Ski Burke

The Burke Freestyle team worked incredibly hard all season long and as a result earned a few spots in USASA Nationals at Copper Mountain, CO. This is unusual for the first year skiing on a freestyle team, but our Burkies are a special group of athletes!   Congratulations to Nick, Ryan, and Luke for putting in the extra effort and making us all very proud. Nick and Ryan qualified for Slopestyle and Superpipe competitions held April 4-10, 2012.
 
As I am writing this it is sunny and 60 degrees at Copper- it's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago we were training at Burke and competing all over New England. We arrived Friday April 6 in Colorado only to find that Nick's luggage had been lost by the airline and Ryan had come down with altitude sickness. Saturday we were off to a late start but still managed to train at The Barn at Woodward at Copper, a custom indoor training facility. The boys worked on front-flips, 540s, and misty flips on the trampolines and in the foam pit.
 
Sunday we hit the slopes and started practicing on the Superpipe and Slopestyle course. We put together our runs, got some sleep, and prepared for Monday's Superpipe competition.
 
Monday we were up early for Superpipe on a perfect spring day. The pipe was immaculate and the team threw down. Nick stomped some huge grabs, alley-oops, and even his first-ever alley-oop 360 in the pipe during his runs. Ryan came charging down with some tai-lgrabs, Japan grabs, alley-oops, 360s, and his first-ever switch alley-oop 180 during his runs. We celebrated by free skiing the rest of the day and enjoying Copper's many flawless parks and bowls.
 
Tuesday morning we arrived on the Slopestyle course to find another great day and perfect course. The field was stacked but we still put together some unique runs that caught the crowd's attention. Nick threw down on the boxes and pulled a switch 180 to a huge 180 on the jumps. Ryan pulled his first switch 360 followed by a huge 360 to cap his run off. After the competition we skied until the lifts closed, again enjoying the great views, parks, and wide-open soft bowls up top.
 
Tuesday night the team had another Barn session and worked on flips and corked spins, which we hope to take to the snow next season. Overall it has been an amazing first year and we are already looking forward to December for our season kick-off. A Special thank you goes to Burke Mountain for supporting our new program and all freestyle team members and families for helping make this a huge success.
 
Stay tuned and come join the team to have fun with us next year!
To register or find out more give us a call at 802.626.7324 or email us at info@skiburke.com 

See You Later.....
Although we have given it our best shot, this season was not meant to be, with the continued deterioration of our ski conditions and over ¼” of rain forecast for tomorrow morning between 8:00 am – noon, we will be forced to make today our last day of operation. I would like to thank all of our staff, passholders, and customers for their unwavering support this season which will surely go down as one of the worst ski seasons in the northeast in many decades. Although the conditions were disappointing this season, we are very excited about the ongoing improvements that have been made at the resort and we couldn’t be more excited for next season. In the meantime, we are thrilled about the upcoming NEMBAfest (New England Mountain Biking Association – June 22-24) at Burke with Kingdom Trails. Kingdom Trails and Burke Mountain are consistently recognized as one of the top mountain biking destinations in the country, so if you have not been here in the summer it’s well worth the trip. We hope you were able to make the best of this season and we look forward to seeing you soon!

A Burke Mountain Minute:

Due to the unseasonable weather forecast and record breaking high tempertures, The Sherburne Base Area and trails in the will be closed Monday-Friday of this week (Mar 19-23) with hopes that we can reopen it on next Saturday & Sunday March 24 & 25. The Mid Burke Lodge and trails on the Upper Mountain will remain open daily.  Tickets and food services will be available from the Mid Burke Lodge & Bear Den Lounge for the week. 

Spring Fever!

The Burke Mountain Freestyle team was formed early this season to introduce young Burke skiers to the competitive side of freestyle skiing and instill a lifelong love of skiing by fostering a passion for freestyle ski progression. Throughout the winter, Burke athletes have been working closely with Burke freestyle coaches led by head coach Sasha Yakovleff training here at the mountain and competing in various freestyle events.

Hannah’s Notebook
To catch up in just a few sentences, there has been a lot going on. We have spent some time on the road visiting our Boston Friends in south station, spreading the word that there IS snow here in Vermont. We’ll be headed to South Station again in mid February with our partners Cabot Cheese. Again we’ll be promoting some good deals, so stay tuned. We also had our Grand Opening ceremony for the Mid Burke Express, during pass holder appreciation weekend, on January 28. If you haven’t yet seen our Ode to the Willoughby Quad, take a peek here, it’s a nice little tribute to say thanks to our old chairlift.

Happy New Year! So Mother Nature didn’t help us out that much in 2011, but we’re hopeful for a New Year that brings us new snow. I headed out this morning at 9am to get my first runs of the year on Big Dipper and Carriage Road, which opened up yesterday.  Although we have one of those fancy GoPro helmet cams, I am no video editor, so to make you a nice little helmet cam video with cool music in the background would have taken me a month, and by that time, we will be waist deep in snow! (knock on wood) So I decided to make a small slide show for your visual enjoyment of my morning.

Looking back...and ahead.

Boy do we have a lot to be thankful for as we take a look back in 2011. We've accomplished so much and have a lot to be proud of. To all our staff, I would like to shout out a big THANK YOU! From chairlifts to wind turbines to music festivals and new real estate plans, there were many big projects and events this year that wouldn't have turned out half as great if it weren't for our very dedicated staff that we are lucky to have here. A thanks also goes out to our friends at Kingdom Trails, for a successful partnership in summer mountain biking and winter Nordic operations. Snow is on the way and we’ll be cross country skiing and snowshoeing on the Kingdom Trails in no time!