The Swiss saga continues

Hello again,

Here is another post about Hannah and my adventures in Switzerland.

We were quite active in the days following our last post. We went for another run and were stopped by a couple that asked us how we knew Williams (I was wearing a Williams shirt). Turns out he was an Economics Professor at Williams in the 1960! What a small world!

We also took the scenic train from Château-d'Oex to a village called Chamby and from there walked over to my grandmother's house. We were lucky enough to have a beautiful view of Lake Geneva the entire time and recharged our batteries by indulging in a delicious lunch where we ate fresh fish right out of the lake (yes landlocked countries can have fresh fish).

 View of the Lake with the French Alps in the background

Looking down the Rhone Valley 

The 8th marked the first day of work for Hannah so my dad, her and I decided to bike the 50 miles from my house to Kandersteg. The first 45 miles went smoothly on nice roads with great views. The last 5 miles on the other hand proved a little more difficult. We decided to stay on the bike route and the  paved road turned into a gravel trail with steep (seemed like almost vertical) uphills. Our back wheels kept spinning out which forced us to walk our bikes up a couple of the hills. But, despite minor incidents, we made it to Kandersteg and our efforts were rewarded by beautiful views and a mozarella and tomato sandwich. 

Hannah settled into her work place and my parents and I went to pick Dimitri up at the train station before heading home.

Exhausted, waiting for our sandwiches

Hannah couldn't get out of the clip pedal fast enough and took a little tumble 

That's it for now but stay tuned for some more news from Switzerland!

Elena 

Driving West

I've been trekking my way out to the West Coast over the last week to spend the summer in beautiful Truckee, CA for a summer of training. Calvin Wight (Colby 2016) and I caravanned out to Chicago with Riley Eusden and Alec McGovern of the Bowdoin Ski Team, before tackling Minnesota and the corn belt on our own. After about 300 miles of the flattest road I've ever seen, we rolled into Badlands National Park in South Dakota. We camped for the night in the park where the buffalo were roaming among the tents and watched the sun rise over the broken hills this morning. We're resting up over the next couple days in Jackson, WY before the final push out to Lake Tahoe. The training here looks sweet and I'm looking forward to seeing some more of the American West as the week goes on.

the loaded car

standard Niagara Falls Picture

Calvin doing some scrambling

inexplicably staring down the desert

chilling in the badlands

our campsite in the badlands

A skier's diet in Central Asia & biking & hiking Kyrgyzstan

 

I am crazy: Fun summer plans include the following journey by jeep and bike. I started out by riding from Almaty, Kazakhstan to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and on to Lake Issky Kul and Naryn province, both of which would have amazing skiing high up where yurts are for the summer months. The riding along the shepherd's tracks is hard to beat though. Now I'm in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, waiting for a ride through the high desert to Murghab, Tajikistan. 

Obviously, whenever you do something that makes you sweat for hours on end, you need some food. But in Central Asia the only Clif bars available are the ones you bring (trust me, I should have brought more), and the only truly safe calories are those obtained from snickers bars and Coke. So I've become good at spotting somewhat safe roadside food stands, banana sellers, and the very very occasional supermarket (I am pretty sure they only exist in towns over 50,000, of which there are only about five in Kyrgyzstan). 

Here are some pictures of the delicious and normally safe things I've been eating while on tour. I hope to ski a bit in the Pamirs but acquiring skis has proved very difficult Kyrgyzstan so I may have to do as the locals and hammer some tin cans to planks.

Shashlik house in Kazakhstan. These dot the more popular highways. If you want safe-ish meat, make sure you choose the kind you want from the refrigerator and have them cook it all the way through. Expect at least 50% fat and some bone mixed in, but both are good for growing skiers.

 

Mystery liquid. Every few days I buy a big bottle of mineral water, and then pour in the rest of whatever soda I find along the way. Most small roadside shops sell Coke and Fanta, which may or may not be chilled depending on the availability of power. I keep another bottle on the bike that I use for fresh water, but in the south of the country where I am now fresh water is not always available or clean due to the pesticides and agricultural/ livestock debris. And two stage filtering sucks. And I don't mind the extra calories in soda while I'm riding. 

 

Chocolate of any kind. There is no denying that it is hot in Kyrgyzstan during the summer, with temperatures over 100 much of the time. So it would seem like a bad idea to buy it and carry on the bike. But the reality is that if you don't want to stop for chai and some shashlik, most stores on the roadside sell little other than flatbread, milk, coke, alcoholic drinks, chewing gum, and snickers. M&Ms are especially difficult to find and often limited to the larger towns. My riding diet I try to balance between 2 snickers and 1 pack m&ms per day plus and alpen gold bar. 

 

Anything found in the bazaar. I gave up on peeling fruits and veggies about 5 days into the trip. Despite warnings from locals about major food safety issues, I keep buying fruits and some veggies. I stay away from the sketchy prepared salads, but otherwise whenever I find something interesting I'll buy it. Dried apricots run around $1 per kg, cabbages about 75 cents each, and watermelons around $3 though the price will fall to 50 cents or less in August. I buy enough for a few days and hope they survive in the food-safe drybag I put them in. Soft ice cream runs around 20 cents a cone and is found in the larger towns too. The Jaymaa bazaar along the river in Osh has fallen victim to street paving some some fruits have an oily sheen, but they can only pave a road so many times.

Lagman. A staple of almost all restaurants in Kyrgyzstan.  Originally a Uyghur dish before they were mostly kicked out under Soviet policies. Choose a popular place and the meat is probably freshly cooked and the noodles are almost always safe to eat. As long as you don't think too hard about the meat, you'll be fine. I won't post the pictures I have of half-cows hanging in the 100 degree heat in the bazaar with various insects.

Casual day in the Swiss Alps

Hello everyone!

After a long day of travelling, Hannah arrived in the Lüthi household yesterday evening. We didn't waste any time and got right to training this morning and went for a nice jog in Château-d'Oex. We explored the town and passed some cows, farms, waterfalls and typical swiss chalets.

The weather couldn't be nicer and the snow is slowly melting off the mountain peaks.

Pre-jog croissants 

View from the breakfast table

 Post-jog smiles 

Last bit of snow on the mountains 

Hopefully everyone had a good start to the summer and stay tuned for more news from this side of the pond.

Hannah and Elena

more oregon adventures

                                                    Thursday morning at Mt. Bachelor

The skiing tended to be great in the morning and warmed up steadily throughout the day.  By noon the snow was ankle deep slush, but fun ankle deep slush.

                                                                 Chris crushing the climb

We went running at Smith Rock state park Thursday afternoon.  The river has carved a two hundred foot tall canyon/cliff (depending on how you look at it).  We were really tired, but the ancient spirits of the cliff gave me energy and I hammered the switchbacks.

How does one cook a yam?  Chris and I did not know, so we had a contest.  Above is a barbecued yam (by Isaac) and a mashed yam with brown sugar, nutmeg and butter, and also fried yam skins (by Chris).  It was a tie.

Summer Training Begins!

View of Bend from Pilot Butte

A few days after school ended, Chris Stock (Harvard) and I headed off to Bend Oregon to do some late spring skiing and relax from exams.  We've been staying with Susan, Bob, and Casey Shannon, who have been absolutely fabulous hosts, and among many other things, great mushroom hunters.  Also  our trip has coincided almost perfectly with the US and Canadian ski teams' spring training camps so we've been bumping into such skiing celebrities as Kikkan Randall, Devon Kershaw, and even Will Wichirski.

 Either Mt. Bachelor or one of the Three Sisters

Looking towards the Newbury Calderra (its active)

The weather and conditions have been different every day.  Today it was 35 degrees, raining, and very windy, but we've also had sun, snow, and everything in between.  

 For the geology nerds among you, many of the mountains out here are volcanoes, and from my understanding the smaller ones are lava/cinder cones from previous eruptions.

                                                Heading off in the rain.  Chris is pumped!

 We went camping yesterday in Ochoco National Forest.  It was pouring rain when we drove into the parking lot and when we were cooking dinner, but otherwise we stayed dry.  On our hike we spotted some elk (or maybe mule deer) lots of hawks, a burned down forest, and two enormous rock pillar formations.  Unfortunately we didn't have the camera with us to take pictures.

Cooking tofu peanut rice curry in the rain.

email me if you want the recipe.

Till next time.  We'll try to get some pictures of actual skiing, and maybe some autographs for Vanya's collection.

Spring BBQ and Awards

The last day of finals was almost a week ago and things on campus are starting to wind down with the exception of graduation, which is one week from today! During reading period the ski team had our annual spring BBQ and awards ceremony. It was a bit frigid behind Poker Flats that evening.....downright cold considering the warm weather we were all getting used to, but we had a great time catching up with each other before heading out for a wide variety of summer adventures!!  Congratulations to Casey, Ian, Phil and Christina for a great 4 years on the Williams Ski Team. You will all be greatly missed and we wish you the best of luck in whatever the future brings your way! Here are a few pictures from the evening:

Coach Fisher assessing Phil's time at Williams

Coach Fisher with an animated speech about Christina

Ian taking it with a grain of salt!

Casey and Bud

The Ski Team

Christina reciting a clever poem for the coaches

The Alpine Seniors and Coach Levine

Bud explaining the Ski Awards

Casey Jones receiving the Ralph J. Townsend Award

Geordie Lonza receiving the Women's Alumnae Ski Award

Liz Kantack ('09) honored as 2013 NENSA Coach of the Year!!

A big shout out to 2009 Williams Ski Team Alum (and captain) Liz Kantack for being honored as the 2013 NENSA Coach of the Year. Great job Liz!!

More details here on the NENSA site: https://www.nensa.net/news/index.php?id=6109

Liz Kantack. Class of 2009

XC skiing in the Republic of Georgia

    Decided to go to the Republic of Georgia for Spring Break and get in some nice cheap skiing. During Soviet times, the area had some cross country skiing, but now the only tracks are in Mazeri, about 10 hours from Tbilisi by bus. Since I was in the area for backcountry skiing already, I decided to try out the tracks and race a 15k classic and a 30k pursuit. 

     A snowmobile somehow made its way from Woodford, VT to Georgia, and with the help of two logs strung together with wire, makes excellent skating tracks. There's also a track setter that was imported from Norway. The snowmobile wasn't working until last week, so right now there's only a 2.5k loop for skating, but it is very well prepared by the children of Becho valley stomping around. 

    The races went relatively well despite iffy conditions and fresh snow above freezing. My first win in a while was nice, but I also felt bad passing kids who have only been skiing for a few months to a few years. Amazing what a Norwegian hotel manager can do with a few pairs of donated skis and some petrol. Richard says that there is 2m of snow in November; maybe a training camp?

   More on the backcountry options and alpine coming soon.

The Epic Queen

    Last weekend was the 2nd Annual Homer Epic, a 100 km race over the remote backcountry of the Caribou hills around Homer, Alaska.  Participants could choose to fat bike, ski, or run this course which has 6470 feet of elevation gain.  This was a challenge Aubrey Smith, last year's assistant coach, could not pass up.  

   Aubs was one of 69 participants who started this race last Saturday at 8 a.m.   She crossed the finish line 7 hours and 9+ minutes later, finishing 4th overall for the skiers.   The winning fat bike time was 5:33:24 and   the fastest runner finished the course in 10:48:10.   

   Aubrey managed all of this even with a frozen water pack that she had to take time to thaw out about 10 km into the race.    It was a beautiful day and she has the sunburn to prove it (her sunscreen was also frozen when she went to put it on).   She sent us a few pictures that I'm posting below.   Aubrey's been skiing well;   on March 2nd, she was the 50K female winner of the Tour of Anchorage.    Congratulations, Aubrey!

 

Photo taken about 30-35 km into the race

 

Aubrey at the last checkpoint

                                                       An epic, spectacular view