SWSA Winter Carnival keeps season exciting

SALISBURY — The weather was cold, cold, cold, but dozens of winter sports enthusiasts turned out nonetheless to support the Salisbury Winter Sports Association (SWSA) and its Alpine Winter Carnival, Jan. 25 to 27.The event featured a variation on traditional ski jumping. A handful of Alpine jumpers from out West, mainly Colorado, came to Satre Hill to demonstrate the sport. As with regular jumping, they descended at high speed down the K70 jump in Salisbury. But instead of wearing the usual edgeless lightweight skis they wore traditional downhill skis, with edges. And they also, of course, wore downhill boots, which lock onto the skis; jumpers normally wear a smaller boot whose heel is not clamped to the ski. On Saturday night there was Alpine target jumping under the lights. Normally jumpers try to see how far they can go before landing. In target jumping, they aim for a specific target on the landing hill. First place on Saturday night went to Marsh Gooding of Steamboat Springs, Colo., followed by Tim MaGill of Clark, Colo., in second and Pat Armone of Steamboat Springs in third. The regular Alpine jumping competition was held Sunday.First place went to Lynn Wenzel of Boulder, Colo. Gooding came in second and third place went to MaGill.In a jump-off that followed the Alpine competition, MaGill earned top honors with a 62.5-meter jump.An hour after the jumping ended came arguably the most popular event of the weekend: the human dog sled race.Each team had six members: five to run and pull the homemade sled, and one to ride the sled. The rider-and-sled combination.The teams took off from a central point at the bottom of the ski jump landing hill and then ran a .3-mile course. This year, the teams veered off at midpoint so they wouldn’t crash into each other and get their lines tangled (as happened in a previous race; this year all the contestants were also asked to wear shoes and teams were reminded to stop if one of the runners fell under the sled). The two fastest teams faced off in an untimed race — and had a finish that was so close the judges had to call for a rematch. The Wok Huskies and the Hot Dogs were allowed 10 minutes to catch their breath and then they took off again. This time the Wok Huskies pulled clearly into first place, winning the trophy. The scantily clad Vikings team members declared that, “We might not have took your trophy home, but we’re taking home all of your women!”Instead, they were given the People’s Choice award for the event, for best sled/costumes. Also a feature of the weekend were demonstrations by the Norfolk Curling Club (see story, page A2). The dog sled race will be held again during Jumpfest weekend, Feb. 8 to 10, which will include target jumping under the lights, the SWSA Jumpfest on Saturday and the Eastern U.S. ski jumping championships on Sunday.For more information and a complete schedule, go to www.jumpfest.org; and look for the Jumpfest publication in this week’s Lakeville Journal Co. newspapers.