Jump Baby, Jump

Now there's one winter activity that Natureman and I have yet to see and that activity takes place in rural Westby about half an hour from the End of the Rainbow Valley. 

Dregne's window display...

And what pray tell is this activity?  It's the Timber Coulee Snowflake Ski Jumping Tournament where many Olympic hopefuls come to compete. 

 I would have forgotten all about the Ski Jump weekend except when we were en route to Viroqua, there on Main Street Westby in the Norwegian gift shop's window display was a miniature replica of the infamous ski jump.   

Side view of the replica

Had we missed it?  I googled it and sure enough we had. But I learned that it just recently became a coed sport. There was a recording of a ski jumping family where the father had been ski jumping for 40 years and his sons had continued the love of the sport.
His daughter was not going to be left out and in order to compete would tuck her hair under a cap so no one knew she was a girl. Now she doesn't have to...

Well any how 150 participants partook in jumping the five jumps in the Timber Coulee of 10, 20, 40 and 60 and its 118 meter Olympic sized hill. The competition annually takes place the last weekend in January and has the best ski jumpers both nationally and internationally. 

Usually large crowds are in attendance and this year's extreme cold couldn't keep the spectators away for its 91st Annual Tournament.  Hey, this is Wisconsin,  Wisconsinites can handle the frozen tundra and aficionados abound. A friend's daughter tells how she climbed the stairway to the top of the jump and by the time she arrived, her beer was frozen. That's cold.

This year the top of the hill was icy which made for faster conditions which the jumpers prefer. No matter what condition of the natural snowfall, volunteers  spend countless hours preparing and grooming the hills. They can always use volunteers if you're interested/ maybe ski jumping is on your bucket list. Not me, I 'll stick to spectator status.


If you'd like to see a snippet click here for this year's event :West Ski Jump 2014