Portillo Flight!
Viva Portillo! Actually I have been here a while now. The Chillian portion of our South America camp went well. We ended with a fabulous powder day! Worm and I ripped it up for a few runs, went in and packed our bags then waited around for and extra 3 hours waiting for our late bus. But it was okay we used our time wisely! Freedog played us some tunes while I tried to stay warm under some cardboard. After the 8 hours bus ride and some zzzz's we arrived in Santiago at 1:30AM. Why not go dancing??? Pretty much all of the guys went out and danced to the weeee hours of the morning.
We then hopped on the bus for a 3 hour jaunt, some more zzzz's and to Portillo. Ahhh Portillo, the elevation, the Octagon (our housing, lets just say bunks), the blazing sun, intense training, incredible views, and some excellent food.
We have had some great training thus far. Three days of SG and 3 more of DH. The mornings are early, but we get the hard snow before the sun cooks it to the consistency of runny oatmeal.
So far carnage has been to a minimal. Personally I have had a couple of good diggers, some guys are a little held up from knee soreness and Wiebrecht got a floor hockey stick to the eye brow so he now has 5 stiches holding it together. But other than that everyone has managed to stay on their feet! The DH portion of the camp has been a non stop rush! We start up on the Rocajack pitch which is long, steep, fast and intimidating! Every time I push out of the gate I wonder why I am doing this. Once we make it off the pitch we take some serious heat onto the flats and then into the terrain section of the hill. This year we built a jump that is sending us on average 60 meters in length!!!! I think I'm a little sick in the head because every time down I just want more and more. I think Marco may have set the record length at around 70 meters!
I am planning on making a little vid clip of our trip so stay tuned onto my website nymansworld.com and it will be up soon.
Cheers
Steven