By john Schultheis

On the last weekend in February the Après Race Team competed at the final races of the regular season in Open League Racing. Lodge Captain Austin Parlette and his assistant Denni Ghilarducci hosted the Race Weekend at the Lodge.

A big storm dumped a couple feet of snow during the preceding week, so our Race Clinic on Friday was canceled. Some of the Race Team drove up early anyway, and we spent part of Friday digging out the Lodge from the snow piled up on the stairs and walkways. Arriving Racers were warmed by Austin’s homemade chili for dinner on Friday evening. Rookie Racer Bob Howard brought up a truckload of good solid oak for stoking the fire. The shed was abuzz with racers tuning and waxing skis.

On Saturday we had Slalom races at Alpine Meadows under a beautiful sky. The snow was deep and soft, packed just enough for good racing. Of course the free skiing before and after the races was spectacular. Après made another strong showing with 27 racers earning 78 points for the day. Highlights included first place finishes by Randy Salzman, Warren Forest, Sandy Kiyomura, Renee St. Germaine, Linda Indreboe and Sandy Saadi.

For the Advanced racers, they did something a little different. First they ran classes 1-2-3-4-5 f as they often do, and as usual the 5’s were skiing through deep ruts caused by the large number of racers before them. The different part was that for a second run, the classes were run in reverse order; 5-4-3-2-1. That meant that the 1’s skied last instead of first, forcing then to deal with serious ruts. They were flying down the course, bouncing and flailing at very high speeds. Many of the 4’s and 5’s really enjoyed skiing on a clean course, and seeing the 1’s and 2’s getting a dose of ruts for a change.

Saturday night chefs Sandy Kiyomura and Denni and crew did a fabulous job creating mouth-watering dishes. We feasted on roast pork with salad and green beans and au gratin potatoes. We topped it all off with Tiramisu and cheesecake.

Sunday morning was crisp and colder, with clear blue skies. The weather reports said that there would be snow flurries in the afternoon, but it was beautiful in the morning. We started off with a hot breakfast and headed over to the slopes.

Sunday was the final race day of the regular season, a GS (Giant Slalom) at Northstar. All of the races were held on “Challenger” on the backside. The Intermediate course was first, with the 7-6-3-2-1 classes running in that order. The course was fast down the face of “Challenger”, but then turning down a steep pitch onto “Follow Me” before a flat section at the end. There were a lot of crashes in the Elite classes on that steep final face.

The Advanced course was almost the same as the Intermediate course with just a little bit of clean up between the races. Again there were a lot of crashes including most of the Advanced and Elite racers from Après.

The Novice course was a major disappointment. It was run on the flat section at the end of the steep final pitch on “Follow Me”. It was way too short and way too easy. The Open League Racing Committee is very unhappy about the poor quality of the course, and the Chairman issued an apology to the Novice racers after the race.

There weren’t a lot of highlights from Sunday, but here they are: Linda Indreboe continued her strong run winning her class again. Linda has been on a roll ever since racer Jim Sanchez decided to take her on as a “Project”. In addition, Snowboarder Randy Salzman won again, and he bumped up to become the first Class 3 Snowboarder in Open League history. First year racer Bob Howard competing in just his second race, got it all figured out and got a Double Strike moving him up to Class 8. Bob suggests that the ski tune and wax provided by the Race Team gave him the speed to conquer the course. David Dippon in his first race after bumping up to Class 9 got a Strike. David gives all the credit to Jim Sanchez and John Schultheis for ski carving lessons they gave him at the Lodge on Saturday night.

The total for the Race Team on Sunday was a disappointing 54 points, but it was enough to clinch our seventh consecutive Open League Championship. We ended up with 567 points (preliminary results) falling short of achieving 600 for the first time in 7 years. We still had a sizeable lead over the team in second place, but the opposition is catching up to us. (It should be remembered that the Race Team this year was about 20% smaller than last year.)

As always, I want to thank all of the racers and the Lodge Captains and all of the people that gave of their time and energy to make this race season a roaring success.

Now that the regular season is over, the Race Team is looking forward to the Northern California Championships (NorCals) in March and the Far West Racing Championships in April.