Ski and Snowboard Club Vail athletes prepare for upcoming seasons on Golden Peak

Golden Peak was the place to pre-season train for skiers — of all ages and abilities — this November. U12 athletes to World Cup stars utilized the firm, icy, manmade snow all month in preparation for the upcoming season.

“We know we can get started here,” said John Hale, Ski and Snowboard Club Vail executive director, adding that skiers were on-snow on chair 12 starting Nov. 7. “The team does an amazing job; they make that thing so firm that some of the best skiers in the country come over to use it.”

Hale is right. The U.S. women’s tech team even whipped over from Copper Mountain during its annual fall camp to take advantage of the surface and ability to get quick slalom reps on the shorter hill. Members of the German, Swiss, Brazilian, French, Croatian and other nations’ World Cup teams have been using the giant slalom and slalom courses as well. Some, like Marco Odermatt, will train on the hill early this week to get acclimated to the dry Colorado snow in advance of the Birds of Prey speed events in Beaver Creek.

While the fall training tone was set by manmade operations, last week’s two-day storm blanketed the slopes with about two-feet of fresh powder. Vail Resorts cat operators pushed everything off before beginning the watering process right after Thanksgiving.

“And then we track it open with the cat and put a ton of water in it; we ran two sessions of watering,” said Brad Wall, Alpine program director, who said the club partnered with Vail Resorts to hire a dedicated snow-making team this year. The watering process creates a firm, icy, World Cup-ready surface highly-desirable for teams preparing for a European-based circuit in the winter.

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“We try and create an indoor surface outdoor — so it’s super slick, super solid,” Wall explained. “And it’s really the surface that makes it beneficial.”

About 50 SSCV athletes from the U18 boys team, FIS women squad and newly-formed U21 men’s group started training just before 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. As the temperatures struggled to climb above 5 degrees on the sunny morning, some athletes made 8-10 GS runs while others trained the slalom course next door. Later in the morning, the moguls team rode the lift up and hiked to the top of their early-season course above chair 12.

“We’d love to have a little bit bigger course going right now, but it’s Mother Nature — you get what you get — so, we’ve been making the most of it and I feel like we’ve seen pretty good progress,” said mogul program director Freddy Mooney, who has about 60 athletes across his development, Rocky Mountain Qualifier, Rocky Mountain Freestyle and FIS groups.

“Having them stuck down at the bottom — the silver lining is that we’re definitely a captive audience,” Mooney continued. “It kind of forces the athletes to embrace taking on some of the more tedious tasks of their basics and really getting a good month of fundamentals as we get back on snow.”

The moguls team is preparing for arguably its most important competition, U.S. Selections in Winter Park Dec. 13-15. The competition determines starts at domestic NorAm and World Cups as well as spots for the Junior World Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan Jan. 4-7. Mooney’s best athletes will head to Winter Park on Tuesday for a five-day training camp on the course. Reese Chapdelaine, who made last year’s Junior World squad, said the training on Golden Peak has put the entire team in a good place heading into December.

“I feel like we’ve been doing a lot of good work there,” Chapdelaine said. “I feel like it’s set us up really well to go over there and be successful.”

SSCV forms U21 Alpine team

Hale said the club’s creation of the U21 men’s Alpine team is a new development he’s excited about. With the U.S. national team’s elimination of its D-Team, this postgraduate opportunity is critical to help high school athletes bridge the gap to either high-level college competition or national team nominations, Hale and Wall explained.

“The typical high school athletes are only getting two years of FIS racing in high school. And if you want to compete at a good college or make a national team, you need a little bit more than that,” Hale stated. “That’s the idea of the U21 program.”

“We just had a really strong group coming up through the club who just finished high school already, so we had a really good cohort already,” added Wall. “And we had a few kids come in from outside programs who were really strong also and we were able to attract some really qualified coaches.” 

The 12-member squad — which includes Youth Olympic Games qualifiers Julian Arthur and Stewart Bruce — is being coached by Will Hadden, who is returning to the club after a stint working as the U.S. men’s NorAm coach, as well as Scott Houser and four-time Olympian A.J. Kitt.

“He’s been great. He’s got a great, positive attitude and has so much experience and knowledge about skiing,” Alex Krupka, another U21 team athlete, said of working with Kitt. “Having that extra knowledge and wisdom — because obviously none of us have experienced that next level in Europe. He’s been there, experienced it and seen success there, so having that here has been super helpful.”

Krupka has enjoyed being able to focus full-time on skiing and reap the benefits of sports nutritionists and sport psychologists who have come on board to help the athletes reach their full potential.

“You can take the extra time to make sure your body’s feeling good for the next day, the next week. So, overall, it’s super helpful,” he said, adding that most days “are pretty packed until about 2:30 or 3 p.m.”

“Basically our whole lives right now just revolve around skiing, which is definitely a change from going to school and stuff,” added his teammate Erik Strickler.

Strickler and Krupka said the goals for most athletes on the team are to score NorAm points, make the U.S. team or qualify for World Juniors, in addition to garnering the attention of major colleges. Strickler is hoping to ski for Boston College.

“There’s definitely a wide range of goals on our team, but everyone has high goals,” Krupka said. “There’s a good pace here and it’s good for everybody.”

“It’s a great group and they’ve been functioning really well coming together as a team,” Wall added.

Hale stated the club is actively exploring the idea of adding a U21 women’s team in the future. With all of the club’s squads, quality coaching is the top priority.

“Not only for the most advanced kids, but for the younger kids and all the kids in the program,” Hale said. “Any athlete who is in SSCV — we want them to have an incredible experience.”