Special Olympics Ski Racing - 1st Day at Hurricane

"Good Morning, it's 5am on July 7, 2007, in beautiful Portland Oregon and we're expecting beautiful sunny skies and very warm temperatures for the next few days". That's our radio wake-up call, yes at 5am, for our first day at Hurricane Ski Camp.


A definite routine to learn - 5am wake-up, 5:15am jog up and down the street, 5:30 breakfast, 6:00am load up the car, 6:15am arrive at the base of Mount Hood at Timberline Lodge to wait until the first lift leaves at 7:00am, 7:15 arrival at our designated lane.


Now, one of Cory's challenges is getting himself ready on time - he has a tendency to be too meticulous, too perfect and is often rushed to be where he needs to be at the time he needs to be there. Putting on his ski socks for example, can take about 5 minutes per foot - to make sure he gets the sock on perfectly, with no bumps or folds, etc.


Another of Cory's challenges is motor skills - he'll virtually always find a clumsy way to carry something, so it makes it difficult for him to carry his share of the equipment. And speaking of equipment: here's what needs to make it up the hill:

skis, boots, sweater, jacket, helmet, poles, two pairs of gloves, goggles, several water bottles, fruit, sandwich, sunscreen, x 2 of everything since there's two of us going up.


So we do get everything loaded into the car and since we've never been to the hill before, we need to follow Bob and the others. Now once they arrive at the ski hill parking lot, they've done this before and they are on their way to the lift in no time flat. Meanwhile, Cory and I are struggling with how to carry everything so it takes us a bit longer to get there, so we in the back part of the lineup for the lift. We learned rather quickly that Bob expects his skiers to be at the front of the line so we'd have to make some changes to our routine if we were to get there a bit earlier.


So here we are in the line-up for the lift, and it's becoming quite clear that all these young racers are very much used to the routine, but we're not. And as Cory's dad, it's important to me to try to give Cory as much opportunity to "fit in" as much as possible - to not stand out as someone different. Cory does need help from me sometimes with various pieces of equipment - so not only is everyone else doing all of that by themselves, but I am in fact the only parent there - all the other racers are there on their own. So trying to make Cory blend in just isn't going to happen.


And these racers are always in race-mode - once the lift is open, look out - here they come, they want access to the lift and they want it NOW...


We manage to get Cory sorted out with boots, helmet, goggles, gloves, and poles. I've got my boots on, my helmet on with goggles, my gloves are on, but I'm still carrying my skis, my poles, and the backpack with the remaining stuff in it. And I'm so concerned with Cory being ready, that when the time comes to drop my skis to put them on and get on the chair lift, I started putting on my skis backwards!


Turned the skis around just in time to hop onto the chair and up we go - stress level just about as high as it can go.


And again, all of this is new to Cory - we've never been on this mountain before and we need to change chairs half-way up. Sure enough, we have to ski off the first chair, down and around a corner, then back up to the next chair - all of this while carrying a back pack which is new to me.


Sure enough, getting off the first chair was OK, but couldn't get going fast enough to get up the small hill to the next chair, so now I'm scrambling to herring-bone my way up with poles in one hand and back pack in the other. Cory doesn't make it up either - so now he and I are in the way of the skiers trying to maintain their speed up the hill so they don't have to do what we're doing.


I was soaking in sweat at 7:15am and we hadn't even started skiing yet.


Now we get to the top of Palmer Glacier and learn that there are about 15 or 16 other ski camps there - about a couple of hundred young skiers up there and we need to find our group. The glacier is set up like a bowling alley - each camp assigned its own alley, and we find our group on lane 9.


And then I see the view - WOW! We are somewhere around 9,000 feet, with the glacier stretching out below us, and Mount Jefferson in the distance.

Beautiful, absolutely breath-taking, not just the scenery, but the wind too! You can hear the wind on this video - a 360-degree panorama.

So now onto the first ski runs. Bob has set up some basic giant slalom-style courses, just to give Cory, Max, Ben, and Samantha the opportunity to make some basic turns to show Bob what each of them can do. I'm impressed with Bob's coaching style - he gave feedback to each racer just about every time they did a run, commenting both on what they did well and what they needed to work on. Later he took some videos of each racer and we reviewed them in the evening back at the house.

In Cory's case, his pole-planting needed improvement - he was planting his poles too late, thereby starting his turns too late and therefore making his turns well below each gate and slowing him down as he skied across the fall line to get to the next gate. And I noticed that Cory was skiing very tentatively - all the newness seemed to be making him very cautious. He is very much afraid of missing a gate. One of his peers at Special Olympics missed the opportunity to go to the World Games in Japan in 2005 because he missed the last gate of his run at the National Games in PEI and was disqualified, and Cory does not want that to happen to him - so he is very concerned with making every gate, even in practice.

At this point, Cory was still using his own equipment: a pair of 3-year old recreational Nordica ski boots and a set of Head Monster m70i skis that Cory had just bought back in December. Bob took one look at those boots and delivered one of his many "Bobisms": 'mooshy' - his boots were too soft, too 'mooshy' to give him the power and control that a racer needs. And while the skis were very good for recreational skiing, they were not designed for racing. So we'd head back into Government Camp later in the day to find Cory racing boots and racing skis.

Later in the morning, the snow gets quite soft and the ski conditions deteriorate, so we're done by around noon each day. So it's now time to pack everything up once again - at least the water bottles are empty so the backpack is lighter! - and head down. Well, it's not quite that easy. There's only snow until about 3/4 of the way down (see the photo above) so then it's hoofing it back to the parking lot.

That means not just carrying your backpack, but your skis, and your boots too. So we ski down as far as we can, and change into our regular shoes. By then, it's pretty darn hot, close to 100 degrees fahrenheit - it's a good workout carrying all that stuff in that heat wearing long underwear, ski pants, and a t-shirt.

And again, we're a bit slow, not being used to all this and by the time we get to the ski shops in Government Camp, most of the free demo equipment is gone. We walked from Rossignol, to Volkl, drove over to the Nordica shop, and finally found a pair of GS race skis in Cory's size at the Fischer shop, but no boots. We finally found a pair of racing boots at the Atomic shop, so Cory was ready for the next day with his first set of racing skis and boots.

Then a little down time and dinner. That's Bob on the right, with Samantha and Max on his right, and Ben on his left. Bob fed us really well all week - that's bar-b-que chicken, baked potato, and corn on our plates.

Next up, more early mornings, new equipment, a fall and an injury, and making progress. And record-breaking heat.

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