Ava's international SkiMo adventure

Ava McCann is a young endurance athlete athlete going places and trying her hand at a number of different disciplines as she continues on her athletic journey.

A member of the cross country skiing national junior team, Ava represented Australia in biathlon at the Winter Youth Olympic Games in January and earlier this year was invited to take part in an International Ski Mountaineering Federation development camp in Spain.

Read more about Ava's experience at the camp...
 

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From the 24th to the 30th of March, I was lucky enough to attend the second Olympic Solidarity Ski Mountaineering Training Camp in Jaca, Spain.

I trained with athletes from Argentina, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Greece, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey. It was amazing to meet other athletes my age and make new friends.

We learned about transitions, including how to take our skins on and off (and fold them neatly so they don’t take 20 minutes to pull apart!), how to use our avalanche detectors and how to do kick turns.

There was even a workshop on waxing skins... who knew!

We visited an historic cathedral, went ice skating, and did a fair amount of bombing down the slopes and off-piste of Candanchu Resort without skins.

After the camp ended, I discovered that I had skied the whole time, including La Zapatilla Tube with an incline of 35º (40º according to Red Bull), with my new boots not done up properly! I was very happy to learn what the lace thing on the boot does to tension it.

We did a short vertical race on the last day with about 250 metres of elevation. I found the whole camp much more difficult than XC training. But although SkiMo is very hard work, it’s also a lot of fun, especially being rewarded for the uphill climbs with downhill on edges.

If you get a chance to try it out, and you’re feeling pretty fit, I highly recommend it!