So, the snow guns are on at the Club, but we're not there yet. What's going on? Although going to law school is generally conceded to make one an expert in everything, I will not offer climatological opinions. I will tell you that the GDHL committee, like everyone at the Club, has been considering the options for the next little while. Here's the story for now:

There will be a GDHL race season this year. It may not start as early as planned, but it will be great when it happens.
We have almost 80 people already signed up, of whom 15 have either never been in GDHL before or have been absent for a while, which is a lot more than usual. The word is getting out. These include several under 25 and Howard Cole, who is a new member of the Club and was at one point on the national masters' team and was probably the fastest guy in the country in his age group (unless it was a year when Al LaChance was in his age group, in which case it was a good battle).
We are going to move the start for the second group of women further up the list this year. Probably around bib 30 instead of 60 last year. The fastest women will get a bit of a ranking penalty because of this advantage, but the rest will just enjoy a smoother course and have a different group of admirers behind them.
There is going to be a lot of activity at the Club after Christmas, whether or not there's skiing. There are over 500 people attending the family New Year's party and the Club is adding lots of extra events.
We normally get a big surge of sign-ups at this time of year, when people get into the swing of things. Getting into the swing of things will be a bit more challenging this year, so we really need you to sign up if you haven't and chase your buddies if you have. Or if you're a guy who would otherwise be starting number 118, spread disinformation and hope that you'll move up to 85 this year.
We haven't set a hard date yet, but if you want to be on a team, you need to sign up quickly, because we need some time to get teams organized. No later than 28 December to be certain of being on a team if you want to be! We can usually accommodate racers who will be scored as individuals only after that, but we would rather you just sign up now.
The Calcutta is scheduled for Saturday 2 January at 5 pm in the South Lodge. We will have the usual good socializing, Dynastar race skis and Pratte camps for auction along with the teams, some nice raffle prizes as part of the preferred bib draw and a Squires gift card and other good loot for everyone. It's possible that the Calcutta will be delayed a week, but that wouldn't be a good outcome, so please plan on being there on the 2nd and get your friends geared up too!
If you have questions or suggestions, send us an email.

Diversions

So if you're feeling a bit dispirited by the anomalous meteorological situation, what can you do to alleviate your symptoms?

1. Get jealous about friends and family who are skiing someplace else. This is my son Rob (also the GDHL webmaster) at Big White a couple of weeks ago. They have had quite a lot more snow since.

2. Resolve to plan better for next year. Those of you, like Jeff Craig and me, who bought Pratte camps at last year's auction, have already had great skiing in Zermatt or Sun Peaks. The shot above is looking down towards the training hill in Sun Peaks during the last week of November. A good base to start, 20 cm. of fresh on the second day and then four days of sunshine! The adult coach this year was Jacko Gratton, recently retired head coach at Tremblant. His cues included pushing on the outside ski while pulling gently up on the inside ski, "hooking" or tilting in the inside knee, co-ordinating lead change with edge change and clearing slalom gates to the outside when cross-blocking. Always good to get new insights.

3. Play skill-testing ski related indoor games. Visit the instagram page of Manny Osborne-Paradis and see how many of the donors to his helmet collection you can identify. Thanks to Morgan Rubes and Paul Woodhouse for this.

4. Check out some good video. Here is Larissa Yurkiw winning bronze in the Val d'Isere downhill on Saturday. Here is Marcel Hirscher winning gold in the Val d'Isere GS last weekend. And here is a 360 degree video taken by Bode Miller as a forerunner at Beaver Creek. By clicking and dragging on the screen, you can rotate the image, but be warned that the video doesn't work with some web browsers.

5. Do some dryland training with Lindsey Vonn.

6. If nothing else works, put on your ski boots and have fun inside like Julia Mancuso :-)

See you at the Club soon!

James Mathers