My last month has been very busy. Half of my last month has been spent ski training in Chile with school (Green Mountain Valley) and the time before that was spent in the classroom, weight room and on the river.
Only times I have paddled in this last month were during and after hurricane Irene. The morning of the hurricane I paddled on Mill Brook about 10 minutes from campus. The rivers were high that morning and were rising very quickly. Everything was too big already so we decided to go run as much of mill as we could before it got too high. We got there and it was very high but still looked like it was good to go. After a quick scout in a couple places we put on and it was a great paddle. I paddled most of the lower section which I had never done and there was one very un expected double drop that was great! The normal drops in the section were watery. It was a great run. When we got off there was not much wood moving. After we ran shuttle (took 10 min) there were full size trees coming down the creek. Needless to say, perfect timing! The next week was spent helping the community clean up from the flood. So many houses and businesses were destroyed…
The next week we got a bit of rain and I got out on the New Haven ledges for 3 laps prior to class that morning. We put on at 7 did 3 laps with Dr. Ed Clark and made it back for 9:15 for a 9:25 class! The three laps were great. It wasn’t very high but still fun. There were some nice surprises on the river after Irene changed things and some things for the worse. But the always great Toaster falls (18 ft) was still that amazing auto boof and nice soft landing! Glad that didn’t change!
Now to skiing-
Chile was a great camp. The conditions were perfect throughout the camp. We didn’t receive 1cm of snow making the trails bulletproof for 2 weeks straight. We were able to accomplish a lot. I worked in the beginning a little on technique and then moved into gates quickly and progressed trying to be smother in my transition and building more pressure at the top of the turn. I got 5 days of GS training, 3 days of SG and 3 days of SL. The speed training was great on Sol 1. We progressed into a larger jump everyday. The last day the jump was pretty large. The GS training was amazing because of all of the different hills we got to train on throughout the camp. SL was good too. I was happy the way I skied the last couple days in SL. For being my first time in SL gates in a long time I was happy to be consistent. I just need to narrow my stance a bit, keep a consistent pole plant every turn and I will be doing well. The food was not the best down there but we survived. I must say tonight’s meal at Ruby Tuesdays in the Santiago airport was quite amazing. I am going to have to dig in back at school and pack away some food because we all lost a fair amount of weight getting barely any meat for the past 2 weeks.
I cant wait to get back out on the rive this week! Looks like there may be a little rain coming in so keep your fingers crossed! I am itching to get in my boat.
Lastly I am getting some new camera lenses this week so I am very excited! I will have them for the fall season! I am getting 2 Tokina lenses. One 28-80mm 2.8 f/stop and one 80-200mm 2.8 f/stop. I will get at least one of them hopefully both!
It is currently 3 o’clock in the morning on the airplane and I can’t sleep, so I have been writing a long blog post for the past hour!
Until next time, Safe Lines
Ryan
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