joegm
New member
random thoughts while still recovering from the epic 17 day bump session in B.C. been back for 5 days... weather was killer, 1 day of snow ( very minimal ) , 1 day of rain, 3 days of fog , 7 blue bird, and 5 partly sunny. most days the temp at the base of the village was about 80 and in the glacier most of the sunny days were around 60 to 65....( or something like 22 or so as frank would say!!!! ) we were able to ski down off the top lift to the top of the solar coaster lift and avoid the bus ride on the way down every day we were there which was amazing.... they did a great job setting up the line down ... it was falling apart fast when we left but to go that late seemed quite the feat. overall camp and the whole things was very good... early on though it was too crowded , went out at the height of all the insanity when the jib camps, the race camps and the freestyle camps are at their peak....next year gonna try and go out mid july and close the place, which i think happened today aug 3rd. smart's mogul camp had sean smith, craig rodman, shelly robertson, ryan johnson (# 6 olympics) and scot belevance ( also #6 in 02 olympics.. they tied ) for coaches at the 4th session. we got some epic days in during smart's off days and the other big name bump camp that's out there ( world mogul ) on their off day towards the end towards the end of july when the fast skiers in tight suits cleared out of town... it was like having your own private bump run for the whole day with a 2 minute t bar ride....i always come out of there with new info but it's getting to the point now where until i start doing the technical things the coaches are telling me to do, i am gonna be in a rut... so i'm looking foreward to a big winter.... going out early also allowed me to see the jib camps first hand live becasue in the past, they are usually wrapped up by the last week of july when i would go out. 2 observations 1) the level of riding and jibbing is approaching an unreal level for the top level skiers.. the things that were being attempted and often times stuck, were incredible.... bump specific wise, the bumpers at the next olympics i would guess will have to have at least one invert jump in the runs in order to contend. the new rule in bump skiing is that you cannot do more than 2 back to back tricks in the same air meaning no triple twisters or quad twisters... if you are gonna do a quad manuver, you have to cut in after the 2nd twister with something else, so you can do 3 twisters in an air, just not three in a row... this is really pushing the young bumpers to get inverted more and you could see them working on it....as hard as this is to fathom, i actually heard a conversation between two canadian team members talking about attempting an air switch ( ie coming into the jump backwards ) ... it would seem the amount of speed dump required to do that would put one so far back in the time that it would be unlikely in a competition.. but i wouldn't rule it out in 2006... the other thing i noticed was that the lines that the top level skiers are skiing are getting more and more direct and zipper like with less knee angle and more up and down... i kind of like the older style with a lot of dynamic movement and knee angle... kind of like frank's countyman jean luc brassard use to ski like... ( jlb also used to attempt , to me, one of the most impressive airs that i think can be done... the double cassock... but that's all condsidered old school now i guess <BR>2) my second observation is that while the level of riding and jibbing appears to be skyrocketing for a certain percentage, there looked to me to be an astounding number of younger skiers ( south of 15 yrs old ) who were in jib camp and who basically sucked in terms of basic ski technique... the mentality of riding rails seems to be the most important thing to a lot of these younger kids who were out there.... it was emphasized to me when seeing some of the jibbers accessing their big booters via the top of the bump runs and while trying to get through the bumps looking like balls in high grass... lost!!!!!! i'm not the biggest fan of racers but one thing you can't argue with, racers are fundamentally sound skiers... certainly more so that some 15 yr old who thinks he is the bomb because he has a pair of tanner hall armada skis on. <BR> but anyways, it was all good as they say up there in canada <BR> yo cancat... yer killing me man... all this great new stuff at cannon your talking about and not one word about a dedicated blue bump run... the same old crap with paulies and zoomer ain't gonna get it done man.. tell nat p. the gm, i am disappointed.