By Jimmy Krupka, GMVS correspondent
For the past three weeks, the Green Mountain Valley School (GMVS) campus has been completely deserted. That's because for the month of November, GMVS essentially moves its entire operation out West for some early season on-snow training. The alpine programs went to Colorado, where they skied at Vail, Copper and Loveland. The Nordic program went to Sun Valley, Idaho.
One of the biggest questions we get about students traveling during school is: "How do you do your schoolwork?" Quite simply, we do the assignments our teachers give us, which we can usually accomplish without in-person instruction. If we need help, several teachers are out in Colorado with us and, occasionally, they will even hold classes with us.
Another question we are asked is: "Why go out West when there's snow here in Vermont?" There are many reasons. The first and foremost reason we seek snow out West is for guaranteed quality training. At much higher altitudes, Colorado and Idaho get snow sooner and in much larger quantities. In Vermont, the likelihood that we will have a trail covered or snow on the ground for Nordic skiers by the beginning of November is not very high. And, although the GMVS alpine training trail, Inverness at Sugarbush's Mt. Ellen, may look like it has sufficient cover to ski on quite early in November, one must keep in mind that a two- to three-foot base of snow is needed to be able to drill the gates into the snow.
Another reason for lugging the entire school out West is the training atmosphere, something that may be hard to understand until you have been there and felt it. For the Nordic skiers, it is the open plains and wilderness, with the mountains rising in the background, away from most civilization. It is a quiet, majestic aura that makes one feel alive and motivated to just keep skiing. For the alpine skiers, it is the atmosphere of professionalism. Copper is where the U.S. Alpine Ski Team trains in addition to many of the best junior skiers in the country. In Vail, numerous national alpine teams train right alongside us, including the German, Slovenian, Croatian, Austrian, Canadian, Japanese and Swiss teams. They come for many of the same reasons as GMVS.
For the first two weeks of the GMVS alpine camp, it seemed as though the famed Colorado training conditions had neglected to show up. With the exception of a just a few trails covered with manmade snow, everything in Colorado was brown, including the mountains. However, with four feet of snow in five days, the alpine training was back on track. After a great camp with incredibly productive training for both downhill and cross-country skiers, GMVS skiers returned home for Thanksgiving one step ahead of the competition.
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