hill being jumped in April AND November EVERY YEAR is a K25.  Kids get wrapped up too much in the competitive nature of the sport of ski jumping.  The competitive nature is always about going to the next bigger hill, and then the one beyond that.  To be competitive long term you have to always be jumping a bigger hill.  To reliably jump 12 months a year you have to jump a K25, theirs no way around it.  Sam Burke's streak came to an end when he moved out to Park City so he could jump the K120 all the time.  Since they don't jump in April his streak came to a grinding halt.

 

Most adults I know tend to get into things for the pure fun of doing them.  They aren't involved in a particular sport for competition, rather they are in it for the recreation of doing it.  They don't mind one day paddling a class V steep creek and then paddling a class II-III river the next day.  For adults its all about being out there and not about competing.  This is one of the reasons the sport of ski jumping has such a hard time recruiting adults into the sport.  This is the reason why their are very few jumpers who have been ski jumping regularly for 30-40 years.  They all get burned out by the competitive environment and quit.  For me over the years it has been about jumping, not competing so I don't mind the idea of jumping a K90 and turning around the next day and jumping a K25.  Am I jumping or not...that's what matters most.  The more I jump, the more I like it.  I would much rather be out taking 10-15 jumps on a mid winter Saturday than be at a jump meet getting 5-6 jumps.  I'm in it to jump, not to compete.  You have to have that mindset if you ever hope to jump 100 consectutive months otherwise you won't be able to come back down and jump something like a K25.  Your coach will complain if you do because your suppose to put the focus on keeping big hill form and you can't do that on a small hill.

 

The competitive nature of the sport also makes you want to push beyond the feasible limits of the sport.  When you get too far forward over the skis you end up in big trouble.  Big trouble can mean you end up injuring yourself ask well.  Any injury can quickly kill any ski jumping streak.  This is one area where I have been fortunate thus far.  Other than one concussion the only thing I have managed to do is give myself black and blue mark from all the crashes I've taken over the past nine years.

 

Admittedly I've seen just as many kids show up to hang out at practice and chat with their fellow jumpers when they have been hurt playing soccer.  Kids always seem to be playing a number of different sports, any of which can sideline them, sometimes for months on end.  It doesn't take ski jumping to hurt you...it can happen in the car, on the soccer/baseball/football field, or anywhere else.  Kids do have the tendency to hurt themselves more than adults because they don't know their limits.  Any injury can end a streak.

 

No matter how you look at it, not missing a month of ski jumping in 100 months is definitely one of the harder things to do.  I'm still shocked most of the time to realize that I have managed to pull off such an unthinkable feat.  I've had times when I really was worried I was going to be forced into missing a month.  It was the fear of the potentially missing a month several years back that got us boys to jump 68 consectutive weeks in Lebanon.  I can't miss a month if I don't miss a week.  The nice thing is now I'm typically not travelling much on the weekends and we aren't jumping during the summer months on the weekends anymore like we always use to.

 

Now onto month 100.  Or is that February 2010 when Storrs Hill will mark 150 consectutive months of ski jumping.  Or is that Decemeber 2010 when I'll mark 10 years without missing a month.  Oh...the streaks continue.

 

Keep the ski tips up, err ski you later,

Crash