The 2nd of January 2008 sees the start of Ski and Snowboard Australia’s first overseas Snowboarder Cross camp.

The first to arrive into our condo in the small ski town of Frisco was Ms Julia De Campo. Located just minutes from both Copper and Breckenridge Mountain’s, it is three level’s, with the girls on the lower level, kitchen, dining and living rooms on the middle floor and three bedrooms up-stairs, housing the boys. Julia spent a few lonely hours there whilst I was picking up Nick Warren and Bryan Taylor from Denver Airport. We soon arrived to help get everyone settled and find some dinner. With our youngest team member, Daniel Morrisey, already here, it was now just time for one more, Emma Pullin. Emma’s flight had originally been scheduled for arrival into Denver at 5.25pm, which would have worked out perfect with Bryan and Nick’s flights also around that time, instead, her flight out of Melbourne was delayed, and re-routed via Sydney, it saw her miss her connecting flight to Denver and forced to spend a night in L.A. courtesy of Qantas. We soon saw her after that ordeal the next morning and moved her into our Frisco residence.

That afternoon (3rd of January) saw us gather our riding equipment and head up to Copper mtn to sort out our season passes and get in a few quick runs before the lifts close. This was definitely a tough ask with both Nick and Emma very tired from the flights but still very keen to get on snow again after a three month layoff.

The 4th saw us do a full day riding, a very good effort from Emma and Nick still recovering from jet lag. With the mountain still very new for all of us it was a good day for us to see exactly what Copper had to offer. Our tour guide that day was Daniel Morrisey who did a great job showing us some great terrain. With everyone very tired Emma volunteered to cook one of her famous curries. We soon found out though that this was a great idea but hard to accomplish with American ingredients. All turned out fine though and we all enjoyed a great meal.

The 5th was a day for celebration with Julia enjoying her 17th birthday with us. Our day started slow with heavy cloud around, a bit of wind and a few fresh inches. We had scheduled gate training up high and after several runs, weather was not in our favour with a disappearing act performed by Emma half way down, with the snow and wind not only blocking my view of her from the bottom of the coarse, but also hers’, by losing sight of the gates and having to pull up. The afternoon saw us get technical with some drills to help us improve our position to be more aggressive for upcoming races. That night we all went to dinner for Julia and enjoyed a nice Italian meal and chocolate cake for the occasion.

The 6th saw six inches fall over night and after eventually finding some good tree runs to shelter us from the wind, turned out to be an awesome powder day. By two o’clock we were all extremely tired and collapsed in exhaustion.

The next few days sees us on the road heading to our first comp located in Minnesota. With everyone looking forward to the fifteen hour drive it’s lucky we now have an I-trip to listen to some of our own music with everyone hating the American radio stations.

Nathan Zentveld
Coach