The Ski and Snowboard season is off to a blistering start with our UCSD Ski and Snowboard team competing in their first race over the New Year’s weekend. Race day 1 began with Ski GS and the UCSD Men and Women showed up and blew up with two male athletes (Remi Barth and Tobin Groth) and two female athletes (Kathy Qi and Samantha McCusky) finishing in the top 10. Later in the afternoon the snowboard GS blasted off and once again we had two male (Jeff Lampert and Chris Johnson) and two female athletes (Lisa Sandwiches and Annabella Ioda) finishing in the top 10, our constancy is unmatched in the Southwestern conference. On day 2 our wild UCSD athletes participated in the infamous rail jam, a slope-style competition consisting of boxes, barrels and rails, the ultimate spookfest. The snowboarders kicked the competition off by watching our valiant co-president Jeff Lampert huck his carcass down every feature possible. Unfortunately our male snowboarders did not land themselves in the top 10, with our highest placing at 12th by our own Jeff Lampert. Much like our male boarders, our females were hucking and chucking but also barely fell out of the top 10 with our top female athlete, Hedy Wang, finishing at 11th. Not long later the rail jam began for skiers and boy oh boy was it a barn burner. With only 11 male skiers competing, UCSD made a strong showing with three athletes in the top 10, that’s a lot of points! The female skiers had an even scarier showing with a total of 5 athletes, and our UCSD women destroyed getting 2nd and 4th! The final day was perhaps the gnarliest of them all. Mother Nature knocked on our door and kicked our butts with a 10F degree temperature at the base of the mountain that got down to -20F with the wind, yikes! Nonetheless our UCSD athletes put on their big kid underwear and skied/boarded with the Triton Spirit fueling their competitive fire. The day began with the ski slalom and our own rookie Remi Barth zipped through the gates to acquire a first place finish. Along with Remi we had Tobin Groth and Brian Pintar finishing 5th and 8th respectively. Our UCSD skiing women couldn’t quite break into the top 3 but managed to lock in a 4th place finish by Samantha McCuskey and a 6th place finish by Kathy Qi. If the ski slalom event was a 5k run, the snowboard slalom was a marathon. The snowboard slalom event lasted a brutal hour and a half that consisted of mostly sitting and absorbing as much wind and snow that the ol’ mountain could throw at you. Even so, our male and female boarders cooked their way into a series of solid finishes. On the male side we had Chris Johnson and Jeff Lampert finishing 5th and 6th. For our females only our heroic co-president managed to crack the top 10 with Lisa Sandwiches locking in a solid 6th place finish.