It’s a rough time to be a cross-country skier in the Midwest.
“Conditions continue to deteriorate under the relentless warm weather,” reads the current introduction to the trail reports section on Skinnyski.com.
“I am now asking the community to join us in this effort to keep our snow,” says Claire Wilson on behalf of the Minneapolis-based Loppet Foundation, pleading with trail users to keep their boots as clean as possible in order to keep dirt out of the snowpack. “Please join us in doing the biggest snow dance, biggest cold dance you possibly can” over the next few weeks, Wilson adds.
“Not gonna lie, the snow situation is pretty sad here” posts local Zak Ketterson on Strava, recently returned to L’Étoile du Nord from World Cup racing in Europe. “Especially compared to last year. Feels like spring out there.”
“Today we are facing the warmest winter in the history of record keeping in Minnesota,” note Loppet Cup organizers.
This year’s Sisu Ski Fest was canceled. The Minnesota Finlandia has been canceled. The Moraloppet has been postponed indefinitely. The Sleeping Giant Loppet in Thunder Bay is already “in doubt due to low snow and warm temperatures,” SkinnySki reports, a full five weeks ahead of its scheduled March race date. This weekend’s City of Lakes Loppet will occur entirely on (now shortened) snowmaking loops at Wirth, where current forecast high temps for the weekend are 47° F. It is 51 degrees at a nearby regional airport as I write this, at 5 p.m. local time on January 31.
But what about in Birkieland? Ominously, the Pre-Birkie, scheduled for February 10 out of Hayward, has already been canceled.
“The normal course is not skiable and we finally believe the forecast that snow will not be coming in the coming weeks,” organizers wrote in a Sunday press release. “The man made snow loop at Birkie start area is not an option and most likely will not be skiable even if it was available to us.”
Speaking of the manmade snow loops at the Birkie trailhead in Cable: Here’s the most recent entry on the Birkie’s grooming page, from Monday of this week:
“Closing Update: after looking at our current week forecast and trail conditions, we have decided to close our snowmaking loops starting Wednesday at 10am, and re-opening for a short period of time on Friday. Highs are predicted to reach into the 40s for that time period and we feel that it is in the best interest of the longevity of our snowpack to avoid all traffic, both by ski and groomer, during that time period. The weekend looks to be in this warmer stretch as well, and we will need to determine if we want to close again for that duration. In the meantime, please be careful when out skiing as colder temps at night will freeze our snow making it very hard, and any ruts, or chopped up areas will be difficult to navigate.”
These updates are not what any skier in any part of the country wants to hear at this point in the season; while bounding or road biking have their time and place in the skier’s arsenal, that time is usually not the last week of January.
But the stakes are higher for the Midwest in this particular winter, which has long promised the doubleheader of the Loppet Cup, at Wirth Park in Minneapolis, on February 17–18, and then the Birkie, in northwest Wisconsin, the following Saturday, February 24. (Yes there are many other events associated with the Birkie. I am referring to the flagship skate race, held on that date, as an easy shorthand. Jessie Diggins hasn’t been waiting 15 years to contest, say, the Open Track Birkie.)
I haven’t yet sussed out a date for snow control for the Loppet Cup, the term of art used by FIS that gives “a date on which a definitive decision will be made whether to confirm that a competition will be held.” But there is, in fact, manmade snow on the ground at Wirth at present — see Caitlin Gregg’s post, above, from two days ago — and there’s only 3.3 kilometers to cover, and snow guns are standing by. I feel safe concluding that the races at Wirth will occur as planned.
But that brings us to the Birkie, a point-to-point race over 50 kilometers of trail. Ending, ideally, by traveling across a lake. Which is no longer open water, as it was distressingly recently, but which has also seen its ice thickness decrease by more than half within just the last week. Not good.
These realities were the subject of a recent webinar on Monday of this week, hosted by Birkie Event Director Kristy Maki and ABSF Executive Director Ben Popp. You can watch that in full here.
If you would like to hear a specific discussion of contingency plans and options for this year’s race, you should jump ahead to the 6:00 mark of the broadcast. Here are the possibilities that Maki discusses at that point in the presentation; all quotes here are pulled from the above video embed.
1. Normal Birkie
“If things totally change and we got cold weather, and we got snow, natural snow, you could still plan a normal Birkie,” Maki said.
If you’re reading this website you probably have a pretty good sense for what that looks like (hint: it covers 50km of trail for the skate Birkie, and slightly more than that for the classic Birkie); Maki said that the Birkie team is keeping this possibility in mind as they move forward.
“However,” she added, “we’re super realistic and I know that you all are too and have lots of questions about, Is that even possible? None of us have a crystal ball. But we are making that plan just in case while we move forward with other plans that look a little more realistic right now, going with that forecast that’s calling for lower precipitation and above-normal temperatures.”
(See slide below. I would personally characterize Maki and Popp in this webinar as commendably forthcoming when it came to current conditions on the ground and the weather forecast over the next few weeks.)
2. Long-lap Birkie (à la 2021)
“Our second contingency plan would look a lot like the 2021 Covid Birkie,” Maki continued. “So that would be a long-lap Birkie starting at the American Birkebeiner trailhead, skiing to OO on the skate trail, and coming back to the American Birkebeiner trailhead on the classic trail. So that would give us our 50 kilometers, our 29-kilometer Kortelopet, and a 15-kilometer Prince Haakon. That is our second option.”
3. Lap race on ca. 10-kilometer laps out of Cable
“If we don’t have enough natural snow to cover the trail to OO, then our third option is a lap race up at the American Birkebeiner trailhead,” Maki said. “We know that we’ve had four kilometers of great racing and a great course up there [as used for several events already this month], but that will not be enough for 13,000 people. So if we do a lap race up at the American Birkebeiner trailhead, we know we need to get at least 10 kilometers there, most likely 10 to maybe a little bit more depending on what mother nature helps us out with with any natural snow.”
(Maki at this point discussed the substantial mounds of manmade snow that had previously been created, identifying them as key to “being able to come up with a course with the manmade snow that will allow us to spread you out enough that we can get all of you out on during different times of that week.” Maki added, “We need to preserve every snowflake possible in these next few weeks,” pleading with trail users to give the stored snow a wide berth.)
4. No Birkie
Option four is a full-on cancellation, though Maki seemed optimistic that this would not occur.
“If we can’t do a 10-kilometer lap, at least a 10-kilometer lap,” Maki said, “and unfortunately if we had some big catastrophic weather things, lots of rain, lots of warm temperatures — we would be looking at a cancellation at that point.”
But “right now the long-term forecast is looking more favorable than that so we’re really hoping that we will land with one of the long loop or lap races,” Maki continued.
Should option (2) or (3) occur, Maki concluded, athletes’ race-day experience “will look a little bit different. … Even with over 10 kilometers in a lap, we still can’t fit 7,000 people on the course at the same time. But we will have to change the schedule for the week, probably splitting up skate and classic races due to the width of the trail. Our goal is to have an enjoyable and safe race for all of you. So we’re going to ask for your patience for a little while as we try and figure out what those schedules look like, how many racers we can fit on the trail at a time, and how we will split up those different events.”
Over on birkieguide.com, Birkie guru Ari Ofsevit ranks option three, lap race, as most likely in his lay expert opinion. He follows that with option two (out-and-back race to OO), option one (ice on the lake + snow on top of it = full Birkie), and option four (no Birkie), in that order.
Again, the full webinar from this Monday is embedded above. You can listen to the whole thing for additional details on such topics as the expo, Barnebirkie, the Jessie Diggins Birkie Bash (ft. Jessie Diggins), and the open track Birkie.
Maki stated that they plan to make a decision by February 12, and to announce that in their live Q&A session on that date. That will occur at 7 p.m. local time, and should be viewable here on the Birkie Facebook page.
— Gavin Kentch
