By Gavin Kentch
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The opening weekend of racing for the 2025/2026 SuperTour season has been moved 300 miles south, from Fairbanks to Anchorage, due to forecast cold temperatures in the Golden Heart City.
“The NSCF and NSAA race organizers met with the USSS Event Contingency Group this evening and elected to move this weekend’s SuperTour races to Anchorage based upon the most recent weather forecasts,” wrote the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks, or NSCF, in an update dated to 8:52 p.m. Tuesday evening. “The most current NWS prediction calls for high temperatures below -20C for the weekend for [the race venue of] Birch Hill.”
“Registration for the events through Zone4 will not change,” NSCF continued. “Registration for the first two races is still open through NSCF. The race formats are scheduled to remain the same. We thank everyone who has worked, and is working, to make these races possible. And appreciate all the teams who made the trip to Alaska.”
Your best sources for updated information about the opening weekend of SuperTour racing are the following:
Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage (NSAA) Facebook page
NSAA website for the SuperTour weekend(s)
The latter site has not yet been updated to reflect the two new races, understandably so given the tight timing here. For the time being, you can cross-reference the original NSCF race page, found here, for information on race format.
When the races were set for Fairbanks, they were scheduled to be a classic sprint on Saturday and a 10-kilometer interval-start classic on Sunday. The NSCF posting says, “The race formats are scheduled to remain the same.” The NSAA Facebook posting mirrors the NSCF posting verbatim, except that NSAA has this sentence as, “The race formats are scheduled to remain the same at this time.” I am truly not trying to rumormonger nor to imply anything, I just have to flag that discrepancy. Clearly the Anchorage folks are working hard right now with a lot of moving pieces; I will share their updates on race format once I have them.
So let’s talk about current snow conditions in Anchorage. The above photo was taken at Kincaid Park, now the venue for all four Period 1 races, on November 23, ten days ago. (The skier in the foreground is my septuagenarian mother. #wholesome)
This is… not what Kincaid looks like right now. Daily highs and lows at the stadium weather station, starting on Thanksgiving Day, have been as follows (all temperature values rounded to the nearest whole number):
| date | low | high |
| November 27 | 24° | 37° |
| November 28 | 20° | 37° |
| November 29 | 20° | 30° |
| November 30 | 30° | 34° |
| December 1 | 29° | 36° |
| December 2 | 29° | 42° |
There has also been some precipitation in there, mostly light rain.
Put all that together, and trails are currently… firm. I last skied at Kincaid yesterday, twice, first in the early afternoon for a solo skate ski and then again around sunset with my younger daughter. On skate skis, the trails were spicy but also absolutely yielded an edge, and would be fast but unremarkable for high-level skiers, particularly in an interval-start format. UAA did intensity on Lekisch yesterday morning, for example.
On classic skis after sunset things were getting pretty skittery, but also my ten-year-old skied everything on fishscales that last had edges before she was born, so, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
There is also a snowmaking loop, where the skiing was totally fine. (By my experienced-skier standards; if my mother is reading this, don’t go out until things get ground up and soften somewhat.) Assuming that the race-weekend format remains unchanged, the classic sprint will be unremarkable; the base on the manmade loop has got to be a foot deep right now. Athletes will be skiing on freeze–thaw manmade snow, but unfortunately we all have a lot of experience with that these days. Except for the Fairbanks folks; they just do freeze. Jealous.
There is currently snow across 100 percent of the full 5km course currently set for next weekend, albeit a relatively thin amount of same with a small amount of dirt showing in a few spots. There are also classic tracks on the whole course; as of last night you could probably drive a truck on them.
Options for a distance race include this full 5km loop, something like three times a 3.3km loop centered on the stadium and snowmaking area, or even six times a 1.6km loop that is basically just the sprint course plus a smidgen more. The B-Climb on the sprint course is 24 meters (the final hill in Ruka is 21 meters, for perspective) (it is a 32-meter A-Climb on the Pink Course that would have been used for the Fairbanks sprint, R.I.P.); one could do worse for a distance race.
Bottom line, I will wait for local race organizers to announce plans before speculating further. But I do want to underscore that there are options here, is my point.
I will be on site at the venue for all four days of racing over both weekends. Stay tuned.
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