A little something new!

Having spent the last week freesking big stuff in Chamonix, I am wiped! So instead of typing, heres a little something new!

veldig bra!!!

Todays results don't scream awesome, but it was really really good, solid skiing for me, minimal mistakes and some top split times, make me a really happy skier, plus 10th in the final world cup of the season isn't too shabby either!  13th overall for the season, 12th in the classic, 13th in the sprint, and 17th ish in the parallel with only two starts makes me a very happy man, big improvements in all of my skiing this year!  Way better in the gates first...making jump lines, and landings...as well as much better skating and endurance we all huge factors in the season.  My offseason training with Angela Figallo was pretty clutch in making that possible...ANGELA YOUR A BOSS!!  I can't wait to get back at it!

From españa this is C. Snyder checking out!

ikke bra...

Today was not my best skiing, pretty good, but not the best.  Today was a broken day, in the first run of junior parallel, I broke a pole on the third gate, raising my season total of broken poles to five poles...leaving me with one pole...oops.   I managed to make up some time in the second run, but not nearly enough, so race number one, down the drain.   In the afternoon I had two pretty decent runs, but with two penalties in the first run, I was pretty much out of contention right off the bat, but thats ski racing so I am looking forward to tomorrow mornings sprint classic, bib 17!  Our coach Ty has the first run course set so hopefully I can take advantage of some familiar setting!

Let em rip

The Classic!

A wild day here in Espot!  The course here was pretty long, with an especially challenging skate section.  The middle was SUPER STEEP, like really really steep.  I did a pretty good job staying ahead of the course and lost a minimal amount of time in the skate to finish with a nice little 10th place.  Not my best classic result, but still a good one.  I am happy with how I skied, especially after looking at the GS split times, top 5 ski time so super happy with that.  Unfortunately, 10th in a world cup is only good enough for 4th in the junior world champs category...but in the afternoon parallel qualification, I was fast enough to qualify for both the junior and senior races, 6th and 13th respectively.  So tomorrow could be a really really really long day!  Im looking forward to racing some parallel!  Should be a ripping time!

Gonna go SHRED!!

ESPANNNAA

 I think that Spain is without a doubt my favorite race series of the year.  Although the 12 hour drive from Chamonix to Espot is quite a tough one.  I drove with Jack Harvard Taylor and Jasmin Taylor of the British team, quite the ride.  I drove for about two hours, IN A RIGHT HAND DRIVE CAR!! So strange, changing lanes and lane positioning in general was just really strange.

But now that I am here, is 60 or 70 degrees outside, sunny, and beautiful.  The skiing is interesting, but it is still fun.  We have been tuning our ski's outside shirtless, playing soccer in the street, I love it here...its so relaxed, the race hill is so nice, and its in generally amazing.

Tomorrow is the Classic, I'll be getting after it!!!

CHAMONIX!

We have been in and out of good internet and the last three days have been crazy, but We are all happy mostly after the three races here in france.  We have had unreal weather here, warm and sunny everyday, but the racing has not been quite so good.  Madi and I both struggled a bit in the classic, 13th, and 16th respectively.  Mediocre skiing, and good skating, on a perfect course. Sad day though as Shane our north of the border friend went down with a reoccurring ankle injury.  Hopefully a speedy recovery for him.  Last night was the night sprint here in Chamonix.  Madi skied well, but had some trouble with the slippery snow conditions.  I was really slow in the first run, 20th, but some good strategy and SUPER HIGH intensity in the second run bumped me up to 12th.  Today we raced a sprint just across the mountains at Les Contamines, where madi shredded her way to 7th on an absolutely banner day, I on the other hand, had some trouble finding speed and wound up in 17th...such is life! Tomorrow we travel to spain to meet the rest of the US team!!



I am making a few changes in my boot to give me a more aggressive stance, I played around with some things in the second run to see what felt good, and I really liked it, so lets see what I can do!

Le Vallée Blanche!

Today was without a doubt one of the most spectacular days of skiing that I have ever had in my life.  Jack Harvard Taylor of the British team and a Chamonix local took Madi, Roy, and Myself, as well as two of his friends, both former top British Alpine Team members, out on the spectacular slopes of Mt. Blanc and the Aguille de Midi...more to come on this later, but this place is without a doubt one of the most spectacular places on earth.  I have some amazing photos of the day, and honestly I am a bit speechless!  Tomorrow is a tough tough classic across the valley at Les Houches, I start bib 8!  Attach from the front!

Chamonix!

After some very very very stressful situations at the Denver airport, I made it to Chamonix via the Geneva  airport! I had a very nice dinner in the Montreaux Jazz Café in the Geneva airport.  Serenaded by the likes of B.B. King and Ray Charles!  I then shuttled my way over to Jack Harvard Taylor's chalet in Chamonix!  A stunning drive, and a stunning place to be!  Today was a stunning day here and we had a good day of training up on the hill!  We trained with some of the french team along with the local british folks!  Tomorrow a day off with a quick ski down the Vallee Blanch!

back again!

Its been far too long since my last post in here, about 2 weeks to be specific, but these have not been the best two weeks ever.  As far as the last part of Steamboat world cups are concerned, I crashed in the classic, had a decent sprint result, 11th, got eliminated in the second round in the parallel, and had two very poor runs for a 17th in the final sprint.  Not completely horrible, but obviously not the results I was looking for on home turf.  Good news is I know I made mistakes here and there, and I know how to fix them.  Only I haven't really had the chance, last week it pretty much dumped all week and I had epic pow day after epic pow day.  Including on 30+ inch dump last monday that was pretty much mind blowing.

This past weekend we trucked over Alta, Utah for some regional races, the first of which was the second worst conditions I have ever races in, dumping snow and 50+mph winds.  It was more a contest of who got the least amount of wind, which I did not, so 3rd in the first race.  The second day I skied pretty fast, but 1 measly penalty somewhere left me in 2nd place on the day.  The course was really flat and easy so there was not much room for me to distance myself enough to have wiggle room, so that sucks but thats life.  On the bright side two awesome days of free skiing at Alta were well worth the drive.  That is probably my favorite place to ski of all the places I've skied in my life, pretty epic.

I have one week before I depart for Chamonix and the next set of world cups, so its time to put the fat skis away and get back to work!

A weird feeling

Today was a good day, a bad good day, probably the worst great day I've ever had.  (hows that for an oxymoron).  I finished today in 8th position, by personal best (great day), but my skiing, or at least how I felt my skiing, was terrible!  I didn't make any glaring mistakes, but I just make lots of little ones.  For example struggling off the jump (compared to the rest of the field I apparently aced it, but it felt pretty bad)  and 4 gate penalties.  However, I think that everybody else felt the same way.  Steamboat has had about a foot of heavy wet snow in the last couple days and we had about 4 inches to slip off this morning, so the conditions were not exactly easy.  I think the winners today were the people who struggled the least!  So I'll take it, and tomorrow, I'll get right back at it, wearing bib #5 which I have drawn in each and every classic thus far, talk about consistency!

And speaking of the winners, huge congratulations to Steamboats own Madi McKinstry who absolutely crushed it for her first world cup podium today in 3rd position!  That makes it a great day!

Hopefully I can match or better her results tomorrow!

Not much

Not too much to say about the last two days and the first two dual sprints...yesterday I skied pretty poorly and failed to qualify for the dual portion, and today I skied really well in the first run, but I jumped too far and in a bit of the wrong direction and I crashed out in the second qualification round.  So, the last two days have been lots of watching for this kid.  Soo too bad for me, but thats thats the way the cookie crumbles!  So we fly back to the US on monday and get after it getting ready for the US world cups!

Rjukan Sprint

Finally I've broken out of my 11th place rut!  I skied well today, not great, but well, and penalty free for two full runs, resulting in a 9th place finish in todays sprint!  I wasn't really impressed with the way I skied, other than the fact that I was penalty free, but I am excited about the fact that I finally had two good runs on a hill that has absolutely killed me in past years.  In the three years that I have come to Rjukan I have never once had a race better than 22nd on this sprint hill!  Of course I did have my previous best finish here last season in the now obsolete  GS, but that was on a totally different hill!  It feels really good to have a good race on a hill that has always bested me in the past.

Today was nice, but tomorrow we run the FIRST EVER WORLD CUP PARALLEL SPRINT!  It will be historic, and I would be lying if I said that winning tomorrow, being the first ever world cup, would be much much more special than any other win this season...I am going to go get after it, you never know what I will come up with!

Gaustatoppen

Meant to add this, the view out my hotel window!

Back in Rjukan!

I am back in Rjukan for the third year in a row, and it is beautiful as ever!  The Gaustatoppen mountain in the background, on one of the biggest mountaintop plateaus in the world.  Its so big you don't really feel like its a mountaintop, but sure enough, it drops down into valleys all around.  This truly is a very special place.  The last two days we have been training here and getting a feel for the very soft snow.  Today the organizers started bringing in all of the big TV equipment and all the big trucks just started showing up!  Hopefully I can have a few good results here, it would be good to leave my first go round of europe with some more good finishes to make up for my crappy skiing in Slovenia.  We have a sprint tomorrow, followed by the first two parallel sprints of the year!  It can be seen on Eurosport 2 sunday morning, and NRK 1 saturday night!  Wish us luck!

Kvitfjell Classic!

A day late, but better late than never!  Kvitfjell was once again pretty good to me on a gorgeous Norway day, with a nice sun, and temps down around zero, the Norwegian coach set a brutal classic, around 45 gates, plus a nice roll track, and a brutal minute long skate section, I laid down a pretty decent run, good enough for eleventh position, despite breaking my pole very early in the run.  Kudos to my teammate Madi Mckinstry for an expert pole handoff.  I did not make the jump  line, once again by inches, but I am still very satisfied with my result.  Not only were these two races in Kvitfjell two of my best result, but they came in different disciplines, on runs that I did not feel were my best skiing.  I am looking forward two these next set of races here in Rjukan, hopefully I can clean everything up and really lay down some killer runs to have some good results here and improve my standings to give myself the best chance of kicking butt when we go to the good ole USA!

Kvitfjell day one!!

We had fun in the snow today,  as it snowed all day today, as it has the last 4 days here in Kvitfjell.  Madi ran 8th and she ran into some equipment trouble as her goggles completely iced over as she left the start, so she struggled a bit with knowing where she was on the long sprint course.  She also took a little spill in the wrap, also probably due the fact that she looked a bit like a blind person (weird huh) as she skied in.  However she had a strong second run but was not able to gain much ground for a 10th place finish.  I had a pretty decent day racing on a hill I spent a long time skiing on last winter.  First run I laid down a solid run, and was able to jump into twelfth place.  I was much more comfortable in the second run, and made up more time to finish in 11th position.  I did end up with 7 total gate penalties, I know I had two in the second run, including a big fat alpine turn after the jump, I  went a little too far for once!  Tomorrow Madi and I will try to clean up our skiing and lay down some sweet runs.  She starts #3 and I start number #5!!  Finally my classic points are good enough to break into the top 15!!  Rock and roll!!

Better..

Today was a better day, I had a decent first run, good speed, but again I missed the jump line...and I quote the world cup director on this one "by about 10cm."  That my friend is frustrating, skiing really fast, then making one little mistake and getting bumped 3 seconds back.  At least I know that my skiing was fast.  The second run was much better, I nailed the jump landing and pretty much everything else.  The skiing was still not quite perfect, or really even that close to perfect.  I need to clean up a few aspects of my skiing, but I was penalty free so thats what really counts.  I am looking forward to going to Norway and Kvitfjell to race on a hill that I know pretty well, until then, TELE HO!!

Bohinj...and believe it or not...racing

We are here in Bohinj, Slovenia, where there is...no snow, but yes believe it or not we are racing.  We were not able to race in Rauris where we had too much snow, and here where we have almost no snow we are racing.  Literally as soon as you leave the race piste you are on dirt.  The skate section is about 2 meters from edge of where the snow ends, on a corn field.  I'm talking there are corn stalks sticking up as soon as the snow ends.  Its pretty wild.  It is below freezing, mostly, but there is just no snow.  So we are racing on this little tiny ski trail.  I'll try to post a photo soon, but the internet is pretty sketchy here.  Its a wild world out here.  Anyhow the racing by me was terrible.  I did not ski well in the first run at all, call it nerves whatever you want, but it was terrible.  I stepped it up for the second run and skied mostly better.  We will see tomorrow if I can step up the game.  Phillipe Lau laid down two killer runs to absolutely smoke the competition.  I don't think anybody can catch him right now!  I'll do my best to tomorrow, bib 19!!

Well we tried...

The last two days we have had races in Rauris, Austria,  From which we had spectacular views, as well as some sweet free-skiing!  Unfortunately friday we had 12 cm of heavy heavy heavy heavy wet wet wet snow.  So we wen't and inspected for the first run, but we didn't even make it to jump practice before it became apparent that there was far too much coming down to see, let alone run a race.  So we  went home, dried out stuff out and prepared for today.  The race organizers spent the night out working on a preparing the piste to race today, but even with all their hard work,  we only made it through 5 racers 3 of which crashed violently, before it became apparent that the conditions were far from ideal to race on, specifically the surface which was very soft, and highly inconsistent.  It was bumpy, chunky, and just about everything else you can think of that would not be fun to ski on.  It was a great day, but not quite the kind of nice day to race on unfortunately.  So we are now in the little baby town of Bohinj, Slovenia, where you there is barely enough snow to cover the race hill!  None the less the snow is hard and consistent so we will go for it tomorrow and hope for the best!

what up Austira?

Zoë, Kenneth and I have safely arrived in Rauris, Austria, after taking numerous planes, trains, and automobiles, and more than my fair share of sketchy train stuff in Munich, but we are all here and ready to rock!  We all went freeskiing today on a strikingly beautiful day here in Austria. We took a little dabble on the race hill, taking a chance to peak at some of the tricky terrain features that the hill presents.  Tomorrow we have official training, so we have a good opportunity to get a good feel for the course!  Race day on friday, get excited!!




also the photo is taken from the Summit of Rauris, what a spectacular place!

since I've been gone....

It has been quite some time since my last blog post, and I had intended to keep you all more informed, but unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot to write about, then there was lots to write about, and no internet to write with!  So I'lll give you the quick and dirty.  For the last few weeks, I have been training with the steamboat springs winter sports club, pretty much every day.  I have made some very good progress with my skiing, and I felt like I was skiing about as well as I could, until last thursday.  I broke my thumb.....wah wah waaahhhhh.  But Its not a serious break and it didn't require surgery!  So I sucked up the pain and went down to Vail and raced.  Around 70 people showed up to bash gates, and a fantastic time was had by all, especially this kid who skied a great race, skied penalty free (for once) and came home with the gold!  It felt great to come away knowing that I am skiing as fast as I think I am, and that I am ready to throw it down on the world cup level!

I am currently sitting in Denver, awaiting my flight to Europe.  Denver to London to Munich and a Train to Salzburg!  This thursday we will open our World Cup season at Rauris in the heart of Austria!

Wish me luck!!