Freaking Cold Out

I just got back in the house from walking Rocket and I am here to tell you: it is freaking cold out there. Rocket recognizes that it’s cold, but her overriding concern is that 7:30 has come and gone and we haven’t had our morning outside bonding experience. That is a problem. Never mind that it’s -20. That is not the point. The point is that we walk every morning regardless of the weather and just because it’s a little chilly doesn’t mean I have the option of wimping out and cancelling the walk, like I cancelled my skate clinic today.

We survived the stroll, but there’s no way I’m going back out there until the thermometer says something a little more reasonable. Like something that is a positive digit as opposed to a negative. I’m planning on skiing this afternoon, but I’ll require a little help from the weather.

When it’s this frigid there is no way you’ll catch me skate skiing. I got an email from a friend last night saying that skating yesterday “was like skiing uphill on sandpaper”. Right. That is exactly what it’s like.

On the other hand, when it’s super cold out and the snow is abrasive like it is now, classic skiing can actually be enjoyable. For starters, you’re in a track that’s been skied in, making the snow slightly less abrasive. You’re getting much better glide than skating would provide. Kick waxing is straight forward at these temps because all you need to know is go with your coldest kick wax. If you’re on no wax skis I pity you, but you’re still going to get good glide provided you glide wax your tips and tails, which an astonishing number of skiers neglect to do.

And last but not least, your hands are going to stay a hell of a lot warmer classic skiing than skating. At my advanced and declining stage of life my hands get cold skating at 25 degrees unless I’m wearing wool liners. But with classic you’ve got that big arm swing with each stride, driving blood into your finger tips with each poling motion. I’ll start out with the liners in place and take them off when my hands start to sweat after a couple of K.

My moment of enlightenment came several years ago when I was skating on a day similar to this one. I was grinding along up Whitetail Hill, hating life and my hands like blocks of ice, when here came a woman on classic gear sauntering by me without a care in the world. She made some off-hand comment about it being a tough day for skating and as she breezed effortlessly on by, the lightbulb went on in my head. Time to quit being a dumbass and get some classic gear.

So, I did. And immediately wondered what had taken me so long to make the move. When I started skiing, sometime in the early part of the 20th century, what is now called classic is all there was: all you needed was skis and a two-track through the woods. We groomed the original version of the Seeley trails by skiing a track in. If we were lucky someone from the Forest Service would run a snowmobile over them once a month.

Now this is where I’m supposed to say, “you kids just don’t realize how good you got it” or something equally codgerly. If that’s even a word.

Anyway, skating came along, it was fast and dynamic, and the rest is history. Don’t get me wrong, I love skating, but when I came back to classic I was glad I did.

Classic was like coming home for me. It feels natural. Now, whenever we get fresh snow and have a good classic track set, I’ll alternate classic days with skating days. They use the same muscles but in different ways and with different emphasis, so you actually recover better by switching it up. It’s simpler to have an easy day classic skiing, especially when conditions are soft. It’s cross training on skis.

So, until it warms up considerably, I’ll be the old fart out there on classic gear.

But when the snow transitions and we’re grinding the surface with the ginzu, you’d better believe I’ll be gleefully sailing along on my skate skis.

The Great OSCR Debate

A storm is raging in the sacred confines of the Great Meade Hall of the Seeley Lake Nordic Club. Logging operations forced a course change in the OSCR route, and the pros and cons are being debated ferociously. Before club members take up their cudgels and begin drunkenly flailing away at one another, let’s pause to reflect on the accomplishments of the Seeley Lake Elementary Ski Team.

Yesterday’s performance by all of our kids, and some of our graduates, really showed how far we’ve come as a program. Owen Hoag hung with the Glacier Nordic Club, taking third place in a hotly contested battle that was decided by mere seconds and is probably the toughest, most competitive 10k race we’ve had to date. Klayton Kovatch entered the 25k, an exceptionally long distance for an 8th grader, and made a strong showing, finishing somewhere in the top 10. My girl Cora Stone raced so hard she puked in the parking lot afterwards. She proudly offered to show me the evidence, but maybe some other time, Cora. Sam Ayers, a kid who should be everyone’s role model, showed once again that positivity and enthusiasm trump everything else, every time.

And now, back to our debate.

For the last, I don’t know, maybe 20 years, we’ve run the OSCR over the top of Rice Ridge. It’s a long, steady climb with a total elevation gain of 3302’, is extremely scenic and consists primarily of skiing on roads. The new route consists of two loops which gain 2562’ each for a total of 5124’ and use almost all of our existing trail system with the exception of the Auggie Cutoff road and a climb which roughly parallels Auggie that we call the 20k Addition. That’s 1822’ of extra climbing.

The two-loop option is not without historical precedent, having been used back in the mid-90’s for several years. I’ve raced both iterations and my personal preference from a skier’s standpoint is the two-loop option.

Two loops provide a showcase for the Seeley Creek Trails. We’ve got an outstanding, professionally designed trail system here, and two loops gives skiers the opportunity to experience it all. Tim Swanberg reminded me yesterday that I wrote a post years ago about the lemming effect, wherein skiers who come here to train ski a 10k loop over and over and over again because the math is easy. They miss out on Mountain View, Bear Tree, Hawkwoods, and maybe Roller Coaster and Larch Knob, all of which for my money are the most interesting skiing we have. It’s challenging, it’s tough and you can’t get by on endurance alone. You have to know how to ski to perform well. In contrast the Rice Ridge Loop doesn’t challenge your skiing ability as much as your fitness and aerobic capacity. It may be pretty, but nobody is looking at the scenery when they’re dying while climbing the switchbacks.

Using the Forest Service roads for the Rice Ridge race put us at the mercy of the snowmobile club who would groom the course for a fee. Last year they neglected to groom the Auggie Cutoff portion of the race, catching our groomers unawares and forcing them to frantically buff the surface right up to the starting gun. Additionally, snowmobilers use the course during the race which tears up the surface and raises safety concerns. One year when we were racing counterclockwise, I was screaming down through the switchbacks and encountered four snowmobiles flying uphill. They never even slowed down, and I squeezed by them with what seemed like inches to spare. The new course minimizes snowmobile conflict since we only use a short stretch of the Auggie road.

The new course puts grooming in the hands of the ski club and gives us more control over the quality. When it’s icy conditions we can use the ginzus to scratch up the surface as opposed to the pisten bully which essentially does nothing with the hard pack. It gives the club 5k more to groom, which in the grand scheme of things is minimal.

We’ve been discussing the possibility of officially incorporating Auggie and the 20k Addition into the trail system and have broached the subject with the Forest Service. Historically it was part of the ski trails but fell by the wayside when the current trail system was designed. Using the new route as part of the OSCR 50k could help give us leverage and might increase the likelihood of the Forest Service allowing us to gate either end of the Auggie Cutoff portion during ski season. The snowmobile club has abandoned grooming that stretch and the minimal use it does get provides a temptation to snowmobilers to trespass on the ski trails, which becomes a major issue in heavy snow years like last year.

The biggest knock on the new route is that it’s hard. Well, yeah. OSCR has never been easy. This is Seeley Lake, MT, a town of rugged individualists and dominant women. The kids on the ski team all have circles worn into their Wrangler hip pockets from their cans of snoose. What the hell did you expect? Our goal is to make Nordic skiing great again.

Those are my arguments, now we want to hear your input. The feedback I got yesterday was consistently positive, but racers also consistently reported that it was tough. Is it too tough? Would you ski the 50k again as two loops or would you downsize to the 25? Do you like the Rice Ridge route better?

Leave your comments below. Remember, this is the internet and the kid gloves can come off under the cloak of anonymity. If you use profanity, that’s fine, just try to display some wit alongside your f-bombs.

Biathlon Resurrected

After a three- or four-year absence the Seeley Lake Biathlon has returned. Originally staged independently by Cheri Thompson, the event had fallen on hard times despite its overwhelming popularity. The Nordic club had considered resurrecting it, but no one had the nerve or energy to take it on until last spring when Dave Batchelder naively put his head on the chopping block with absolutely no prompting from us.

Apparently, he had one of those light bulb moments and thought he had a good idea. I agree, it was an excellent idea, since someone else was going to do all the heavy lifting. Not that I ever actually do any heavy lifting. The reality is, any cross country race requires a ton of work and organization, but a biathlon increases that commitment exponentially since it involves all the usual race production effort with the added component of guns shooting real, live ammo that puts holes in things, including humans, with deadly force.

So now you have not only a race course to prepare, registration, promotion, timing, food, etc. etc., you’ve also added an interval start, a shooting range, targets, shooting lanes, someone to oversee the range, a monitor for each of seven shooting stations, PLUS a penalty loop for every missed shot and someone to keep track of the hamsters going round and round the loop with one lap for every missed shot.

The targets were the easy part. Cheri was stuck with a pile of biathlon equipment that she would probably never use again and the club was more than happy to take that problem off her hands. Dave struck a deal with Cheri and we purchased what turned out to be a small mountain of stuff. So, we not only bought biathlon targets, but an unanticipated storage problem as well. But, hey, added layers of complexity just keep life interesting and if Seeley Lake is going to Make Nordic Skiing Great Again then we are willing to make small sacrifices. The biathlon range is being disassembled at this very moment and my guess is Director of Shooting Operations Christ Lorentz has a rough idea of where he’s taking that pile of crap. As long as it’s not my garage we’ll be fine.

The other part of the equation is safety, no small deal when guns are involved. DSO Chris has a long history of involvement with the local gun club as well as competitive shooting, so we knew we were in good hands in that department. Since this is a citizen race the assumption is made that none of the racers know jack squat about guns or gun safety and everyone is required to complete basic safety training prior to the event. For many of the racers that meant arriving at the range at 8 AM to get schooled on the essentials such as not waving your rifle around with reckless abandon and blowing your big toe off. The local kids were scheduled for 4 PM the day before the race which eliminated a good deal of the cluster effect that we’d experienced in previous biathlons.

Due to the lack of snow we experienced early in the season, Dave postponed promoting the event until the week prior. That was a double-edged sword. Do you go ahead and advertise early and risk having to cancel and refund entry fees, or do you hold off until the last possible moment and pray there is adequate participation to cover expenses and justify the boat load of work involved? As it turned out, we had 65 racers which has to be judged a success, all things considered. Granted, that number was heavily juiced by the volume of kids from Seeley Lake Elementary, but still the majority of racers came from outside the valley.

Easily the coolest thing about the biathlon is that it really is a race for fun. Sure, racers are skiing hard and there’s that handful of skiers whose competitive edge can’t be suppressed. But, for most people, especially the kids, it’s about having a good time and getting to shoot guns. Other than a few of the teenagers, the racers weren’t what I would categorize as elite skiers. And the shooting range can be the great equalizer. You may be the fastest skier out there, but if you miss five shots, you’re going to ski five laps around the donut which can add 20 seconds per lap to your total time. Meanwhile, your buddy shot clean and is out on the course slipping away, while you’re spinning circles on the giant wheel going nowhere.

For those of you who showed up yesterday: thanks for coming. To the ones who thought about it but declined: there’s always next year. The Seeley Lake Biathlon will be back in 2020 and it will be smoother, bigger and badasser than ever.