Suicide Hill

[us56456712]

Last night our mountain bike club rode up the bluff on the opposite side of the jumps. We call it Grand View and you can see the jumps. I was an official at the 123 Annual Ski Jumping Tournament (Competition Secretary) and I have attached some video from it (training jump the day before the tournament). I have had a lot of jobs at these jumps over the years; announcer, chief of hill, chief points calculator, starter, distance marker, hill prep and setting up the hill (with distance marks, start light, speed trap etc). I used to be a jumper but retired when I was 28. I never jumped in our annual tournament as I was no good. There are a lot of bad jumpers. I am getting too old to climb up and down many times during a tournament so I sit in the judges stand and keep track of all the number and official decisions that occur during the competition. You are too busy to watch the jumps. Sometimes this video loads slow. A properly prepared jumping hill has to be very icy for consistent takeoff speeds and so you don't dig in when you land. The chief of hill and his assistants have to wear crampons when they go out on the landing to repair divots from a crash.

 

[emfife]

Last night our mountain bike club rode up the bluff on the opposite side of the jumps. We call it Grand View and you can see the jumps. I was an official at the 123 Annual Ski Jumping Tournament (Competition Secretary) and I have attached some video from it (training jump the day before the tournament). I have had a lot of jobs at these jumps over the years; announcer, chief of hill, chief points calculator, starter, distance marker, hill prep and setting up the hill (with distance marks, start light, speed trap etc). I used to be a jumper but retired when I was 28. I never jumped in our annual tournament as I was no good. There are a lot of bad jumpers. I am getting too old to climb up and down many times during a tournament so I sit in the judges stand and keep track of all the number and official decisions that occur during the competition. You are too busy to watch the jumps. Sometimes this video loads slow. A properly prepared jumping hill has to be very icy for consistent takeoff speeds and so you don't dig in when you land. The chief of hill and his assistants have to wear crampons when they go out on the landing to repair divots from a crash.

All I can say is DUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE !!!!

 

[us56456712]

All I can say is DUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE !!!![/QUOTE

Glad you enjoyed it. I did. There are a lot of cool Photoyoop threads attached that show winter sporting life here in the UP as well as international ski jumping and flying competitions. Just click on what tickles your fancy or just watch the evolving show that comes up after the training jump. When I was about 22 I went off suicide hill on cross country skis. One of the worse decisions I ever made. It was on a dare. I climbed up and all my buddies were drinking coffee out of a thermos and egging me on. No one, including me, thought I would do it. So just to keep them thinking I would really do it I put on the skis. They still were not convinced I was serious and were passing around the coffee. This aggravated me that they were so nonchalant. So I got out on the starting gate. Still no interest from my buddies. What the heck does it take to impress you guys! I thought that all I had to do was let go and gravity would take over, so I let go. My skinny wood skis started chattering and jumping at high speed in and out of the tracks and the sharply bent tips started to bend toward my face. I finally sat back and put my gloves on the ice beside the tracks, just to keep from crashing before the takeoff. Because my weight was so far back I went off the jump upside down. One ski was stuck in the landing and the other ejected like a rocket and went straight up over a telephone pole that is used for lights for night jumping. I was a yard sale with goggles, hat and wood ski splinters all over the place. My buddies collected the junk that ended out at the bottom and said "I believe this belongs to you". They were still drinking coffee and totally not impressed or even concerned. Ho hum. One ski ended out in the swamp and was never recovered. Years later my son had a bad jumping crash (flipped in the air) when he was 12 and one of his skis hit the landing straight down and went over a telephone pole and ended in the swamp. All I could say was "been there done that". When I was an oncology nurse in a former lifetime one of the other male nurses claimed to have ridden a toboggan off Suicide Hill. I called his bluff and the next day he brought in a photo of him in mid air holding the toboggan to his butt with one hand and the other holding on to his toque hat. That is a better feat than cross country skis. For a while in the 60s it was a thing for teens to get drunk and go get some skis out of a garage and go off at night, even if you didn't know how to ski. The transition at the bottom is too sharp for downhill ski as you can't bend your ankles in downhill boots so the skis eject in an eye blink and you are suddenly sliding on your face. Some even claimed to go off on snow shovels. I did see one of our older retired jumpers go down the landing of Suicide Hill on a snow shovel after we packed the landing. He sat on the shovel with the handle between his legs to sort of steer with but he tipped forward and the shovel handle stuck in the landing and he went flying. He had a big kid grin on after it was over. For a few years in the 60s they and to put chain link fences across the take off of all the UP jumps but now all the kids are wooses and got their noses in some sort of TV screen. Sadly, the fences on the take offs have all been removed.