Feb 23, Leavenworth ski carnival (w/jumping!)

From the Leavenworth Winter Sports Club website:

Ski Hill Carnival
Sat. Feb. 23, 2008, starting at 10 a.m.

The annual ski hill carnival is back! Bring out your best costume and enjoy the fun. Tentative schedule is as follows:

Saturday am--Nordic Team's last practice!!!
11:00-11:30 Alpine Race on the Bunny Hill
11:30-12:30 Alpine Race on the Big Hill
12:00-2:00 BBQ Lunch
1:00-2:30 Nordic Combined (XC race and ski jumping)
2:00-3:00 Obstacle Course/Relays/Fun Games
3:00 Big Air Competition on the Airplane Jump (Big Tow)
6:00 Torch Light Parade (Bring your own Flashlight)
6:30 Fireworks

The Nordic Combined event provides an opportunity to try real Nordic ski jumping. For a recent report about ski jumping at Leavenworth click here . (Click "refresh" if you don't see photos on the first try.)

Ha, that looks like a fun new way hurt myself.

Actually, they were four-way competitions: downhill, slalom, cross-country and jumping. Folks who've seen my "Skiing the Cascade Crest" presentation will be familiar with the name of Sigurd Hall. Here are some notes about his finest competition result, a third-place overall finish in the National Four-Way Championships in 1940. He died in a crash during the Silver Skis race on Mt Rainier just a few weeks later:

www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/peri...0.html#asa-1940-p120

American Ski Annual, 1940

p. 120: Hume, Rita Marrah, "Four-Event National Championships"

The downhill and slalom events of the National Four-Way championships were held at Mt Baker on March 13 and 14. Dr. Otto Strizek was the course setter. Sigurd Hall finished first in the downhill and third in the slalom to lead Alf Engen in combined points after these two events. The competition moved to Snoqualmie Pass for an eleven-mile cross-country race over a course set by Hans Otto Giese. Alf Engen finished fourth and Hall fifth, giving Engen a slight edge in the standings. The climax was the jumping event held on the giant new hill at Milwaukee Bowl on March 17. This was the first time the hill had been jumped in competition. Alf Engen and Torger Tolkle, the two leading jumpers in the U.S., dueled with Tolkle flying father but Engen winning on form. Hall finished thirteenth in the jumping.

At the awards banquet, Alf and Sverre Engen, who finished first and second overall, hosted third place finisher Sigurd Hall on their shoulders to the tune of "He's A Jolly Good Fellow." The author writes: "It is a memory that will live long in the minds of his fellow racers, those who knew and liked him best. For just one month later Hall's meteoric and successful ski career came to an abrupt close when he lost his life while participating in the sport he loved."

I don't know where to buy real Nordic jumping skis. If you went to the Leavenworth event, you could talk to a few jumpers who have that gear and find out where they got it. This 2004 Seattle Times story by Ron Judd describes my brother Gordy trying the jump on our dad's old skis a few years ago.