Annual Birkie Thread

[Ear Mountain]

Thanks Jay,
It has always been a treat to read your Birkie stories. No story for me this year. After 42 consecutive skis on the Birkie trail I have retired. I'm 76 now and 2022 was my last go at the trail. Still hiking and backpacking though.

[Jay w]

Ralph, I'm seeing this now. Thanks. Making it to 70 skiing the Birkie is a hell of a feat, which I realize more with each race I do. So making it to 76...I take a bow. I probably won't be racing it much longer, but I will probably ski it in some form for a few years.

Out there in a month...

Jay

[Ear Mountain]

Ralph, I'm seeing this now. Thanks. Making it to 70 skiing the Birkie is a hell of a feat, which I realize more with each race I do. So making it to 76...I take a bow. I probably won't be racing it much longer, but I will probably ski it in some form for a few years.

Out there in a month...

Jay

Thanks Jay, I've definitely been skiing the Birkie (not racing) for a long time now. Usually found it a fun day.
Enjoy your Glacier visit this year. I'm spending a night at Upper Two Medicine Lake with my 13 yo grandson in July and hiking with a small group from Goat Haunt to Kintla Lake in August.

[Jay w]

We had 2-3 weeks of winter this year and it didn't snow, with one exception.

I'll see if I can recall this winter correctly...it snowed a couple inches on Halloween, and then didn't snow more than an inch at a time until the beginning of Feb. So our snowfall total for the winter was 7 inches until we got about 6 inches in the beginning of Feb. (This was just before holding an XC World Cup in Minneapolis. A post in itself.) Our snowmaking loops (for XC) had trouble making snow since the temps were too warm, and then it got really warm and melted a lot of the (artificial) snow that was made. Then In Jan we had a cold snap where they opened the taps. After the cold snap, it got really warm again, closing the (artificial snow) trails for a while. So, my golf game got a lot of practice in Dec-Feb.

As you can imagine, basically all the ski races were cancelled. I did one classic race up at the Birkie Trail head, where they make snow. During the cold snap, the Birkie made a HUGE pile of snow, and then before the Birkie, they spread that snow around to make an additional 6 km of trail, for a total of 10 km. As you can also imagine, my attitude towards winter was somewhere between really bad and piss poor. So, the Birkie.

They had "races" for the Elite Skiers only. The rest of the skiers were participating in "events." To paraphrase Drew Cary, they record the times but the times are meaningless, just like a stripper's name. This was because the events were spread out over a number of days and wide ranging times. My time was 7 am on Saturday (Wave 1 and 2 skate). For these events, the temps were again warm (40s F), which meant people were walking around in ankle deep mud with ski boots. For my event, the temp was 4F, so the mud was now frozen and I was struggling to stay warm. I didn't anticipate that the skiers would actually race...all of them. My wife said, "What did you think they were going to do?"

I was out of shape but the race went fine. For us masses, they left one fairly large climb and an S-turn named Twisted Sister in the race. By the time I got to the 3 lap of 3, the climb was scraped down to ice and second corner of Twisted Sister was.....yup, also scraped to ice. You have to pay money to have fun like this. The Elite Skiers were racing after us, followed by waves 3-10. Hilarity ensued. The next day they removed this section for the classic races. Word on the street was they couldn't groom the uphill. All-in-all, the course was excellent, and it was good they held the "events."

As always, it was fun to gather with the old crew (and getting older) and drink too much margaretta on Saturday night. Maybe next year we'll have winter. More on that thought...we've had 2 or 3 unusual summers...very dry. So dry we can't grow grass when we used to mow the yard twice a week. Then this "off the charts record warm" winter makes the masses nervous. Is XC skiing dying. It seems so except the World Cup races had huge turnouts that were very vocal.

Jay

[Ear Mountain]

Jay,
I'm happy that you had a "fun" Birkie. I'm glad I retired after the 2022 race since scrapped down ice is definitely not my idea of fun.
Ralph

[Selkie]

We need a new category for this level of fun - type 3?
Jay, I'm glad you were able to participate in an "event" and redeem the day.
A balmy winter for sure, down here on Lake Michigan.