Letters from NJ@KT Camp – Thankful Thursday
Greetings friends and happy Thursday from the Northeast Kingdom. It’s been another glorious day around these parts. Campers woke to some spotty showers with temperatures in the 60’s. After a hearty breakfast, ride groups either set out to check off more trails they haven’t ridden of the 100+ mile network, or participated in the final day of trail maintenance and skills clinics. Today’s trail work focused on some new sections of the New T trail, and clinics worked on berms and flow at the Darling Hill skills area.
Our varsity boys group set out on a fully mapped out ride of 53+ miles, planned entirely by the campers. They considered water and fueling stops, trails they wanted to ride, and gravel climbs that they wanted to tackle. We ran a live tracker in the dining hall throughout the day which was lots of fun! They accomplished their mission with distance to spare, logging 55.03 miles and and over 7,000 feet of climbing. Other groups also accomplished great things, including the combined varsity and junior varsity girls who rode over 40 miles with nearly 3000 feet of climbing. Chapeau!
The showers moved out by lunch, giving way to bright skies and a bit of humidity to keep everyone honest. The ice cream was flowing in town during and after rides, and some groups stopped for refreshments trailside at the Village Sports Shop on Darling Hill. It was a banner day!
Anne have been super popular!
After taking in the daily edit by former camper turned coach, Lilly Matthias, evening awards were on the menu. Tonight’s were the Intergalactic Water Balloon Champions of the Multiverse, awarded to Colton M. and Finn B. for their dominating wins and distance, and Camper of the Day, honoring Eric L. for his amazing work ethic while slinging all kinds of dirt during his trail maintenance session. He worked nonstop and moved mountains!
Activities this evening included tie-dye, watercolors, laser tag and a nutrition & warmups seminar, which was well attended by our high school racers. Coach Lilly put together a take-home slideshow of links from the session for students and parents to review in the future. You can access it by clicking here. A stray downpour rolled through to make things interesting, and then left us with a really great scene down the mountain.
Tomorrow we are super honored to welcome our friend and local professional rider, Cody Phillips, to camp. Cody will be riding with some of our older campers to discuss post-NICA racing and riding along with a healthy dose of life lessons, and knowing Cody, a whole lot of wheel lifts and ride stoke.
Thank you for reading!
