Bend Camp

We're one week into our annual Bend spring camp and we've had some of the best skiing I've had in the three years I've been here. Our first day was a little wet, but for the most part we've had our fair share of sunny skies and spring skiing. Bend is one of my favorite camps of the year. It's the beginning of the training season and our main focus is logging a lot of easy volume. Each morning we usually ski for two or three hours and then in the afternoon we do some kind of dryland training. Bend is an activity paradise. You can ski (downhill or uphill), mountain bike, run, paddle, swim, climb, or really do any other kind of activity your heart desires. As much as I love skiing on snow, it's nice to break up our training with running, biking, or strength in the afternoons.

Annie, Ida, Erika, and me 

One of our newest rookies, Ian Torchia (Torch) posing with his new teammates

Practicing some classic striding drills

Erika, Annie, and me with Mt. Bachelor in the background (Paddy photo)

If there's ever a day where it looks like it could be a good day for crust skiing up at the mountain, we throw in a pair of our rock skis just in case. The other day the boys headed out for an adventure while the girls did classic threshold intervals. When we got back home, they were all stoked about their ski and showing off all the pictures they took, so we made it our mission to go crust skiing the following day. We lucked out with the weather and had a beautiful sunny day to ski up into the Broken Top Bowl. I've been to Bend three times now, but this was the first time I ever did this ski and it did not disappoint. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Me, Sadie, Jennie, and Ida heading down from the Bowl (Bryan Fish photo)

Heading towards Broken Top with Annie

Snack breaks with Sades on top! (Erika photo)

Sodie is PSYCHED

Perfection

Goobie enjoying her first ever ski off trails

Yesterday afternoon we had a meeting with our U.S. Ski Team sponsors, Craft and L.L. Bean, where they unveiled our summer training uniforms. We are incredibly lucky to have such supportive companies providing us with training and competition gear and we're looking forward to sporting our new goods the rest of camp. We had a photo shoot with L.L. Bean on our ski this morning and we're about to head out for our Fast and Female event this afternoon. Thanks for following!

Back to winter this morning (flyingpointroad photo)

Dynamic warm up with our strength coach, T! (flyingpointroad photo)

New L.L. Bean and Craft gear (flyingpointroad photo)

April Activities

During the month of April, my friend Liz Stephen calls herself, "Fun Liz". Not to say she and the rest of us aren't fun the remainder of the year, but during the month of April, we can experience a different kind of fun that doesn't involve worrying about the little everyday stresses of being a ski racer. Some April activities that fall into my fun category are: not roller skiing until May, back country skiing as much as possible, crust skiing ever once in awhile, going to the beach, spending time with friends and family, and generally focusing on mentally and physically recovering from a long season without worrying about training hours. After spending about a week at home after Spring Series, I headed out to Colorado to spend a few weeks with Simi and his family in Aspen.

Beautiful (and bumpy) flight from Denver to Aspen

Simi took it easy on me my first few days in Colorado and we did some shorter skis while I adjusted to altitude and keeping up with him. My first weekend out there, we had a bunch of friends come to Sim's cabin for the weekend. These were some of my favorite kinds of April days consisting of waking up, skiing all day, coming home and having a cold beer on the deck, making a big dinner, going to bed, and doing it all over again.  It was a full cabin and we had some incredible skiing!

The crew!

First day of skiing in CO

Snack break

Liz and Al

Happy happy happy

Celine and Liz came to visit for the weekend!

Gus flew out for his first back country experience and was a champ

Sim checking Sylv's beacon

Ben, Hannah, and Liz scoping out a route for the day

On top of the world with Liz, Ben, Nils, and Hannah

Me, Liz, and Celine on top of Highlands Bowl

Liz and me skiing some pow pow

Tour guide Al and me

Weeeee

After a few days of recovering from our big weekend at the cabin, my cousin Anya and our friend and wax tech Tim came to Aspen for a few days. We toured around Aspen for a day before heading back into the cabin for a couple more days of skiing. We timed this perfectly with a big snow storm and I got to ski the most powder I've ever skied in my life (which isn't saying much, but it was a lot!!).

Uncle Howie in Aspen!

Tim and Anya

Anya and me

XC ski out to Maroon Bells

Anya!

me

Sim, Anya, me, and Tim

After a ton of skiing in Colorado, we packed up for a photo shoot with L.L. Bean in Asheville, North Carolina. I had been to Asheville once before to visit my cousin Alexa who was living there and it's a really incredible place. It has a huge outdoor community, and a culture that is rich in art, music, good food, and good beer. It is located in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains and we got to do most of our shoot up in the mountains. Jessie, Simi, and I were the models for the shoot and we had a blast with the company. Look for some of the photos to appear this fall!

behind the scenes

Heading to the waterfall

sunrise shots

Sunset shots

Blue ridge mtns

Jess and Sim in downtown Asheville

After our L.L. Bean shoot, Sim and I flew back to Colorado for a day before out final adventure of the month! For the last week of April, we went down to Sayulita, Mexico for a week of beach time. Our friend MJ met us down there and we had a lovely week of surfing, paddle boarding, mexican food, margaritas, and relaxing. It was the perfect week to finish off Fun April and now I'm excited to being the new training year! I'll be back in Vermont for the next two weeks before our start up camp in Bend Oregon the last two weeks of May. Thanks for following!

Sayulita Sunset

Beach time

MJ and Sim on the roof top deck overlooking town and the ocean

Lunch spot

MJ sunset surfing