It’s mid-May, which means that this is a season of transition for skiers in every part of a not-small country. If you’re in the Midwest, your natural-snow winter, uh, sort of never happened this year, sorry; Zak Ketterson was on rollerskis in Minneapolis on April 21, but could have done so weeks earlier, and I would characterize the SkinnySki trail reports forum in winter 2023/2024 as an extended testament to the virtues of competent snowmaking in an era of climate change, as well as a credit to the resilience and indefatigability of the Midwestern people.
If you’re in the Rockies, meanwhile, you probably woke up to snow yesterday morning. Ditto for Anchorage. At sea level.
And speaking of southcentral Alaska, the below video was taken at Hatcher Pass on Tuesday morning. At 3,500 feet. I wasn’t there — weekday morning school dropoff routine, and at least the semblance of a day job, are together not particularly conducive to 80-minute mid-morning drives to training — but if I were told that this was hardwax skiing, that would not surprise me. There were several inches of fresh snow atop a prodigious base, and the air temp the night before had been 27° F. Not bad for May.
But that was (is?) this winter. What happened last winter? Specifically, which nordic ski area in this country had the longest season? I most precisely mean here the longest season of groomed skiing; I have a triple-digit streak going of consecutive months on nordic skis (since you asked and all), and know as much as anyone about skittering around on dirty snowfields in August on skis with no metal edges. That is fun, in its own quixotic, “what am I doing with my life” sort of way, but it is also fun in a very different way than, say, klister skiing in groomed classic tracks in a t-shirt in May.
Below please find my listing of nine different venues that had at least a full six months’ worth of groomed cross-country skiing in winter 2022/2023. Yes, five of them are in Alaska, sorry; this is sort of write what you know, but also it was a good winter here, and these five all made the cut. Besides, my top four listings all went to spots in the Sierra Nevada or Colorado Rockies, amidst an all-time epic snow year in the western U.S.
I spent a lot of time researching potential places to include, and would hope that I got everywhere in the U.S. that passed the six-month mark last winter. But it’s a big country; if I missed somewhere, by all means please let me know (extra points if you have cites for this).
Also note that we are talking about natural processes, and that there is clearly ample year-over-year variability here. Auburn Ski Club Nordic Center, for example, first place on the list below, groomed into June 2023 last summer, but closed things down for the 2023/2024 season on April 14. Independence Mine had its first groom of the 2022/2023 season on October 21, 2022, but didn’t get started this year until November 6, 2023, at least three weeks behind its long-term average for first groom. Places that historically have long seasons tend to, well, have long ski seasons… but that is no guarantee for what will happen in October or November of a given early winter.
Anyway, here is my list for the winter of 2022/2023. Cites are given for all start and ending dates, per either the ski area’s social media account or screenshots from grooming updates. Elevation figures are in most cases drawn from NordicPulse; where a ski area did not use this platform, I used third-party mapping software and manually calculated the elevation at the stadium. Enjoy, and happy skiing to all.
ASC Nordic Ski Center, Soda Springs, California (Donner Pass) (elev. 2,192m)
Soft opening: November 3, 2022 (cite)
(There was then an official opening eight days later, on November 11 (cite), but I see athletes skiing on groomed snow in the first post above, so I’m going to give them November 3 as a starting date.)
Last day of grooming: June 10, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 220 days
Nevada Nordic, Old Mt. Rose Highway, Incline Village, Nevada (North Lake Tahoe) (elev. 2,460m)
First day of grooming: November 9, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: June 3, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 207 days
Bear Valley Adventure Company, Bear Valley, California (elev. 2,130m)
First day of grooming: November 12, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: May 29, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 199 days
Grand Mesa Nordic Council, Grand Mesa, Colorado (elev. 3,268m)
First day of grooming: October 24, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: May 10, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 199 days
Independence Mine, above Palmer, Alaska (elev. 1,074m)
First day of grooming: October 21, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: May 6, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 198 days
Disclosure, Independence Mine was not groomed continuously throughout this time; Mat-Su Ski Club, which is awesome, concentrated some of its efforts on ski areas at lower elevations during the heart of the winter. Plus I think access to the whole mine area was closed for several days due to avalanches across the road, if I’m not mixing up my winters here.
Birch Hill, Fairbanks, Alaska (elev. 296m)
First day of grooming: October 22, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: May 5, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 196 days
Kincaid Park, Anchorage, Alaska (elev. 78m)
First day of grooming: October 26, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: May 5, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 192 days
Archangel Road, above Palmer, Alaska (elev. 678m)
First day of grooming: November 6, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: May 13, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 189 days
Girdwood nordic trails, Girdwood, Alaska (elev. 91m)
First day of grooming: November 3, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: May 8, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 187 days
(And finally, honorable mention since this is often mentioned as “the longest groomed nordic ski season in North America” and I know people will be curious why it wasn’t on the list:)
Mt. Bachelor Nordic, above Bend, Oregon (elev. 1922m):
First day of grooming: November 30, 2022 (cite)
Last day of grooming: May 28, 2023 (cite)
Season length: 180 days
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
