Travel

The Soldier Hollow rollerski course and surrounding Olympic trails are bustling with activity these days. US Ski team members, Canadian and US biathlon skiers and some top juniors are all currently training outside Heber, Utah. Some members of the Canadian cross country team are supposed to arrive this week and will stay for the rest of the month. Here are some photos from early this week. Related article: Soldier Hollow's rollerski course has been greatly...

FasterSkier.com visited the Olympic arena at Soldier Hollow outside Heber, Utah this weekend and tested the new additions to the rollerski course. The biggest news is that a (approximately) one kilometer loop has been added and this loop includes the main climb up Hermod Hill! At the top of Hermod it's a flat/gradual down/rolling section before it connects to the old loop close to the bridge that goes over the steepest hill on the sprint-course....

Start and stop June turns into big July Ski-able conditions are normal in June or even May in the austral winter of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego but this year the real snow held off until late June and July. After a series of storms passed through conditions have been good to excellent and even withstood recent north winds (equivalent to south winds in the boreal hemisphere). Ushuaia’s local stalwart skier and junior coach Sebastián Menci...

Eleven American Juniors, and three coaches from the US, just returned from three weeks of dry-land and on-snow training in Sweden and Norway. The trip was organized by Burke Mountain Academy’s Pete Phillips and this was the sixth year it has taken US juniors to the Solleftea Ski Gymnasium’s summer ski school to train with Swedish athletes and coaches, and to put the training to use on the snow fields in Sognefjell in Norway. This...

Falls Creek, June 18. The Australian Ski Season officially opened a week ago. Since June 7 there have been 10-15km of cross country ski tracks groomed at Falls Creek, the training centre for the Australian Cross Country Ski Team. It is snowing today and more snow is forecast all this week. The tracks will be groomed again tomorrow – conditions can be seen on the Falls Creek website www.fallscreek.com.au The FIS Australia / New Zealand...

Max Treinen was a US World Junior Team member in 2006. He has traininged with Jan Buron's Alaska Winter Stars program since he was 8 years old, and he will be skiing for the Unoversity of Alaska Anchorage next year. This fall I decided to spend the 2006-2007 schoolyear in Sweden. Because of visa problems over which I shan’t go into any detail in this piece of writing, I ended up spending but four months....

For the 6th summer a group of juniors from all across the country will have the chance to participate in Sweden’s Solleftea Summer Ski School, and to train twice a day on snow at Norway’s spectacular Sognefjell. The Summer Ski School is an important recruiting tool for the Ski Gymnasium in Solleftea, and juniors from all over Sweden come to train with top athletes and coaches from the current Swedish National Team, from the Ski...

Late snow in Europe. After a dismal winter, winter finally arrived in parts of Europe – just in time for spring. Here is another photo-update from Meiko Hoemke of Germany: Skiing in Europe just doesn't get boring… snow hit again last night. Oh yea, es ist wunderbar! After being done with my two week block at school in Zurich I stopped on my way home at the Flumsberg Alm in Switzerland close to Luxemburg. The...

Fortum Ski Tunnel in Torsby, Sweden has had a fantastic fall season. By December 31,000 skiers had visited since the opening in June 2006. For more about the Torsby skitunnel see Swedish Ski Tunnel To Open http://www.fasterskier.com/news3399.html First Swedish Skitunnel Opened http://www.fasterskier.com/travel3436.html Evaluation Of The Swedish Skitunnel http://www.fasterskier.com/travel3440.html The Swedish skitunnel in Torsby has been a success among Norwegian and Swedish skiers. – It has exceeded expectations. The customers have felt that it’s been a...

Everyone realizes that ski racers must spend a lot of time training in order to excel. Obviously, the skis need to be waxed and cared for in order for them to be fast. Clearly, time must be allotted for sleep and proper recovery. Once all this is accomplished, however, the racer still needs to get to the race, and that can be a daunting task in the widely dispersed American racing scene. Traveling plays an...

Recently Forbes Traveler magazine polled members of the US Ski Team about their favorite ski resorts in North America. Favorites were solicited from athletes Andrew Newell, Torin Koos, Andrew Johnson and Kris Freeman; coach Chris Grover; and the team's Director, Luke Bodensteiner. The top ten were as follows. Silver Star Mountain Resort, British Columbia Mont-Sainte-Anne Cross-Country Centre, Quebec Craftsbury Outdoor Center, Vermont Methow Valley, Washington Royal Gorge Cross Country Ski Resort, California Telemark Resort, Wisconsin...

For those of you who are packing up to head to West Yellowstone – you lucky dogs! We recieved the following report and photos on Monday from Amy Caldwell, Stratton Mountain School Head J1/OJ Coach. The Stratton Mountain School crew arrived in West Yellowstone last night and got on the snow for the first time this morning. The conditions were great with around a foot of snow and temperatures in the mid-20's. Besides our group,...

All Nordic skiers take note, especially Master, Junior and U23 racers. The trails at the Black Jack Cross Country Ski Club in Rossland, BC will be hosting their two biggest race events ever. The expertly groomed, rolling terrain that Canadian National Team skier George Grey calls home will host both the 2007 Canadian Masters' Championships and the third race of the 2006-07 Haywood NorAm Series. The Haywood NorAm event is a qualifier for the Junior...

The Yellowstone Ski Festival November 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25, 2006 There has been a significant change in the weather here in West Yellowstone and final preparations for the Yellowstone Ski Festival are well underway. Here’s an update on a few of the event’s highlights: The Fall Camp Clinics are FULL: Our Fall Camp Clinics are officially full for 2006! Thanks to all of you that have registered. We will offer another set of...

Last year’s 33rd place finisher in the American Birkie, Meiko Hoemke sent us these photos from glacier skiing in Les Diablerets, Switzerland last week. Here is Meiko’s report: – I finally made it up to the glacier this morning. The temperatures in Europe are ridiculous warm at the moment. The glacier is at approximately 9800 feet elevation. Temperatures up there were in the 42F+ range, the conditions were old wet snow with chunks of ice...

Editor's Note: The following was sent to us by APU Nordic Ski Center. In addition to the great skiing at Hatcher Pass this past weekend, it is also worth noting that the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage has also started grooming some of the trails right in Anchorage. Many skiers, myself included, have been enjoying very good skiing at Kincaid Park the last couple of days. Sorry, no pictures from that – I was too...

Whoa! What are those for? Cool as! If you think you get crazy looks as you rollerski in North America, try rollerskiing through the streets of New Zealand. Sometimes little kids come out of their homes to watch us in our rollerski pick-ups, so we get them to help us out by making them the official ‘starters’ of our speeds. While most collegiate skiers have been spending the fall training with their teams, there are...

Siri Halle, the 1991 junior World champion will be racing in the Dusseldorf sprint World Cup opener. She was recently training in Bulgaria. http://www.fasterskier.com/news2371.html Siri Halle (34) has been selected to race for Norway in the upcoming sprint World Cup opener in Düsseldorf, Germany. She is however not a member of the national team, so while the team did their final preparation in Val Senales, Siri Halle got ready at 2000 meter altitude in Bulgaria....

The snow started falling in Fairbanks Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday afternoon the Birch Hill trails were being groomed and a few dedicated skiers were taking advantage of the conditions to start accumulating some early season K's. The total snowfall at Birch Hill was about 3″-4″/8-10cm, which is plenty for the smooth-surfaced trail system. It will be a while before tracks are possible, but skating is pretty good at this point. For a first-hand view...