Updates! - West Yellowstone

My goodness. Many apologies for the lack in posting, the St. Olaf ski team did not fall off the face of the earth, we are still working harder than ever! The next few posts will cover our trip to West Yellowstone, a dual meet with Scholastica, the JNQ/open races at Wausau, U.S. XC Senior Nationals in Soldier Hollow, Utah, the Minnesota College Championships and St. Olaf time trials, and our upcoming races at Telemark Lodge in Cable, Wisconsin this weekend! So much to catch up on it's a little overwhelming.

First on the agenda: West Yellowstone

While a trip out to West Yellowstone offers the chance for phenomenal training on gorgeous trails at a higher altitude than Minnesota, it also offers the valuable chance for a team to truly bond together for the first time of the season. There's nothing like 18-hour van rides, living in a cozy cabin for a week while sharing bathrooms, cooking, cleaning, eating, sleeping, and training together to throw a team into sync with one another. It allows a team to get to know one another on a deeper level than purely skiing, and this is a chance every team (whether college or high school) should try to take advantage of.

We spent the week skiing twice a day, sleeping, playing games, exploring town, climbing a few mountains, cooking up fantastic meals, watching some football, and doing a little homework. We hit up the Wild West Pizzeria for dinner, stopped by the expo, and ran to Idaho. Oh and don't forget that we created a magnificent turkey dinner for Thanksgiving.  Workouts included lots of level one general distance skis, a little technique, a ski into the national park itself, and for some of us, re-learning how to navigate some tricky downhills on skinny skis.

Racing: A few of us got the chance to race the SuperTour sprints toward the end of the week. After a high volume week of training at altitude, we were pretty tired, but relatively satisfied with the first official race of the season. Our freshman Shelby Ahrendt raced her first ever college race! We were pretty proud.

SuperTour Bracket Results

Yellowstone was a glorious way to start the season off.  After soaking up the sunshine and trails we headed for home, exhausted but happy.

Nels, Kelsey, Shelby, Nora, Paige, Cole, Liza, Mikki, and Jake at the top of Deja View


Getting creative with roasting marshmallows
Cole, Nora, Kelsey, Shelby, Paige and Liza on Windy Ridge
The view from Windy Ridge is gorgeous
Our ski into the park!
Women's team! Rachel, Liza, Kelsey, Shelby, Mikki, Nora, Paige
The whole team
Men's team! Evan, Nels, Jake, Kai, Cole, Coach Tom

Paige racing the sprint qualifier
Nora in her sprint final

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