December 06, 2012 (West Yellowstone, MO) – Riding in Drew Barney’s ’02 white pickup, we led a convoy of 20+ SUV’s and Suby’s up to the plateau where primo grooming and organized parking chaos awaited. Just 1200′ above town, the snow comes earlier and lasts longer. There had been snow in town, and then r_ _ _, yes, the four-letter word for non-solid precip. But the camp and the races must go on. Now in its 25th year, the Fall Training Camp at the Yellowstone Ski Festival is happening like never before, even in a lean year like this one. I caught a ride with Drew on our way up to the plateau for the clinics one day, and had a chance to ask him about the camp’s and his storied past.

First, Drew, how did you get into cross country, and how did the camps start?
Drew Barney: I grew up in Ogden (Utah) and worked in a ski shop. It was owned by Bob Chambers, who’d been an NCAA champ. I came in one day, and he had two brand new pairs of race skis. Bob said to “mount ’em up.” “Who for?” I said. “You and me are going racing tomorrow!” [replied Bob.]

The Camp started 1979, when the US Ski Team came to West under the direction of Marty Hall. I was a participant in the ’80 camp. In 1987 when a USSA sponsored coaches’ clinic lost funding, Dick Hunt and I saw an opportunity, and put together a training camp for athletes and coaches.

I used to do pretty well in the races, but it’s hard to stay in a position to be in the top three. I may race again after I get my hip replaced.

Drew walks with a slight limp now, but thinks he’ll be back in the game after some new hardware.

What changes have you witnessed over the life of the camp?
DB: We are faster at getting people to ski well. We have a better understanding of the importance of the link between Skate and Classic, and how you ‘can’t cheat’ with the weight shift in classic. In classic teaching we’re better at showing statically exactly what is going on with technique.

What drove the changes?
DB: The pressure is on. Other camps have turned up the volume. We’re always evolving. Coaches share their secrets with each other and with the participants. I’ve got the utmost confidence in the staff. They all bring different perspectives that all lead to better technique.

What sets the West Yellowstone Camp apart?
DB: The campers ski with 6 or 10 coaches over 3 to 5 days. Today (last day of the 3 and the 5 day camp) is the biggest learning day. People are putting all their learning together, and having breakthroughs. Even if their best coaching session was a day or two ago, people are synthesizing, and will look back on today’s session as ‘the best.’ Post event surveys bear that out. People are synthesizing all they’ve learned. For a lot of people who’ve been coming here for years, Thanksgiving in West Yellowstone, has become a given. For many, this is where you ‘do’ Thanksgiving.

Can you tell us a little more about the trail system?
DB: We’ve put a lot of money into the trails, getting them mowed so that we can start up with 6″ of snow. From the initial layout, connecting logging roads, we built the closer loops, then added Windy Ridge. We’ve got no new k’s with restrictions from grizzly and other wildlife habitat impact imitations. But we’ve got great USFS relations. We wouldn’t be able to do this if it weren’t for the Forest Service.

What else have you done in West Yellowstone?
DB: After a couple of years on the Town Council I served as mayor in ’07 and ’08. I got done what I wanted to get done, and was kind of relieved to have someone else take the torch.

You’ve put up with some crazy weather… like what?
DB: Two years ago a big storm blew in and roads were closed into the valley and along many of the routes people take to get here. Last year it was very, very cold on the first day. Skating was super slow. The next day it was 25ƒ, and everybody felt like a hero. This year we had klister conditions on the first day. Waxing was hard, and skating was so much better.

Drew rounded the last corner on the long switchback that gains the steep northern edge of the Pitchstone plateau, with a precipitous drop through tight lodgepole amidst tumbled boulders. Another mile and then some we were moving cones for the reserved camp parking. On top, trails diverged, heading off on mid-winter corduroy. The trails were crowded, yes, but manageable. The buzz in the air, as college racers warmed up for their race, as coaches hauled jackets to the finish line for the point-to-point race dictated by the trail layout on the plateau, or as classes passed each other, meant a high five or hello at every turn.

Do you have any words of wisdom you would like to add?
DB: Winning is fun… for 15 minutes. The fun is in getting there.

November 19, 2009 (West Yellowstone, MT) – As thousands of skiers prepare to make the yearly pilgrimage to West Yellowstone’s fall festival, Drew Barney is hard at work making preparations as he has for over twenty years. In the mid-80s Barney founded the event that grew into today’s Yellowstone Ski Festival when he and Dick Hunt decided to try to fill a void left by the disappearance of the US Ski Team’s annual coaching clinics.

The US Ski Team had lost Shaklee as a major sponsor, which ended the funding for the clinics. So Barney and Hunt created a viable training camp by trading college ski teams trail passes for a day of coaching from the college athletes.

The concept took off immediately and the duo developed the fledgling clinics into a true force from 1986 to 1989. With growth, new challenges emerged to find qualified coaches to handle the numbers of skiers coming to West Yellowstone each fall. Torbjorn Karlsen joined Hunt and Barney around 1990, using his connections from work with the US Ski Team to assemble a large staff of expert coaches. While Barney focused on managing the clinics, Hunt developed a vendor expo as they built the event for what had become a large audience of skiers.

Growth through the 90s put pressure on the organization with annual SuperTour races, expansion of the vendor expo and development of skier clinics all requiring more resources and energy to manage. The West Yellowstone community stepped in to support the event with the Chamber of Commerce and committees made up of local skiers and business people taking on management of the SuperTour races and vendor expo, allowing Barney to tighten his focus on the skier clinics.

In 2005 Barney was elected to the West Yellowstone City Council and served two years as the town Mayor in 2007-2008. He recently lost a bid for re-election to a second term on the City Council. SkiTrax caught up with Mr. Barney in early November to learn more about this skiing pioneer and get his thoughts on the current Festival.

When you started the clinics in the 80s were they an immediate success?
Drew Barney: The clinics really took off from the start. The college athletes were great coaches, but of course they were there to train, so Torbjorn [Karlsen] coming in to help us get coaches around the same time as Dick Hunt came up with the idea of the vendor expo really helped it take off.

What do you think contributed to the Yellowstone clinic’s success?
DB: We do a really good job of making people better at the sport. We can certainly help advanced skiers improve, but we see the most dramatic advancement with beginners and intermediates. We’ve been able to get great coaching and some excellent presentations to help these skiers move up the ladder quickly.

How have the clinics changed over time?
DB: I think that overall in the US, skier technique is better – a lot better than ten years ago. The US Ski Team has put out some information that has clarified things and made our skiers and our coaches more knowledgeable. Splitting up the duties of SuperTour race director, vendor coordinator and my job with the clinics have been really good for improving each of those areas.

What motivated you to enter local politics and run for City Council?
DB: I wanted to try to address issues from a long-term perspective. I felt that there was a lot of protectionism from the bigger businesses and I was frustrated by people only looking at next year instead of where the town needs to be in ten years when snowmobile revenues will be completely dried up.

How have the recent snowmobile restrictions impacted the community?
DB: Winter revenues in the town are about half of what they were at the peak.

Have people in the town seen skiing as a solution?
DB: Skiing is still the stepchild here in a lot of ways. One of the big issues in town is how are we going to improve the economy in the winter. We want to address the long-term financial issues that the decrease in snowmobiles is bringing, and while skiing is not the end-all solution, it is a piece of the solution. They scheduled the Snowblast [a large snowmobile event] on the same day as the Rendezvous [large ski marathon in Yellowstone in March]. Some people are seeing how skiing can benefit the town – we changed the date of the marathon and they gave us an exclusive permit to protect the event, but I could not believe that they scheduled the Snowblast on the same day to begin with.

What is your long-term vision for the West Yellowstone Ski Festival?
DB: We’ve pretty much stepped out of the SuperTour and vendor situation and let the Ski Foundation take care of those pieces to focus on the clinics. We are facing the realities of early-season camps and having early snow in town to bring people. Until the Nordic community changes its mind that fall training is not always on perfect trails, we will have to face that we are going to have lots of people here when there’s snow on the ground by November 10 and that if we have to go up to the Plateau, that number will be cut in half.

Is snowmaking being considered?
DB: We actually have been making snow at the trailhead area and we have the water and access to do it on a larger scale, but the huge upfront capital costs are an obstacle. For this year we have made some big trail improvements. We added 0.5km to the Sprint loop with nice terrain, widened a section by the biathlon range to extend the two-way traffic and alleviate some of the congestion that forms there. We’ve also made some improvements to the start/finish area.

West Yellowstone is a small town – who is driving all of this work on skiing?
DB: The Ski Education Foundation and Trails Committee of the Chamber of Commerce do a huge amount of the work. They are skiers, businesspeople and sometimes both. They believe in skiing and the trails.

After working on these clinics for so long, what do you see as the biggest ways people can improve?
DB: Certainly, technique is a huge area where most people can improve. There is a certain point where you have to have the strength to do the technique, though. Strength and base cardio fitness are fundamental and many people come to the clinics and wake up to how much base training the better skiers are doing. Some people come looking for a magic bullet that they will find in one of the lectures, but the true answer is that you have to put in the work. I am finding that myself more and more as the years go by.

Thanks for spending time with us and all the best with the Festival and West Yellowstone’s long term goals?
DB: Thank you.