Kongsberger Ski Club

 At last!  The dream of a warming hut on Amabilis, a place to get out of a storm, make a hot drink, meet your friends, or change into dry clothes, has been on Don and Frank's minds for a long time, and at last, it is real.   Last fall a troop of skilled Kongsberger carpenters built the hut over the course of multiple weekends.  Today, the Four Amigos (Don, Frank, Jeff, and Erik) finally, after an aborted attempt last weekend that involved too much snow and broken truck chains, pulled the sweet little hut up to its winter staging place on Amabilis.   It's not as high as it was last winter, when permit problems kept it locked down most of the winter, but it's still above the Y, where it will be a welcome haven.  This year we avoided last year's permit drama by siting it on USFS land, and the USFS permit is firmly in hand! The guys report they worked their butts off!  It was a full day of hard labor, chipping and shoveling ice, jacking up the structure to...

It's November; snow is falling in some places, there's a nip of frost in the air, and ski season is starting to seem real!  Below are some training summaries from a couple of racers and, at the end, a discussion of early-season training from a Norwegian coach, shamelessly copied from some newsletter, to help you rein in your enthusiasm for those gorgeous groomed trails; with any luck, it's gonna be a long winter and you want to pace yourself. Middle of the pack overall, age group podium, world masters distances:   I actually really love November dry-land training. The summer is over and I can smell ski season approaching. As I do my workouts, I imagine I am on skis!   I still have a goal of doing something active-- just walking by the lake, for instance-- every day. But biking is out because of the wet weather (I don't like taking the corners on hills fast with wet leaves all over the place.)   Here are my getting-ready-for-skiing workouts:   1. For the last few...

Wow, you guys, way to come through on cabin clean-up day!!   Big  BIG thank you to everyone who came, or  contributed  their labor before this weekend, and special GIGANTIC thanks to Esther, for planning,  organizing , and  making  lunch. Suzanne reports:  The clean-up day was fantastic, joyful even. The cabin was getting so much love after languishing for almost three years! It loved the attention. The pizzas Esther made were scrumptious.      And super cabin chief Esther provides this report: My family had a hard time getting out of the house yesterday and arrived 15 minutes late to our own party, which I was pretty unhappy about. But it didn't even seem like it mattered because so many people had arrived and felt empowered to go ahead and assign themselves a job and just get to work, including Greg Stamolis, who spent the night and had himself a nice quiet Friday evening organizing the basement, then just stayed and kept going on...

  If y'all are like me and obsessively checking the pass report five times a day, then you know it's been snowing like crazy up there.  That means ski season can't be far behind, and that means it's time to post the planned grooming schedule for Cabin Creek and Erling Stordahl for 2022-2023, beginning on December 1 (contingent, as always, on weather and the groomer's expertise in and understanding of snow conditions).   Here it is; wax 'em up and see you out there! Cabin Creek lower trails: six days a week (no grooming on Tuesdays) Amabilis: Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays Erling Stordahl: Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays NO GROOMING on December 25 and January 1 Nick and crew, hope you had a good summer; can't wait to see the magic you make!