2012 Ski Season Officially Underway

When does the season start – Thanksgiving camps? First World Cup Races? How about the when the rollerskis are swapped out for actual skis?

This week we received two reports of on-snow skiing. Welcome to winter!

The Auburn Ski Club enjoyed a record-setting summer – just three months without skiing.

Mark Nadell filed this report.

The shortest dry-land training season in recorded history ended yesterday on the Auburn Ski Club “Glacier.” Since the last day of skiing was just a mere 3 months ago, on July 3, 2011 ( http://fasterskier.com/2011/07/auburn-ski-club-hosts-on-snow-sprint-in-july/ ), an earlier-than-normal strong snowstorm drove through the Sierra Nevada this week and left 2 FEET of snow on Donner Summit. Exhibiting a remarkable degree of flexibility, the coaches of the Auburn Ski Club and Sugar Bowl Academy Junior Nordic Teams quickly switched their afternoon rollerski session to one that included a even more “realism” for nordic ski training — a few laps around the trails at Auburn Ski Club.

Harkening back to the good old days, all the tracks for the day were skier-produced, but with over 20 hardcore skiers and coaches, it wasn’t long until tracks were criss-crossing the trails at the Club. While the novelty of skiing on October 6th far outweighed the quality of skiing, smiles and happy faces amongst the crowd abounded. While the rest of Truckee was whining about the early snow, and the shortness of the summer, these nordic skiers were in their element, excited for the harbinger of snow to come. Even though this snow could easily be gone well before Halloween, it could also stick around until July 2013 as a new base for the ASC “Glacier.”

Does the sun always shine in the Far West when it isn't snowing?

It is not a real storm without a snow angel.

Nick Crawford, coach with the Bogus Basin Nordic Team, sent this selection of photos from Galena Pass, up above Sun Valley, Idaho. Last year Nick was coaching in Fairbanks and enjoyed some of the earliest skiing of the year up there as well. Like the Auburn SKi West, Sun Valley skiers had a short hiatus from skiing. SVSEF groomed up at Galena well into the spring.