MS Trust Monster Ski Home

What a fantastic day!  Another bright day with beautiful sunshine and no wind: Whistler at its absolute best!

We divided into our 3 groups, 2 being led by the Whistler/Blackcomb ski school guides and the other by Nick from Ski-Independence and set off by 9am with our Flaik tracking devices set up.  After a beast of a morning, one of the groups had managed to ski over 32,000 feet – an incredible feat given the snow was starting to melt, even on the tops of the highest mountains, due the the incredibly warm temperatures.

Despite this, all the groups hit their targets and some were able to exceed them with the middle, but highly charming,  group of Tigger, Mike Laver and Stuart Martin managing to ski 37,919 feet in the day, skiing over 40 miles in the process.  The group doing the Silver challenge of 100,000 feet in the week managed over 26,000 feet today – a fantastic amount. The top speed of anyone in the groups was over 44 miles per hour – a bit brisk by any standards.

Tomorrow, the forecast is rain so all the excess feet we managed to achieve today will be very helpful.

The first day of the Monster Ski 2010 challenge got off to a great start with beautiful blue skies and some real spring sunshine and warmth.  With it being nearly the end of the season, Whistler is comparatively empty whilst still having plenty of snow.  Amazingly, we had virtually all the pistes to ourselves.

Today was a great chance for a warm up, and to check that our distance measuring equipment was working – the challenge itself starts tomorrow.  We skied as a single large group in the morning and were able to cover a fairly gentle 12,000 feet in 3 hours before stopping for lunch.  The groups managed another 12,000 feet in the afternoon before a unanimous vote for early beers drew it to a close.  By the end of the day, the temperatures were way up at over 15C in the village.  The 30,000 daily target for those doing the gold challenge is going to be manageable, while those wanting to do its little brother silver challenge found that the warm up day showed them that they too would make their goal.

Despite some tired legs and a minor coming together  for a couple of Monster Skiers on the slope, everyone will be attending the welcome reception held tonight in Whistler village.

Monster Ski begins!! This year we have 17 participants and we would like to say a huge thank you to them all. We will be posting updates and photos  from the team as Monster Ski progresses, so keep an eye on this blog to find out how the Monster Skiers are getting on.

Our Monster Ski team arrived safely in Canada after flying out on Wednesday, narrowly missing the Icelandic ash cloud! Unfortunately, one member of the group who was due to join them on Friday is still stuck in the UK as his flight was canceled. Fingers crossed he manages to catch a flight out soon.

Good luck Monster Skiers, from everyone at the MS Trust!

More daily reports can be found on John Mackenzie’s Monster Ski blog

Find out more about some of our skiers: Pontlliw Ski Team