Oregon Public Broadcasting

Here on the cusp of summer, the only skiing most people contemplate is water skiing.  But Olympic winter athletes never stop thinking snow. 

There's one ski area in the U.S. where racers and snowboarders can train on real snow year-round.  Correspondent Tom Banse found the U.S. National Team -- including local Olympic hopefuls -- on Oregon's Mount Hood.

The high chairlift at the Timberline Ski Area tops out at over 8000 feet elevation.  Needless to say, it's a pretty spectacular place to go to work... if you can call this work.

USA Snowboarding Team Trains At Mt. Hood - Audio Slideshow

U.S. snowboarding head coach Peter Foley is on the job, for once in a place that's commuting distance from his home in Hood River.

Race course builders have re-created as best they can the Vancouver Olympic snowboardcross course. 

The U.S. national team trained for nearly two weeks on it.  But that was just the beginning of Mt. Hood's summer with the stars.

The USA alpine squad and the acrobatic specialists on the halfpipe team will also rotate through here in search of real snow.

Peter Foley: "When you get this late in the year, and July/August, it's only here really."

...A unique combination of high chairlift to a year-round snowfield.

Coach Foley lodges the snowboard team far below the snowline in Hood River.  That facilitates cross training.  Mountain biking you might expect.

Peter Foley: "The skill level is crazy high.  I mean they're jumping really, really big jumps."

But coach, why invite the U.S. snowboard team to kitesurf on the Columbia River?  Foley says it's good practice in "multitasking."

Peter Foley: "There's so much going on with kitesurfing.  Like you have to fly this kite and pay attention to what the wind is doing and what the water is doing and all of that. Those kinds of skills can always transfer."

Foley predicts intense competition to make the Olympic squad.  But at the first training camp of the season, the athletes are still keeping it loose.

A golf club and bag of range balls appears in the middle of practice.  In case you missed it, golf is a candidate for future Olympics.

Pat Holland, in jest: "Well, I'm thinking about being a two-sport athlete.  I gotta make the first sport first."

That's elite snowboarder Pat Holland of Sandpoint, Idaho.  He and his older brother Nate are shaping up to be part of the intriguing storylines involving Northwest athletes. 

Pat cheered his big brother at the 2006 Winter Games in Italy.  Now they're both aiming for Olympic gold in 2010. 

Pat Holland: "If he has to pass me to qualify through or if I have to make a pass on him, we're going to go for it. You don't hold back.  There's just no room for that in this sport."

Then there's the Cinderella story of Graham Watanabe.  In 2006, the Sun Valley, Idaho product slipped into the Olympics through the backdoor. 

Watanabe just missed qualifying for the squad, but then got invited to Torino as support crew.  Once in Italy, a teammate was injured in training. 

Our local boy subbed onto the Olympic team. This coming year, the pride of Sun Valley is determined to ride in through the front door of the Olympics.

Graham Watanabe: "I'm ready for it.  I'm really excited for it and getting a little nervous for it too."

The down economy is affecting even elite athletes.  Sponsorship money is tight.  The U.S. Ski and Snowboard team has trimmed its staff, and cut salaries and some athlete stipends.

Up-and-coming snowboarders had to pay their own way to the training camp.

Callan Chythlook-Sifsof of Alaska debated whether she should come to Mt. Hood or replenish her savings by crewing on grandpa's commercial fishing boat in Bristol Bay.

Callan Chythlook-Sifsof: "I gotta stay on snow and try to keep at it because this is a big year.  But I told him next year I'll be fishing for sure."

Chythlook-Sifsof is first Alaskan Eskimo on the U.S. Ski Team.  She's making ends meet with a new sponsorship from Seattle-based Ocean Beauty Seafoods.

She and the other athletes are looking at a non-stop training calendar between now and the 2010 Olympics.   The first of five Olympic qualifying events is just three months away on the ski slopes of Argentina.

Web extras:

U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association

Timberline Ski Area