Gate Judge

[thebigo]

As part of the volunteer commitment for my daughter's U10 program I am scheduled to be a gate judge Sunday. Taking a look at the still open commitments, I am just now realizing gate judge is the shit job.

The training videos show the gate judges in ski boots? Thinking of bringing boot bag with winter hiking boots, a gallon of water and bag of jerky. Change out of ski boots when I get to my post.

Any other ideas to make this least painful as possible?

 

[boston_e]

Check the forecasted temps for the day and dress warmer than you would for skiing since you won't be generating body heat.

The few times I have done it, i wore either ski boots or winter boots depending on how high up the course i was stationed.

Other than that, just enjoy the front row view of the racing!

 

[Boxtop Willie]

It's hours of mind-numbing monotony surrounded by minutes of gut wrenching terror. Dress warmly and pay attention to the racers, things can happen quickly. Most racers have no issues, the few that do can create quite the conversations at the base post race. There's a reason the sign up sheet fills up last for the gate judges.
I always did it in ski boots. Take the lift up, ski down to your station, do your job, ski down. (used toe warmers on really cold days
I often did the "stick the ski tails in the snow, put pole across binding, create a seat" trick...worked great.
Bonus points if you are facing the sun, a couple of Kind bars always helped.
If its a slalom, the worst section is the flush into the hair pin, lots goes wrong there.
Enjoy the view of the race, best seat in the house.

 

[drjeff]

Gate judge... Not a bunch of excitement, especially if the gate's in the section of the course you're watching are rather straightforawrd, as you may not have any racers unsuccesfully negotiate your section of course.

Pretty much you just stand off the the side of the course in an area where you can see all of the gates you've been assigned to monitor, and then as each racer come through, you make a note of if they failed to properly negotiate any of your assigned gates on the sheet that the race officials hand out to you, then at the end of each run, they collect them. Typically its not too and being in ski boots for the race, as you often get a break between the runs to head down to the lodge and warm up.

IMHO, the "worst" job for a race is if it's a race where its required, is back up hand timing, where there's a person at the start and a person at the finish with a stop watch which is syncronised to the main timing system, and for each racer, the start area timer notes the bib number and the time when they hit they stop wacth, which is roughly the same time the racer goes out of the start gate, and then the finhs area timer does the saem thing when a racer crosses the finish line. Every racer you're writing something down, and on a cold day, that's not much fun!!

Course was always my preferred race job, as you actually got to ski a bit, as well as often cut lift lines to get back up to the top of the course for your next slip run through it. Sometimes though if it was say a freezing rain or windy night prior to day of the race, and the b-netting was set up ahead of time, course maintence involves adjusting/fixing/resetting some of the b-net prior to the race, which really can build a sweat.

I've now graduated a bit in the Mount Snow race crew, where I am involved in running the timing system, which with some of our race courses means I get to be inside a start or finish shack, with a space heater running, which certianly has it's plusses some days!

Enjoy watching your kid race!

 

[drjeff]

It's hours of mind-numbing monotony surrounded by minutes of gut wrenching terror. Dress warmly and pay attention to the racers, things can happen quickly. Most racers have no issues, the few that do can create quite the conversations at the base post race. There's a reason the sign up sheet fills up last for the gate judges.
I always did it in ski boots. Take the lift up, ski down to your station, do your job, ski down. (used toe warmers on really cold days
I often did the "stick the ski tails in the snow, put pole across binding, create a seat" trick...worked great.
Bonus points if you are facing the sun, a couple of Kind bars always helped.
If its a slalom, the worst section is the flush into the hair pin, lots goes wrong there.
Enjoy the view of the race, best seat in the house.

Fully agree with the SL part!

We had a U10 race at Mount Snow a few weeks ago, where the course setter set a really funky flush right before the finishline, and caught the majority of the fielf off guard. In the 1st run, there was literally about an 80% DNF rate due to it! Fortunately for the U10's that day, it was a non scored, fun race after they had done their scored skills challenge earlier in the day, so the finish area crying was kept to a minimum!