CBMST athletes drop the knee in Targhee

Two out of three reach podium

The weeks of training on the Crested Butte steeps paid off for Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST) telemark skiers last weekend.
Both 17-year-old Klara Wohlers and 15-year-old Grant Johnson stepped up to the podium in the juniors’ competition at the first stop of the Big Mountain Telemark Tour held at Grand Targhee ski resort in Wyoming on Friday and Saturday, February 11-12. Thirteen-year-old Conrad “Conradical” Truettner placed fifth in his first competition ever.
Last season, the team tested the waters of the road tour with Wohlers taking her talents from Red Mountain, British Columbia, to Alpine Meadows, Calif. and winning the junior telemark event right here in Crested Butte.
This year, coach Mark Robbins and his athletes are committed to the road as part of this year’s CBMST telemark program while continuing work on Crested Butte.
“We’re hitting all the stops of the tour with the kids,” says Robbins. “The competitions are a fun aspect but it’s not a be-all end-all.”
Robbins sees it as the next step for his skiers as they are forced to scout lines at new venues rather than falling back on the familiarity of competing on their home hill.
After a successful run last season, Wohlers came into the first event this year ready to step up her game.
“Her goal at Targhee was to pick a challenging line and stick with her plan and she did that,” says Robbins.
Displaying control and near-perfect technique, Wohlers finished the first day on top of the leader board. She then picked an even more aggressive line for day two, including an air at the bottom, and despite being the only junior not to fall, she finished the weekend in second place.
“Sometimes the points don’t total up the way you want them to,” says Robbins. “Her goal in the next event is to step up her aggressiveness.”
Johnson is almost a polar opposite of Wohlers, notorious for throwing himself down the hill and hoping for the best. A serious crash a month ago almost kept him from the Targhee event and, in the end, had him readjust his style for the weekend.
“He kind of puts it all out there when he skis and we decided to focus on control and technique,” says Robbins.
The plan worked, as Johnson finished day one in third place and held onto to his podium spot through day two.
Truettner had a stellar outing in his first telemark competition, finishing the weekend in fifth place.
The team now looks forward to competing at a couple of alpine events on telemark skis, including the Freeride World Tour stop here. They then head to Alpine Meadows for the second stop of the telemark tour February 25-26 before closing the season with the U.S. Telemark Freeskiing Championships in Crested Butte.
“Now that we have a comp under our belt, it’s game on,” says Robbins.