How cool are Snow Cats?

Just before Christmas, Coach Adam and I headed up to Lake Louise early, very early (actually 5:30 am is too early in my books!) to build the start section on which we will train for our Christmas Training Camp prior to the full course being ready for us in the New Year. With the help of a friendly and talented Cat Driver we managed to build a mound to put the start gate on, a small wu-tang and a couple of rollers. It was a pretty amazing experience being up on the hill in the dark watching the Cat move snow so quickly and effortlessly to create features. Here are some photos...

Adam chatting about the possible things we could construct.

Snow!

Temple mountain in the back ground as the Sun comes up...

"I'm going to eat you...." watching a Cat come towards you is a little frightening!

As you can see the views were pretty spectacular with the sun rising over those crazy Rocky Mountains! It was definitely a unique experience to be standing on the wu tang as the cat pushed more snow up. The accuracy of the Cat Driver was amazing. 

This experience also gave me a new appreciation of what it must take to build a full course for us to race on. The hours of Cat time, digging and planning that go into each course must be immense. At times as racers we can be quick to judge a course; complaining that it doesn't flow or the features are too small, too big, too rough etc. etc. However, I'm sure at each of those courses there were factors, including the amount and type of snow, the natural shape of the terrain, the amount of money and time available, that came to play and the builders did their best to create a challenging and manageable course. We racers should perhaps learn how to better deal with these different issues rather than determining that it was the course that was the problem. 

After a couple of test runs down the features prior to a final grooming we were satisfied that it would work for training & we headed off for some early lunch to fill the bellies after a cold morning out on the hill. Now I just can't wait to spend some time out there perfecting my starts and getting the legs moving!

Bring on the 27th of December & training camp Day 1!