Today we flew from Denver to Vancouver, Canada, then took a bus up to Whistler where all the Alpine events are being held. The travel experience was not too exciting.

This evening we got to the Whistler Athlete Village which is about 10 minutes down the road from the ski area. The village is really well built and resembles a small college campus. Every country has their own floor in one of the numerous residence halls and their are many lounges and public areas where you can find cafes, game rooms, workout facilities, entertainment plazas, movie theaters and even a multi-faith center if you need to get your meditation or bible study on. The dining hall is a massive permanent tent with tons of food options. It even has a full service McDonalds and McCafe if you feel like you want to “eat like an olympian.” If you don’t get that reference and think its rediculous, check out McDonald’s recent add campaign where they have olympic athletes eating at McDonalds, giving the impression that their food somehow enhances one’s performance.

The world cup races are finally over and now we get to focus on the bigger and better things, such as the paralympics. Today we drove down to a hotel in Denver where we spent most of the day getting our uniform for the paralympics. Never before have we gotten so much swag for any event. The two main sponsors of the US Paralympic team, Nike and Ralph Lauren, made sure we had enough cloths to wear something completely different, every day, for a month. Each one of us went around a big conference room and filled three huge duffel bags full of jackets, shirts, sweaters, shoes, socks, more jackets, scarves, gloves and hats. Ralph Lauren even gave us a style guide for those times when we are feeling totally overwhelmed and just can’t figure out how to pull off “that classic Ralph Lauren look.” Apparently, its all about how you mix, match, and layer.

After we got our uniform we got to sit through a three hour presentation about how to be a Paralympic Ambassador. The whole thing ended up being a lecture about how to not freak out and not be stupid at the games. Unfortunately it was presented to us as if we were little kids with ADD, so it was quite excruciating to sit through. One useful thing I did learn was that I am not allowed to post any pictures or videos of any paralympic venues, logos or ceremonies on my blog. Apparently “THE MAN” owns the entire experience, regardless of the athletes who make the whole thing possible, and “THE MAN” doesn’t want free publicity or anyone else to enjoy the experience unless they want to bend over and pay big bucks. With that said, my posting of pictures and video will be somewhat limited.

I have decided to do a bit of training before the paralympics. I chose to train with Challenge Aspen in Aspen, Colorado where I could get all the race training and freeskiing that I ever wanted. I have been able to get lots of runs on a downhill and super-g on the Tiehack side of Buttermilk mountain, which turned out to be a ton of fun and also happens to be the location of our world cup finals for this year. These speed races were actually part of the Rocky Mountain Masters series, so the competitors were in ages from 21 to 80’s. This was quite a mixture of people, as you can imagine. Some of them made it down the mountain in a minute and thirty seconds, others in over three minutes. Course inspection was highly entertaining because it seemed that every racer had an opinion about how the course was set, and made their opinion known to the course setter, who actually reset the course the way the racers wanted it! This could only ever happen with the masters category, as such input by racers to any other course setter in any other form of ski racing would be unthinkable. The course ended up running fine, but it was also quite do-able in its original form.

Besides training, the weather demanded that I do quite a bit of powder skiing. We had three days straight of ~12″ dumps, so I thought it prudent to ski each of those days. The snow was so deep that I would almost go under the snow every turn, then pop up out of it in each transition. I was using a 186 cm Volkl Gotama rockered pow ski, so I was able to porpoise out of the snow when it got really deep. The three days were easily the best powder days I have ever had. In no other form of skiing do I use more muscles to control my movements and it was great to rip down steep runs and not be hindered by gates telling me where to turn.

Skiing at Aspen Highlands, this was as close as we were to get, short of hiking, to Highlands bowl.

Me, coach Tim of Challenge Aspen, and my teammate, Chris Devlin-Young. Highlands Bowl is in the background.

A cool picture of Chris.

I just got back from Winter X-Games 14 in Aspen, Colorado. My event, Monoskier-X, is basically skier cross, but everyone uses monoskis and we go four at once, first one to the bottom wins. This year our course had quite a bit of modification to allow monoskiers to actually finish the course and make all the jumps successfully. We often have problems with normal skier cross courses because we are not able to generate enough speed to clear the bigger jumps. This year we had our own features in key spots to enable us to have a smooth run. The jump at the bottom of the course was really big and had us going at least 60 feet, about 10 feet off the ground, more than enough time to recite one’s ABCs before landing. There was a great deal of carnage this year as well. Every heat had several people fall, sometimes into each other, making it very entertaining. You will find a lot of that in my last heat, the final, where I had to react very quickly to avoid flailing bodies.

The video above was taken of the jumbotron. Below is ESPN’s summary video.

It was a really fun event and I want to thank my support crew, consisting of my parents, my cousin Ernie, and my Aunt Liz for making all of this happen.

I just finished up a series of world cup races in Sestriere, Italy, on the same mountain as the 2006 Paralympics. I had two downhills, two super-Gs, and one super combined. The track was almost exactly the same as when we raced on it in the past and the snow was almost perfect, man-made and really fast. We stayed in this hotel called The Belvedere which is supposed to be about four stars, but made sure that most of us were in two star rooms. My room, in particular, had all the humidity from our entire floor funnel into the room, which caused the window and surrounding ceiling to drip with water. After a bit of airing out it was slightly bearable. Below is a clip of my first downhill race. I ended up not skiing the next day. See if you can figure out why.

I ended up breaking my shoulder straps, popping out of my monoski like a cork. I also bent by best downhill ski. I did eventually recover, but I was seriously sore the next day. At he end of these series of races I managed to scrape together a fourth place finish in the final super-G, even after I just about fell half way down, so not too shabby.

A cool ridgeline in Sestriere that I really wish I had a chance to ski.

Before we flew home we spent the night near Munich, Germany. Having some free time on our hands, a bunch of us went in to the city to check things out. The above picture was just one of those things we checked out. Oh the boots!

I just finished the first World Cup stop of the season at Patscherkofel, Austria. We raced on the same hill that held the downhill for the 1964 and 1976 Olympics, but we instead ran a slalom and giant slalom. The track was mostly boiler-plate ice which has proved exceedingly difficult for me to manage. I have not been able to hold an edge reliably at all which has caused me to have disappointing results in both races (second to last in GS, 8th in SL). Each run has had me sliding all over the place with very little control and has even involved a few instances where I slid out completely, slid down the course a ways, pop up again when my edge caught, and continue down the run, having to re-generate all the speed I was carrying. Since these races I have been trying to trouble-shoot the problem without much success. My edges are extremely sharp and my technique is good enough (when I am not sliding out of control) to be able to grip on the ice, yet I still can’t do it. Every coach I talk to seems to be telling me something different about how to correct my problem, but nothing yet has helped.

The base area of Patscherkofel.

Betty-Lynn, the guide dog of Danielle Umstead, one of my teammates. Betty-Lynn and I share a bench seat every day when we go to the hill.

We are staying in the town of Rum, about 3 miles from the center of Innsbruck. This is a view of the Olympic ski jumps above the city.

My roommate, Chris Devlin-Young, aka Captain World Cup.

Tomorrow we are off to Abtenau, Austria for another series of races. Should be fun.

I just finished up a week of training at Copper Mountain, Colorado. I have been going to the hill almost every day with my teammate George to train with the NASC ski camp and some of our coaches. We have had several days of giant slalom and slalom training, in both of which we have made a lot of improvement and are now skiing very well.

I have been staying with George and his wife Heather in the town of Leadville, Colorado for the past week. It is often very difficult for me to train away from home because I always have to find a place to stay and arrange for transportation to and from the hill every day, and George and Heather have been extremely helpful and hospitable in providing both of those things. Heather is a great cook too and has made sure we are all well fed.

George, also known as Bro.

The town of Leadville is a fascinating place. It is about 20 minutes south of I-70 from Copper Mountain and is a true mining town. Fancy development that you might see in Vail or Aspen hasn’t happened here due to the lack of a huge, popular ski area nearby. Main street looks like a very typical western style street with box shaped buildings with flat facades. All the houses in the area are single story ranches, prefabs, double-wides or trailers. No-one wastes time with million dollar ski chalets here. Some people even put two completely different  mobile homes together, and no yard seems complete without some combination of truck (lifted at least a foot higher than normal, with chrome exhaust stacks coming out of the bed), truck on blocks, rusty kitchen appliances, or a tractor. I had Thanksgiving with Heather’s family whom are all very nice and made sure I had far more than enough to eat. I tried to dress a bit nice for the occasion with a good sweater but when I got there I realized that everyone had either hunting camo, nascar shirts, or Denver Broncos football jerseys on, which made me feel a bit out of place. They even made fun of me for talking too much like an east coaster. I tried very hard not to bring up politics with any of them for I got the distinct impression that Obama was far from popular. When we were eating dinner the main focus was not so much on everyone else but rather the TV where the Denver Broncos were delivering a thrashing to some other football team. I know just enough of the rules to appreciate the game, but I know next to nothing beyond that. A few members of the family were constantly on their knees, feet from the TV, yelling at the players and coaches to do this and that, as if they knew more about the game than they players and coaches did. At one point it was so loud that I bet the players in Denver could actually here them. The Broncos did end up winning, so there could be something to this couch-coaching.

George’s neighborhood. The town of Leadville is about 10,000 feet high.

Part of the drive to Copper every morning.

I have also had a potential breakthrough in my training. I think I may have just figured out how to run slalom with the correct technique to be successful. The tricky thing about slalom is that you can turn so quickly and put so much energy into the turn that your ski or your suspension can easily toss you right out of the course. I think I have just figured out how to stop that from happening. Unfortunately I can’t go into details because this is the internet and the Japanese, Austrians, Germans or Canadian ski teams could potentially read this blog and find out my secrets, which would be less than profitable for me.

I can tell you, however, that I did knock my front teeth out on a slalom gate on Thanksgiving day. I always wear a chin guard when I train slalom, but the gate managed to get past it and smash my teeth in, which I managed to save. George and I managed to find a dentist who was willing to interrupt his Thanksgiving preparations and put my teeth back together. After much acid-etching, glue, drilling and polishing, my teeth are almost back to normal. They are, unfortunately, very sore and if I bite down the wrong way, hurt like hell. I thought I would have to eat turkey through a straw, but I managed to chew enough with my molars to get everything down. My teeth are getting better every day, though.

It is very awkward to eat and drink without one’s front teeth.

Today we have to meet up with the rest of the team in Summit County, Colorado to start another few weeks of training as well as the The Hartford Ski Spectacular at Breckenridge. I will update more as things progress.

I just went hunting for the first time. I call it hunting, but it was more of an excuse to go around the woods with a gun and not find anything. My friend and I each had a muzzleloader, camo fatigues, and orange vests as we headed out into the forest. I used my one-off bike to get around but it was far too cumbersome and noisy to really sneak up on anything. Instead, we found a promontory along these power lines where I could see in either direction for several hundred yards, and I set up to wait. My friend then walked around the woods on either side of me for several hours, trying to scare deer or other animals near me. Once they got within range, about 100 yards or less for these muzzleloaders, I would then blast them to smithereens.

As it turned out, we saw absolutely nothing. No living thing made its presence known to us, not even a peep, growl or scurry. All I did for half a day was sit on my butt and look at the woods. It wasn’t so bad though, I got about 3-4 hours of good heavy thinking, and staring at trees.

My view for many hours. Anything from the bottom of the hill and closer would have been toast, had it decided to cross the power lines.

That afternoon we got bored and decided that, as long as we had prepared all the guns, we might as well blast them off. So, we took a trip to the firing range with our armaments and found a few other groups of hunters that were sighting their guns in. Some of them had brought arsenals that would be the envy of Napoleon himself. One group had an entire pickup bed full of guns, which they fired off seemingly indiscriminately down range, with no breaks, for about an hour. They had some impressive guns and they were all very loud, but nothing compared to a .50 caliber muzzleloader with a ton of black powder, which we had. We each took a shot with our guns and the other group immediately paused in their firing, wondering where the deafening and concussive boom had just come from.

The next Warren Miller film titled “Dynasty” premiers in the months of October, November and December all across the country. One of the features of this year’s film is a segment on the Monoskier-X event at the latest Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado. Check it out and you might see me flying off of some huge jumps. You can get more information about the film including viewing locations at www.skinet.com/warrenmiller.

I just got back from one of the best camps ever. I travelled with the team from Challenge Aspen to Hintertux, Austria where we had two weeks of slalom and GS training on the Hintertuxer glacier. The conditions were great meaning solid glacial ice with tons of pre-made ruts. The glacier, it turns out, is rapidly melting. I was here about 4 years ago and we could ski much further down then we can now. There are many little streams running over and under the glacier, carrying away ice that probably has been building up for at least hundreds of years. Hintertux is still an epic place, but I think that it might have to advertise mountain biking a few summers from now instead of skiing.

I learned some very valuable lessons this camp, mainly that everything I have learned about ski racing is wrong. Allow me to explain. Usually there is a fine line between turning high and early enough to make sure you make the gate and are still able to make the next one and going direct enough so that you don’t travel an unnessesary distance from gate to gate. In reality, the more direct you go at the next gate, the faster your time will be, high and early be damned. I found that if I went super direct at the gates of a course and ripped a turn just barely before the gate, and put as much pressure as I possibly could into the turn, the faster my time was. Absolutely rediculous. If you have no idea of the fundamentals of ski racing, what I just described is usually what your coaches spend hours demanding that you not do.

We also spent lots of time going on very long pushes and doing workouts. The pushes were usually tons of fun, except the day we had to go on a road that went through a cow pasture (there are lots of cows in Hintertux), and our wheels and subsequently us got covered in bovine excrement. Delicious.

This is the view from my hotel towards the Hintertuxer Gletscherbahn.

The town of Tux. Everything is very green because it is sprayed every fall with liberal amounts of liquified bovine excrement.

Me at the Walfischmaul, or Whale’s jaws. This was along one of our long pushes up the mountain side.

My teammate performing surgery on his skis after he stripped the screw heads in an attempt to take the bindings off.