Wilmington Ski Club

We’re all about skiing, boarding and a whole lot more!

Racing

Rich Zober cutting inside the ruts and carving some nice race turns on the GS training course.

Our first race of 2012 was at Elk, January 7 and 8.  There had been just enough cold weather to open some of the “black” trails, including Slalom. Slalom is our favorite race trail in PA. Unfortunately, the snow conditions were such that the race crew could not set a safe GS course, so we raced slalom both days.  Many of us prefer to race GS because it is faster and technically easier. But it was exciting to get two days of slalom on a great race trail.

Susan Maximuk and one of our new members, Kathy Hart, both placed first in their age groups both days. Paul Fowser and Ron Konza are both in one of the toughest age groups. Both had had third place finishes: Paul on Saturday and Ron on Sunday. Rich Zober finished in second place both days in his age group and Fred Forbes finished in first place on Saturday and in second place on Sunday in his age group.

We had enough racers and good enough times to finish second on Saturday and third on Sunday in team competition. This is especially satisfying. We had enough racers for a team and they did well.

Please note that the website had a race at Sno Mountain in February.  That was listed in error. 

The race at Roundtop is a good race to attend if you have never raced before or have limited race experience.  Let me know if you are interested and will help usher you through.

We are looking forward to our races at Belleayre in New York in mid-February.  Belleayre is an interesting mountain. It is bigger than anything in the Poconos and it has some really good runs, including our favorite race course, Dot Neble. Belleayre is state run, so there is some bureaucratic quirkiness. But on the good side, the area is not over-developed, so the mountain is often not over-crowded.

There are some open dates in February; hopefully our race team will be able to have a NASTAR race day at Sno or one of the other mountains that have NASTAR on the weekend.

On a sad note, our buddy Fred Forbes had a season ending injury at Bear Creek. He was playing in the terrain park with kids when he should have been doing edge-set drills. It is sad not to be able to race with him the rest of this year. But he should be recovered enough for golf season and go-cart racing season.

Think Even Just a Little Snow, Please!

 Bill Champion