>>595801Avalanche org I work with does a presentation at a major event in Wisconsin. As a "thank-you" for inviting us out there, we invite a contest winner and friends out to the mountains to ride for a week around spring break. These are high school seniors, so old enough to be on their own but not old enough to drink. They're decent riders in the flatlands of WI, and it's a lot of fun when they talk about riding 100-200 miles in a day... then we take them out riding in the mountains, 10 miles later they're done for the day.
First day two years ago, got out to the mountain, got everyone geared up, sleds rented, etc etc... about 2 miles of trail before we ducked off into a meadow to show them some basic off-trail skills... bash around through a couple open meadows for a while... nothing real difficult, and they're still in trail-mode (we were trying to break them of the bumper-to-bumper line; yes, you can go over there if you want to!).
End of the day, we had maybe 15 miles on the sleds... back to the cabin, dinner, and the kids all disappeared... to bed. At like 7PM.
I don't think we put on 100 miles the whole week they were out here, but they were exhausted by the end of each day.
Really fun for me to see a group of riders who have never been in the mountains before, nervous and intimidated but excited, then watch their skills improve day to day (even hour to hour). By day 3 or 4 they're starting to figure out the whole mountain-riding thing, and to watch them do things they'd be scared shitless of just a few days earlier is really rewarding to me.
Ran into that whole crew last week at a snowmobile event in MN, and I'll see a couple of those guys again this winter. Fun group, and a great organization out there.
