Yesterday was foggy and wet - the snow was soft but the air was chilly at the Callaghan Valley venue, and I had what must be my last on-snow ski of the season on the Olympic trails. Today and tomorrow are downright summery - sunny and hot. Not warm; hot. Saturday Gunnar and I will [...]

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Today was the last on-snow day for the US Ski Team at their early May on-snow camp at the Callaghan Valley Olympic Venue. Things have been uncharacteristically busy for this time of year since my last post. I had a short trip down to Boulder to meet with Nathan Schultz to begin planning for world [...]

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The transition from Winter to Spring appears to take as long as you want it to around here. I’ve been on a few great mountain bike rides already this Spring -the trails in Squamish are dry and in great shape, and the temps have been comfortable. But there is plenty of skiing still to be [...]

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Race season is over, and as of yesterday there was a 200cm snowpack on the ground at the Environment Canada automated weather station at the Callaghan Valley. The groomers only have contracts through the next two weeks, but there is quite a line-up of camps scheduled right into May, so we’re looking at a long [...]

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OK - it’s been a while since I posted anything here. Believe it or not, I know that. A whole bunch of people seem to think that I need to be told. What can I say - I’ve been busy. Mostly skiing, but I try to call it “work”. I’ve run a ton of tests [...]

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I don’t think I’ve passed along anything useful recently, unless you’re looking to water-harden a bit of steel. More of the same today, but with pictures (click on the thumbnails for bigger versions). Weekends recently have been pretty low-key. Gunnar hasn’t exactly latched onto skiing with any vigor, but he enjoys it for an hour [...]

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Somehow I managed to forget that I had my burnisher in my carry-on bag when Larry and I flew back to Vancouver from Calgary after the World Cups. The burnisher is a critical part of the sharpening process for my metal scrapers, and the metal scrapers are a critical part of the flattening process for [...]

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From a service perspective the Canmore races wrapped up very well. Everybody was happy with skis in the 15K, and the skis were visibly fast in the skate sprint heats. We had a brief period of uncertainty toward the end of the day Friday. We had wrapped up the distance skate day, we’d put base [...]

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I’m back in Squamish, and am not planning to take any more trips for quite a while. I’ll be grinding small batches regularly, and doing a lot of testing. Always plan to call before dropping by!

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We’re half-way through the racing at the Canmore World Cups, and things have gone well enough. No disasters, but also no really notable successes so far, at least with respect to ski service. We’ve been putting people in the races, which is our number one job. We’re still looking for advantages.

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