by Tommi Antila, T2
It all begun when I arrived by plane to Munich, where I was picked up by Harald. It was just a 2,5hrs drive with lots of nice sceneries and chatting with Harald and fellow campers in the bus.
After getting our rooms it was time to look around the valley. The sceneries are impressive, during May it's almost summer in the valley, but skiing is still very good on the glacier. The hotel is at 1500m and the top station on the 'Gefrorene wand' is approx at 3300m above sea level. Some went skiing already on saturday, but many of us just stayed at the hotel and made friends with other campers. During the mornings it was mostly around -5C at the top, in the afternoons the temps rose to a couple of degrees above 0C.
Sunday was reserved for alignment. I had already been in contact with HH about my alignment, which was found to be a bit challenging. Measurements and boot work was done in the hotel gym. I can still recall Rich Messer making the measurements and shaking his head in disbelief and asking: Diana, I need some help here! I have considerable tibia varum. The measurements were done and an initial assessment taped on the boots. During the first days of the camp the coaches had shims with them when we skied and they fine tuned the alignment during training.
On monday it was time to begin the training. We had a short walk to the base station, where we got our tickets and up we went. There are nice cabin lifts with which we were at Fernerhaus station in no time. Fernerhaus is the base for summer skiing at Tux, there's a nice restaurant and also some storage areas to be used by the campers. After a couple of short freeskiing runs the coaches had us divided into groups.
Our daily routine consisted of many, many drills, most of which were familiar from the books, some were completely new. Typically the trainer explains and demoes the movements and then the campers ski one by one and get immediate feedback. Video was taken 1-2 times per day to verify progress. The best feedback is getting the comments of the trainer when looking at your own movements on video. It could look different than it feels! We skied 5-7 hours daily, which is quite much taking the altitude into account.
Skiing at altitude means that one must remember to drink a lot and remember to use very efficient sun protection. I looked like a raccoon after two days of sunshine with inadequate protection!
After a couple of skiing days the alignments were finalised and the boot plates connected and cuffs machined. It was really a hard day for HSS team to make all the boots in one evening!
The hotel is very nice and the owner Christian with his staff are making a great job. We had lots of fun during wonderful dinners every evening. It was really nice to meet so many skiing enthusiasts with a common interest, PMTS. I hope we were not too loud, sometimes ..
On wednesday we switched trainers. It was very nice to have another point of view to the skiing and drills. Towards the end of the camp we free skied more and implemented the movements of the drills to normal skiing. All of us had breakthroughs and many great moments of understanding more about skiing in theory and practise. The beauty of PMTS is the logical, clear progressions which result in easy, enjoyable movements.
Anders, Jay and myself taking care of the dehydration on friday afternoon.. After 5 days of solid skiing it was time to pack and prepare for travelling back home.
Harald and Diana drove us to the airport in the minibuses.
As a conclusion I found the camp to be very useful and enjoyable. There are so many drills and different elements of skiing practised during the week that it's sure that anyone attending will get progress in one's skiing. And it's fun! With so much time together one will make new friends with other campers - PMTS enthusiasts.
So thank you all, Harald, Diana, Rich, Jay, Jasper, you rock! And thanks to all fellow campers, hope to meet you in 2008, I'll be there!
Photos by Geoff (hope you dont mind) and myself.
