The water level at Law Park on July 24, 2010

The team’s last show on the water was at the Wisconsin State Water Ski Show Tournament on July 17th, where we took 4th place. Following the tournament, we held two Junior Team practices and a Learn-to-Ski Clinic at Law Park before torrential rain fell on July 22nd. That heavy rain triggered Dane County to issue a Slow No Wake Order for Lake Monona on July 24th due to the extremely high water.

With our ski site under a Slow No Wake Order, the team was forced to cancel two home shows (July 25th and August 1st) as well as a sponsored private show. With the cancelled shows, the team lost significant donations that help fund our shows. What made the show cancellations especially difficult was the fact that, on all three occasions, the ski site had glass-like water, which would normally be perfect conditions for a show.

Still needing to practice, the team got creative and held land practices to work on our stage presence and choreography. We then found another place to practice on the water and ended up transporting our large floating dock and all of our boats to the middle of Lake Mendota. Although the middle of any lake does not offer an ideal ski site, it gave the team a chance to get back on the water as a group for a couple of practices.

Pyramid Practice on Lake Mendota

Pyramids on Lake Mendota

The team now has just a few practices and one show before the National Show Ski Tournament taking place next weekend at Lake Wazeecha near Wisconsin Rapids. There, we will compete against 13 other teams for the title of National Show Ski Champion. The Mad-City Ski Team has earned this title for four of the past five years.

Click Image for High Resolution

Well, here we are again. Much like the end of last summer, the Mad-City Ski Team faces high water and flooding that put our season on temporary hiatus.

After the torrential rains of the weekend the lake level rose and the City of Madison decided that it was in the best interest of all parties involved to make Lake Monona, Mendota, Wingra and Waubesa slow-no-wake zones. Its frustrating for us because we are excited to be on the water and shape our show into what is shaping up to be one of our best ever.

However, mother nature and common sense are playing a part here in this situation, we don’t want any detrimental shore-line problems or any other issues that come along high water.

We have just completed our second annual Clean Lakes Festival which was also prematury ended due to weather, so, the Mad-City Ski Team is keenly aware of the hazards and fragile nature of our cities eco-system.

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention our friends in the Wisconsin Dells, the Tommy Bartlett Ski Show, as many people may have heard, there was a catastrophic dam breach which caused Lake Delton to essentially be emptied, thus causing the end of the Tommy Bartlett Ski Show for the year, and who knows how long it will take to refill a lake.

Our thoughts go out to our show-ski family and hope that all is well with our friends to the north.

Fingers crossed that mother natures shines on us all soon!!

Note: We snapped a couple photos and uploaded them, click to view our Mad-City Picassa Album ]]> http://www.madcityskiteam.com/2008/06/09/deja-vu-part-2/feed/ 1 http://www.madcityskiteam.com/2007/10/16/new-photo-albums/ http://www.madcityskiteam.com/2007/10/16/new-photo-albums/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:57:28 +0000 eric http://madcityskiteam.com/2007/10/16/new-photo-albums/

From our Photo Gallery Pages, via Jim’s Photo’s, we have a couple new gallery’s posted.

The first gallery is pictures from our annual Ski Team Banquet, our annual celebration of our ski season. This year we had an awful lot to celebrate! Check out the pictures!

Mad-City Ski Team 2007 Banquet

Our second new gallery is of us finally getting our jump out of the water! The high waters made removing our jump from Lake Monona a difficult process and we were finally able to get to it Saturday morning. As the pictures can attest, our jump had a couple issues as a result of the high water, enjoy!!

Jump removal gallery

Stay tuned to our Multi-Media page as our 35-minute season re-cap highlight video is coming soon!!

For the Mad-City Ski Team, the recent rain and subsequent flooding on Lake Monona caused us almost $20,000 in damage to our equipment that we had set up on Lake Monona.

How is this possible?

Our docks and Jump are all held afloat on a number of 55 gallon drums and are anchored by chains to the floor of Lake Monona. The docks that were destroyed, one section of our main dock (to the left as you look out at Lake Monona) and our third dock (to the right as you look out) both had their frames broken by the strain from the rising water tugging against the huge anchors and the frame.

The dock in question, pictured above, is built on a mobile home frame. As you can see in the picture above, a wooded sub-frame is mounted atop the steel frame which rests on almost 30 55-gallon drums. What happened was the as the water rose it pulled against the anchors and ended up breaking and twisting the steel frame causing irreparable damage, causing it to partly sink and render it un-trailerable.

Our third dock (pictured above) is built on a pontoon boat chassis. We built a flat-top deck and bumpers on a used pontoon boat. This dock is used for various acts that come from the right hand of the show course, jump, barefoot, swivel ski and our One-Act Show. This dock faced a similar fate as our main dock, as the strain from the high water against the chains bent the frame and also cracked the pontoons to the point where the dock no longer floated and had to be taken apart before trailering.

The cost to rebuild our docks properly will run us about $20,000, and with three of our shows being canceled at the end of the year, we are hoping for some additional help. We are non-profit so all donations are tax-deductible!!

Remember as well, we also founded, sponsor and run the annual Clean-Lakes Festival whose goal is to raise money to help maintain and clean our local lakes.

If you can, please help us and donate to Mad-City. Please use any of the contact information in the right-hand column to contact us, we will get back to you right away. Thank you!!

All the rain in Madison and the surrounding areas ended Mad-City’s ski season rather abruptly. Following our performance at the National Ski Tournament just over three weeks ago, we returned to Madison excited and looking forward to performing back on Lake Monona.

However, Mother Nature had other ideas as high winds and rainy conditions canceled our first show, post-championship.

Those of you that live in the area know what came next, days and days of rain, which subsequently caused the lake levels in the area to rise up to near-record heights and cause thousands of dollars in damage to the surrounding area.

For us, the Mad-City Ski Team, it also caused the abrupt end to our ski season. One of our most successful and enjoyable years ever!!

While it is incredibly disappointing to have our season end on this wet and dreary note, we also understand the circumstances surrounding the decision to keep our lakes Slow-No-Wake, to prevent any further damage to the shoreline and peoples property.

We will certainly be rearing and ready to go in 2008!!

The Mad-City Ski Team thanks everyone who came out to see our ski show and supported our team this year!!

After the jump is our pictorial of our ski site and the effects the high water has had. We have added two more photo gallery’s on the Mad-City Picasa Site

Our stage area, the water has crept up almost to the bleachers!

Looking towards where our dock should be from the stage

The high water broke our anchor chains and the dock began to float away!!

Looking towards shore from the end of our dock

Our poor third dock (the blue sticking out of the water) is being pulled under by the tight anchor chains!

Even our Jump isn’t immune, tight chains are tugging on it pretty tight!

Links:
Mad-City Picasa Album
High Water Photo Album Pt. 2
High Water Photo Album Pt. 3

Below are some pictures highlighting what has happened to our site at Law Park. The full album is available on the Mad-City Picasa Site.

Our landing area…normally the water is another two feet further down

The ducks are certainly enjoying the high waters!

View of the shoreline from the end of our dock

Closer view of shoreline

Our third dock (right side of showcourse) is being pulled underwater by the tight anchor lines!!

Even the boat landing at Law Park isn’t immune!

Links:
Photo Gallery on Picasa