Nieka and Ken Go West
Day 12: Utah Olympic Park

Our bobsleigh time.
K120 jump at Utah Olympic Park.

Today began the lazy part of our trip -- having said farewell to the National Parks, we took it a bit easier here in ski country. Since we had been to the Olympics in 2002 (see our Olympic travelog), we were anxious to take a tour of the Utah Olympic Park, where athletes train for ski jumping, aerial skiing, bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton. The park is only a few miles from Park City, an easy drive.

We elected the "Behind the Scenes Tour," which is only offered once a day but provides access to athletes, coaches, and other bonus sites. We started at the base of the aerials training run, where skiers land in a swimming pool after completing their acrobatics. The bubbles in the landing area are both to help the jumper spot the landing area and to break up the surface to make the landing softer. We met with a pioneering aerial skier from the 1988 games and rising Olympic hopeful for the 2006 or 2010 games Scott Bahrke, a brother of 2002 moguls silver medalist Shannon Bahrke.

From the aerials practice run, we walked to the Alpine jumps. They practice on the same jumps they use in the winter, with green plastic grass-like material as a landing zone rather than snow.

We took the chair lift up to the top of the 120 meter hill. The distance is the expected length of the jump, not the height of the starting point; that is actually about 300 feet above the landing zone. Jumpers' flight paths mirror the curve of the hill, so they are never more than 8-10 feet above the ground. While the chair lift was just fine, neither Nieka nor I would try the jump itself, even the much more reasonable 10 meter hill used for beginners.

Ken steering the luge.

The next stop was a luge demonstration -- actually, a slightly downhill-sloping parking lot fenced in with padded barriers, about 30 yards long. The luge had wheels, rather than runners, but riding down the hill gave a feel for how the luge is controlled. In Ken's case, without a great deal of elegance or alacrity.

We moved on to the bobsleigh -- another demonstration ride of the starting push, with a hill at the end. Nieka and Ken rode in the two-person sled, but didn't set any records for distance (measured by ascent up the following hill). Weight has a lot to do with it, and we were not the heaviest couple (or the most energetic pushers).

The bobsleigh starting exercise merely whetted our appetite for the real thing: we purchased tickets to ride a wheeled sled down the actual bobsleigh run. That was something else entirely. We were in a four-person sled, with a professional driver (and Olympic athlete) and one other person. Nieka got the second seat, with me behind her, and the fourth person behind me. With motorcycle-style helmets provided, and safely buckled in to our seats, we set off for a 62.89-second ride down the 4400 foot track - a speed of 66.2 miles per hour (faster at the bottom, obviously!). Ours was the fastest run of our set. It was a very bumpy experience, with g-forces of more than three times normal in turn 6 which forced our heads sharply down. We loved the ride and wanted to take another one...

Aerial skiing practice.

We ate lunch on the balcony of the visitors center/museum, watching aerial skiers on their practice runs. Some of the better skiers were using the highest jump (which looked similar to the competition jumps we saw in the Olympics) and were executing triple and quadruple spins with double and triple rotations. Very impressive stuff and fascinating to watch.

More pictures from today