Day 1 - Ski Cross

One of the main stressors about the ski competitions was getting to Perisher in time to get a carpark. This season, the perisher carpark has been filling up resulting in the National Parks closing the road by 8.30ish. We assume that a few things have contributed to this noticeable increase of people at Perisher - Selwyn ski fields delayed opening; Thredbo season pass almost doubling in price and good old covid / lockdown saga.

We were up and out the door early joining the slow crawling line of cars snaking their way up the mountain. Snow was falling lightly. The program for today was ski cross for Ella and Max around midday. Blue sky broke through the grey clouds and with recent snowfalls meant the snow was lovely. We spent most of the morning skiing the runs and making new tracks adjacent to the ski cross course. Opting to head up to mid station area for lunch, we ran into trouble with a massive crowd at the quad chair so took one of the nearby t-bars instead. Deciding to venture over to Leichhardt chair was another mistake as a large horde of skiers were waiting there too. No other options were available here so we joined the line and waited.

Eventually we made it to mid station for lunch with enough time to get back to Jump City for the ski cross competition.

The ski cross competition was interesting. First up the course opened for inspection - this involved the group of participants slowly snow ploughing down the course taking notes. Being Ella's first ski competition she just followed the others! 

Next participants in bib number order skied the course for their first run. With over 70 girls in Division 2, this took awhile! Eventually Ella skied down on her first run looking good taking 37 sec. The kids were encouraged to take the t bar straight back up to the top of the course and wait for their next run. Ella skied faster on her second run taking 1.5sec off her first time. She finished 53 out of 63 skiers only 8 sec behind the winner - it was a close competition!

 

Max was up next. There were slightly less boys in his category. Like Ella he improved with his second run 
Post event we decided on a short loop before calling it a day and returning back to the Station to recover.