West Yellowstone Ski Festival 2019
Yes the iconic West Yellowstone Ski Festival! I was invited by the Casper Mountain Biathlon Club to help coach the up-and-coming athletes in ski technique and marksmanship. I was joined by fellow coaches Kat Gruner (UWYO) and Jake Pearson (MSU Bozeman). Our team was a combination of athletes from Casper, Wyoming, Nome, Alaska, and Methow Valley, Washington. It was a ton of fun to spend a whole week with some of the funniest, craziest, respectful, and outgoing young skiers.
The first few days of the week were disappointing from the lack of snow in town and at the biathlon course. As a result, we had to drive up to the plateau for skiing. In reality, the trail was a road to the park that was groomed for this week, but I have no complaints about being on snow when Anchorage has none at the moment! Either way, the plateau was super cool because I had never skied up there before. We were also restricted to running and shooting or just shooting because of the lack of snow and very slick ice.
I was assigned to the 8-12 year old skiers and we had a blast! Our first ski was barely 45 minutes, but by the end of the week, they were on snow for 90 minutes and eager to work technique. Since they are all biathletes, they only wanted to skate, but I think I turned them into classic skiers once they actually learned technique. Their mothers told me that they have never received classic coaching before (what???) I also enjoyed that, once my group was done skiing, I had time to do my own ski training and catch up with Kat and Jake’s older kids group to ski with them for more time on snow.
My favorite memories with the younger athletes were at our house in Island Park, Idaho. Our house was about a 25 minute drive away from West Yellowstone, had no TV, bad wifi, a hot tub, and tons of board games, so we spent lots of time playing games and getting to know each other. Kat assigned each kid to a cooking crew, so it was a lot of fun to teach them how to cook and feast on the final products :) By far the most entertaining incident was when the kids pressed too many buttons on the hot tub and it fritzed out. The jets got stuck on full blast and shot water every where. They tried to fix it but when we went outside to tell them it is time to get out, it was full panic mode (why did none of them think to get our help earlier??) When Jake and I eventually got it off, half the water was on the side of the house or in the yard. They were dedicated to getting their hot tub running again, though, because the next day they packed pots and pans full of water out the door to refill it!
A biathlon race was scheduled for Wednesday and I was super excited to participate in my first on-snow race. However, since there wasn’t snow in town yet, I feel like I missed out on an important race to help me prepare for the upcoming trials. I was also not able to do the regular ski race on Saturday because I helped get all the younger athletes to their races instead. Overall, it is a good thing I did my job as a coach to wax, get bibs, make sure they made their starts, etc. Once everyone was ready and the other coaches arrived, I left for skiing on course to cheer and enjoy the beautiful day.
After the race, I was planning to drive home, but every single road to Wyoming was closed! Thankfully the WHAT (Wyoming High Altitude Training) team took me in to stay an extra night. To pass the time we went to Wild West Pizza for dinner and climbed the largest, steepest snow pile ever to ski off jumps. The verdict is that I am terrible at hitting jumps. An extra day in West is always best ;)
You can check out pictures and videos from our week on the Casper Mountain Biathlon Club Instagram.
