Skiing in the Summer?
Today, Sarah and I took our first lesson in freestyle skiing! We are spending a few days in Park City, UT after our trip to Colorado. Yesterday, we went up to the olympic training center, which is about 4 miles from the condo we are staying at. We watched people jumping off of freestyle olympic jumps into a pool! It was very cool and they have smaller jumps for people to learn on too. I was looking at the smaller jumps and thinking, “I bet I could do that…”
Turns out, for $65 you can get a 3 hour lesson from the pros (litterally the pros one of the lady coaches was on the last olympic team for freestyle skiing).
They do a good job of incrementally working you up to insanity. First, we signed the paperwork stating that we were indeed stupid. Next, we went through a stretching session and then watched a video talking about the facility and freestyle skiing. After that, we jumped off a little trampoline into the pool. Then we got geared up… The price included a wet suit, a helmet, a life jacket, skis, and boots.
There was a little test to see if we could ski on the plastic “synthetic snow”. After which we went to the little kicker. This had a 20 foot run with a 5ft jump into the pool. It was a little frightening, but after a few jumps it started to feel good. We were getting up to 10 feet of air into the pool.
Then right before our time was up I got to go on the next jump up. It was steeper with a longer run and the top was about 10 feet off the water. So at least 15 feet of air. On the bigger jumps (this one and up), they had a setup for putting compressed air into the bottom of the pool with a set of pipes that turned the water to froth right before you hit it, I suspect this makes a huge difference in softening the impact. I did my jump turn and slid down and off the edge. One of my issues with jumping is focusing too close in and looking down. So at about the peak of my trajectory I head one of the coaches yell “look up!” I did and made a comfortable landing in the froth.
On a side note there were real freestyle olympic types there playing on the big jumps and getting 50+ feet of air with multiple flips and twists (just like the olympics, but on a 100 degree day in the middle of summer). How cool is that!
Pictures to follow….