Copper Mountain, Day 3

Yesterday was a busy day, filled with fun and lots of hurry up and wait. Whitney was up early to head out to the boarder cross course. They had an early inspection of the course, then since they had made changes to the bottom, they had two practice runs. Bob and I came up a bit later; took the chair lift up then walked down to the course. We walked past the slope style course and saw them getting ready to get started.

The competition was run a bit differently than we were used to. They started with time trials, each girl went down by herself, racing the clock. After that, the girls were ranked by time, then put into brackets. The long wait occurred here. There was a problem with the times for the Youth Women group, so they had to fix that, then redo their brackets. It took quite a while so the race start was pretty delayed since that group was the first to race.

While we waited, we spent lots of time sitting on the mountain, enjoying the beautiful day. It was warm, sunny with clear blue skies. Really nice. I've got some pictures I'll share when we get home.

Once the races started, we had to wait for Whitney's turn. She was in a group of three; she was ranked 16 in the time trials, the other two girls were 6 and 11. She had a poor start but got it together and did really well. She ended up in third, which meant she didn't move on, but she said she had her best run down the course. She felt really good about how the race went.

When she was done, Bob and I walked the rest of the way down the mountain, the three of us grabbed some lunch at the outdoor grill, and walked back to the condo. Whitney was pretty pooped, so we relaxed for a while.

Later we went out and walked around a bit, got a sweatshirt for her and something for her sister. We watched the crowd at Burning Stones plaza and part of the awards ceremonies, went to find dinner.

Whitney said she had a great time, it was lots of fun, and she was really glad she came. One more day here to get in some good snowboarding, then we'll be heading home. We're glad she had her race yesterday, the weather is taking a turn for the worse (possibly some rain/snow today, and warmer temperatures coming).