Mammoth Lakes, CA – U.S. Ski Team coaches and the Mammoth Mountain Race Department have constructed terrain mimicking World Cup race hills for specialized training at the California ski resort.

“It took a lot of work to get the slopes to this point, but the crew at Mammoth has been incredibly energetic and supportive in helping us produce terrain to specifically help our team build skills in areas where we need more work,” said U.S. Women’s speed Head Coach, Chip White.

Mammoth Mountain has made their resort available to the U.S. Ski Team starting each morning at 6 a.m. for two and a half hours of private training before opening to the public at 8:30 a.m.

“Having our own private training space each morning allows for you to get a lot done,” White explained.

“It has been getting really cold at night, so we’ve had full-on World Cup conditions right from the start of camp,” said ski racer Stacey Cook, a Mammoth local. “Mammoth always has great snow this time of year and even though they don’t have the base they normally do, what is here is ideal for what we need to accomplish.”

World Cup women’s athletes including North Conway, N.H.’s Leanne Smith and Laurenne Ross, of Bend, Ore., as well as Cook, have been training on a “bumpy traverse” similar to what they saw at the 2012 Audi FIS Alpine World Cup Finals in Schladming, Austria, which will host the 2013 World Ski Championships next February.

“The traverse Chip [White] built is super bumpy and a lot like what we saw at Schladming during the World Cup Finals,” Cook explained. “It’s also like the downhill traverses in Bansko [Bulgaria] and Garmisch [Germany] as well. We see a lot of right footed traverses on the women’s World Cup.”

“The World Championships venue in Schladming has a particularly nasty traverse and so do a few other World Cup venues we race on each season. We noticed our athletes losing time on those sections and we want to correct that,” White added.

For a second straight spring, U.S. women are also utilizing the Mammoth camp to work on specific form exercises with Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) Team Captain Mike Rogan.

“It’s also been great to have Mike [Rogan] back with us this spring,” Cook added. “I think we all benefited from his perspective last year and now he’s like a member of the team. He can see things in our technique that help complement what our coaches see. It’s a huge gain for us to have him here.”

Also present are Julia Ford, of Plymouth, N.H., and Eagle/Vail, Colo.’s Mikaela Shiffrin. Men’s team members working out at Mammoth this week include Park City, Utah Olympian Ted Ligety who is testing skis, Will Brandenburg of Spokane, Wash., and Heber City, Utah’s Steven Nyman, as well as Travis Ganong (Squaw Valley, Calif.), Tim Jitloff (Reno, Nev.), Tommy Biesemeyer (Keene, N.Y.) and Junior World Champion Ryan Cochran-Siegle of Vermont. The nine-day camp, which is taking place concurrently with a U.S. Freeskiing training camp at Mammoth,  is designed to allow each athlete to work on specific needs before getting into high volume on-snow training later in the preparation period. Athletes are testing skis and other equipment as well as training giant slalom, slalom and super G on a variety of slopes.

“It has been incredibly productive at Mammoth – probably the most productive camp I’ve had in a number of years,” said Brandenburg. “I’ve been taking 12 runs each day with six of those being full speed training runs of full-length or beyond full-length slalom. So far we haven’t had a day without sun. I’ve been road biking a lot in the afternoons and even got out rock climbing yesterday – we’re definitely staying active.”