Paige Schember: Snow in July: Haig Glacier Camp

It is amazingly easy to train hard in a beautiful place.

Sunset at the training center (the Haig is the big patch of snow in the background)

Last week the SVSEF Comp team crew and part of the Gold Team made the trek up to Kananaskis County in Alberta, Canada to snow train on the Haig Glacier. The Beckie Scott Training Center sits on the rocks below the glacer and consists of three buildings: a coach's cabin, an athlete cabin, and kitchen cabin where everybody eats and can hang out. Other than that there are outhouses, a shower, and a helipad, but that's about it. It's about a three hour hike/run into the camp, and once you're on the mountain, you're in the true wilderness. No one else is out there except for an occasional backpacker.

Man, did we pack in the hours this week. Each morning we would hike 45 minutes up to the glacier (not an easy task, if you look at the picture above), ski for a couple of hours, and then hike/slide our way down. Little Midwestern me learned a new skill: glissading. When you glissade, you basically propel yourself down the warmed up steep snow patches on your feet (or your butt if you eat it and fall). It's a workout when your legs are already shaky from 3 hours of work. After the morning workout we'd have lunch, crash and nap, and then get up in the afternoon for an adventure run/hike or a strength workout. Then it was dinner time, a game or a movie, and then bed! Up at 6:20 in the morning for yoga and breakfast, and then we'd do it all again.

Mary killing it on a classic ski

Training camps are always a challenge, both physically and mentally. The toll that around 30 hours of training puts on your body also affects your mind as you reach higher and higher levels of exhaustion. By the end of the week we were all pretty tired, but on the last day we put in an overdistance ski (3+ hours). For me, that workout was a harder challenge than racing is or has ever been. But the reason skiers put ourselves through huge blocks of training like that is to strengthen our minds along with our bodies, and that's what makes weeks like the Haig amazing.

While huge training camps seem daunting, it's also amazing how quickly the hours slip by when you're in the mountains of Canada (or any beautiful place). Something about beauty makes the physical toll seem so much less, because you are so excited to get out and explore, learn new things, and spend some time in a place that few people have gotten the chance to enjoy. So I think that when you finally realize how tired you actually are, it can be a shock. Which is actually pretty cool if you think about it, all of the sudden it's like, "whoah, I guess 25+ hours of training can be sort of tiring?"

Major shout outs go out to Pate and A-ron for being amazing staff, hosts and cooks, and dealing with our, well, bathrooms (they are basically saints). Thanks to the SVSEF Comp team for being serious troopers and awesome tripmates, and thank you to Ashley, Tim, and Colin for the endless support and awesome technique help. The week was a huge success.