BOISE, Idaho — The end of ski season is on the horizon with most resorts shutting down the weekend after this one. However, this season on the slopes will go down as one to remember for several reasons.
It all started at Soldier Mountain where this local mom and pop resort brought in one of the most renowned terrain park builders to install massive jumps. Soldier became the training ground for the U.S. Slopestyle team and we got a front row seat.
"What these athletes are doing on those enormous jumps is absolutely astounding," said Scott Fischer, a local skier who wanted to check out Team USA. "We are literally right underneath the jumps, you can’t get that anywhere else."
December provided resorts with a big boost of snow ensuring a busy holiday season and a strong bottom line for the season. We had a blast ripping up the night with some local kids at Bogus Basin.
"I love it, it is so special, it’s where I can get out ski and just be outside with nature," said Preston Hansen. "I’m definitely thanking Bogus Basin for the people that stay here at night for the night skiers."
January provided a dry spell, but that gave me an opportunity to check out some other ski related stories I've been wanting to cover for years. We made it over to Sun Valley for the action packed sport of skijoring and also stopped in the Camas Prairie for snow kiting.
"Snow kiting is just like kite surfing except for you are playing on frozen water," said Eddy Petranek. "The terrain is three dimensional, it goes up and down, and you can use the kite to climb up hills then you can come down the hill. If you put the kite in the right position, it acts like a paraglider and it can lift you up off the ground."
Mother Nature turned the faucet back on in February and there were epic powder days to be had at Tamarack and also at Brundage who opened up the Mountain Adventure Center ahead of this ski season.
March ended with a bang as the best ski racers in the world came to Sun Valley for the World Cup Finals. We got to see Lindsey Vonn make history and the crowd roared when Mikaela Shiffrin won the slalom by 1.13 seconds on the final day of the competition.
"Amazing, I could hear the crowd down here from the start and also the people who were cheering at the start," said Shiffrin. "It feels good to ski it with power and intensity. "I can thank the crowd for giving me that energy."
Covering winter sports is my favorite time of the year for our Idaho Backroads Series and you can find all those stories on our website.
We still have the end of the year shenanigans to look forward to including the popular Pond Skim at Bogus Basin. That will take place on Saturday, 19 on what our local non-profit is calling a bonus weekend. Tamarack hosts the Idaho State Pond Skim Championship this Saturday.
This Saturday Brundage hosts the Brewlympic games, Sun Valley hosts the Baldy Bash on Saturday, April 19 and this weekend will be the final days at Pomerelle who has their pond skim on Saturday. We will have one of our Twin Falls reporters checking out this event.
