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While I'm pretty sure that the majority of people reading this do little or no ski-orienteering, I'm also pretty sure you will be interested in what's going on up in the mountains near Lake Tahoe in California. Namely, the first World Cup races of the winter, and I think the first races of this stature (World Championships or World Cup) in the USA since the World Masters Orienteering Championships in Minnesota in 1997.

And what makes these World Cup races especially interesting is that the USA, besides organizing the event, has two women competing —Alex Jospe and Ali Crocker -- who are among the very best in the world. At the Ski-O World Champs last winter in Sweden, Ali finished 8th in the Long distance and the women's relay (Ali, Alex, and Cristina Luis) finished 8th. So there was some anticipation to see whether those results were a fluke, or the sign of even better things to come.

The Junior Training camp has been scheduled for March 23-25 at Blue Mountain for this year. Erin Schirm has volunteered to organize and run the training part of the camp. She is looking for people to help out with training exercises for the various groups, and to put out and take down controls.

Erin is also putting out a call to any elites and team members to consider coming down for a day or the whole time to share your knowldge with the juniors, get to know them, and inspire the future of orienteering. Also to the Veterans of orienteering who have been around for a long time and know the ins and outs of the sport, it would be great if you could either come and share what you know with the kids, or send Erin some training ideas and practice tips that you have found to help young orienteers develop their ability.

Contact Erin Schirm if you have any interest in helping.

by Samantha Saeger

Since the end of August of last year, I have been living in Uppsala, Sweden with my fiancé, Ross Smith. So far, the entire experience has been a hundred times better that I could ever have imagined!

The best part about living here is orienteering with the local orienteering club, OK Linné. They are a fantastic club filled with friendly, dedicated and talented athletes of all ages. The club house is only a ten minute jog from my apartment and almost every evening there is club training which begins there. In the early fall there were orienteering trainings on Thursdays, and sometimes Wednesdays. On Tuesdays there were intervals. These trainings are aimed at the juniors and seniors in the club, but all are welcome. Most evenings there are also separate trainings organized and designed for the younger juniors as well. The training program is advertised on their club webpage, and you can see the details about each training and sign up. On the weekends in the fall, Ross and I traveled with the club to the district and national championships. These trips were a fantastic way to race against difficult competition and to bond with our club members.