Author Archives: birkiefanboy

Weather Speculation: Warmer

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So, uh, don’t panic.

But get a little worried.

The Birkie Trail should be fine for the race as long as it doesn’t rain too much or get way in to the 40s (but, uh, it might, which could be very, very interesting). It will be warm for the 24 hours preceding Saturday morning (but it might—might—dip to freezing on Friday night) and it is not going to have the usual squeaky-snow Midwestern feel to the race. Welcome to the East Coast/California, folks! Warm and slushy or maybe icy, too.

Fluoros? Yeah, they’ll matter. Flex and grind? Yup, them too. Rilling? Oh, yeah, you’ll want to rill. Wax? Ha, klister, all klister. Get our your blowtorches, classic skiers.

And for god’s sake do not ski on the trail on Thursday or Friday.

DO NOT SKI ON THE BIRKIE TRAIL (after Wednesday)

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The Birkie has issued a missive that you are not to ski on the Birkie Trail after Wednesday night.

This is really important.

The trail has good cover on it, but the weather on Thursday and Friday is iffy. It is going to be above freezing on Friday, and may not go much below freezing on Friday night. I would assume that they will groom the trail when it’s still cold on Thursday, let it set up and then leave it be. If they groom it on Friday when it has moisture in it, it might freeze in to ice, which is bad. If they leave it be, it will absorb the moisture and might freeze it in to it (the snow can store a lot of latent cold in the snowpack) and we’ll have decent conditions.

But if you ski the trail, you will put ruts in to the snow. And if those ruts freeze, we’re all in deep trouble.

There are other places to ski in the area, including the Birkie Ridge trail up to the Birkie Trail and back, check out Skinnyski’s reports here. These trails will not damage the race course. But don’t even think of skiing on the Birkie Trail on Thursday or Friday. Not even a thought. Mmkay?

10,000 skiers say thank you.

Weather Speculation: Roll up your sleeves

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It’s going to be warm.

Like, not warm enough to melt the snow, so we should have a race. But a heck of a lot warmer than any Birkie in recent memory.

Monday through Wednesday this week will be seasonable: highs in the 20s, lows around 10, with maybe an inch of snow here and there. Then it gets interesting.

Thursday should be cold to start, but warmer as the day goes on. Luckily snow goes down on Wednesday night on Main Street (I think) so it should set up well when temperatures are still around zero. Thursday will go up to around freezing, and then not go down. Friday will be the warmest day. It will likely be cloudy and in the 30s, with some light rain or drizzle (yes, rain). Nothing that will wash the snow away, but certainly something that will put some moisture in to it. The snowpack will be quite cold and retain a lot of latent cold in it, as will the ground, so it is unlikely to get soft if the temperatures stay below 40.

Then things get really interesting Friday night. Current guidance shows the low temperatures dropping to right around 30 as a weak cold front comes through. If temperatures stay above freezing, the course may begin to soften given the time above freezing. If they drop, say, to 28, the course may freeze from above and below and could be lightning fast and solid, a good day for stiff skis with good edges. Glide wax will matter, and it will matter a lot more if it’s 33˚ at race time versus 28˚. And the course may change during the race, with firmer conditions at the start that soften as we go south and as the sun comes out, which may or may not happen. Oh, and it’s possible there will be some light wet snow overnight. So as for kick wax: good luck, classic skiers. It may be a day that waxless skis take the day.

This is not one of those years where we know the weather ahead of time, because while 5 degrees makes very little difference between 5˚ and 10˚, but a whole heck of a lot of difference between 29˚ and 34˚.

This Birkie is going to be interesting. Fun, and interesting.

The good news is that Saturday afternoon may be 35˚ and sunny, so get ready for a party on the lake. I’ll get the New Glarus.

Weather Speculation: A Balmier Birkie?

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1998 to 2007 was a dark period for the Birkie. The race in 2000 was canceled, 1998 and 2007 were shortened significantly, 2002 finished short of Main Street, and 1996 had race temperatures well in to the 40s; I can only imagine that it was a soggy, slushy Birkie. (Our weather history chart is here; I’ll update it soon with more recent data.)

Since then, we’ve had a run of good luck. Even in 2012, where there was hardly any snow south of Birkie, the course was perfect. The only downside has been the cold; some of the coldest Birkies have been held in the past decade. Still, eight races with pretty much perfect snow in a row is not too shabby, especially in a time of warming temperatures across the globe. If you’d told me after we skied 25k on rock skis and slush in 2007 that we’d have perfect snow for the next decade, it would have sounded like wishful thinking in a year where there wasn’t more than three inches of snow on the trail before race day.

This year shouldn’t lack for snow; there’s enough on the trail (although more would be nice) and we’re unlikely to face a 2000-esque meltdown (when 15 inches were washed away in a few days), but unlike most of the races in the past few years, it won’t be cold at the start. So you can leave your buffs, dermatone and maybe even wind briefs at home; it’s very unlikely that we’ll need a “-” in front of the temperature, at least not in Farenheit.

We might not even need it in Celcius. The two models are getting in to range, and both show a warm up at the end of next week. The European model shows temperatures peaking on Friday night just above freezing, with a mix of rain and snow falling on race morning. This would be interesting to say the least, and would cause a run on fluoros at the local ski shops. The American model brings the warm air in a bit earlier, with temperatures in the 30s on Friday, but falling back through the 20s on Friday night. With any moisture added to the snow, this would create a lightning-fast track for Saturday morning. The Canadian model, for what it’s worth, parallels the American model with a cold front swinging through on Friday afternoon.

Unless the models are wildly wrong, there should be no real threat to having enough snow for the race and a ninth straight Birkie with good snow. But it might be the first time in a while the start of the race we won’t have to layer and layer and layer up.

Weather Speculation: two weeks to go

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With two workweeks until the Birkie (including Presdident’s Day; it’s so close!) it’s time for another installment of weather speculation! Last week’s snowstorm dropped 6 to 8 inches of snow and pushed snow depths in to the foot-deep range, although the packed depth on the train is less than that. This definitely helped the long-term forecast for the Birkie! Sunday’s thaw in Hayward was moderate and short-lived, and it’s now cold with a bit of light powder falling. It looks to stay cold for the next week.

Over President’s Day weekend, temperatures will moderate somewhat. Not a huge thaw at this time, but highs closer to 0˚C than 0˚F (it may not clear 10 in Hayward from Monday until Sunday). It may get cooler again before the Birkie, but there is some long-range guidance which would point to a warming trend towards race day, possibly a cool morning with a warm afternoon (desirable) and possibly some sort of storm (less desirable). This is, of course, a long way out and is very, very likely to change, so don’t make your plans based on it quite yet.

Early weather speculation

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It’s February, and if you’ve followed this blog in the past, you know that means that it’s time for Weather Speculation! As usual, we look at weather models and make wild guesses about the weather, although they are at least slightly educated guesses. There’s only 19 days until race day, so we can basically pinpoint to within a degree what the temperature will be when your wave hits the course in Cable. (Note: this is a lie.) Join in!

With an early race this year and snow on the ground, we just need to worry about a warm-up. As you heard on the BirkieGuide Podcast (Wait, you didn’t listen to the Podcast? What is wrong with you! Go, go download it and listen to it now!) there is a thin-but-solid base on the whole of the trail, that could be skied well tomorrow but is susceptible to melting and could use some more snow.

So basically we need one of two things to happen. Either a) it needs to stay below freezing for the next 19 days or b) it needs to snow. If both happen, all the better. Let’s see where we stand with the long-range forecasts:

a) Cold. So far, it’s been a warm winter east of the Rockies. The City of Lakes Loppet may be salvaged by a last-minute snowstorm after warm air melted a five inch base to a thin covering of slush and ice. January has been only a couple degrees above normal, but with wild temperature swings and a late-month thaw. That has passed, and the next few days look colder. Not cold, mind you. But colder. And colder is good enough in Northern Wisconsin in February. (There’s newly-available “NowData” from the NWS for Spooner dating back to 1895. That may be downloaded.) As for the weather, the current models are not showing any major warmups in the next two weeks. In the third week things get a bit dicier with warmer air dumping over the Rockies, but it looks to stay at bay until it gets warm in earnest in March. So this is qualified good news.

b) Snow. Of course, a couple of feet of snow would help out as well. A couple of feet we may not see, but the storm which has pushed north 50 miles in the last couple of days in to the Twin Cities is similarly pushing towards Hayward. It may drop [edit] 4–8 inches of snow on the Birkie Trail (with higher amounts at the south end, which if you listened to the podcast you would now is where it’s most needed, and the totals keep going up; the trend is your friend) this week, which would make everyone breathe easier. Not a blockbuster, but not nothing. Beyond that there are no huge blizzards on the horizon, but an inch here and there. Time will tell.

As for race-day weather, it is foolish to try to predict specific days more than a week out (and certainly not three), so I am not going to. Yet. It will be between -20 and 50 at race start. And most likely in the teens.

The BirkieGuide Podcast is (almost sort of pretty much) here

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bgpimage2They said it could never be done. (Wait, that’s a lie.) But it has been done. All hail the BirkieGuide Podcast!

UPDATE: It’s here!

In the first episode we spend nearly half an hour talking with Ben Popp and Al Serrano about the 2016 race. Want to find out about the new hill at Rosie’s Field? It’s in there. The new finish procedure? Yup, in the podcast. Some recording magic from our friend Sam of the Outside/In Podcast, who made the whole thing sound better than a skype conversation? That too is in the podcast. Basically, you should download the podcast, and listen to it a bunch of times. Don’t download it a bunch of times or my server might crash, though.

How do you download it? Well, soon, it will have a link in iTunes and you can download it there. For now, you can download the .mp3 file directly or copy the following link and go in to iTunes and select “File–>Subscribe to Podcast …” and then paste this link (http://birkieguide.com/podcast/feed.xml) and it will subscribe you to the podcast. Do you get your podcast somewhere else? I am pretty new to this so you may have to help me out, and I can submit the feed elsewhere, too.

Want to be a guest on the BirkieGuide Podcast? Email me. Seriously. We can talk.

 

2016, and the Birkie, are almost here!

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December 26 Birkie Webcam. Building that base!

Greetings skiers. (If you live out west, enjoy your snow. If you are in the east, “greetings rollerskiers.”) With the new year upcoming, it’s once again time to scrape those bases and head out for some Birkie training. Some of our best training comes from reading the Birch Scroll for little tidbits about changes upcoming in the race. Here are a few:

* The permanent start! While it won’t be completed for this year, construction is taking place in order to facilitate a 2017 building and start for the race at Telemark. This is good news, as even more of the trail will have a permanent route and will no longer be at the whims of the Cable Airport and the FAA.

* I haven’t skied the classic race, so I am generally unaware of the course between the start and the powerlines, but apparently it’s pretty narrow. So it’s being widened. That’s good, right?

* While most of the Birkie is in Bayfield and Sawyer County forests, portions near the end cross private property. Rosie’s Field is one such property. It has been sold by one family to another, but they are still Birkie-friendly. So much so that they are allowing us to have more trail and more hills! (You can see the new section in Google Maps, I think it’s the narrower horseshoe in the larger area of activity here, which appears to be logging, but might be housing, in which case it would add a new road crossing.)

Most importantly, this will add significant climb in to this part of the course. It will be comparable in size to the Mosquito Brook Climb or the hill after Highway 77; not as steep as Bitch Hill, but longer. This will affect race strategy, as it will mean that from Mosquito Brook to the top of the hill after Hwy 77 will go as follows:

Given the total climb and steepness, it may be the most difficult climb of them all. It will certainly make the race more, uh, I think the word is “fun.”

* Wave times will be adjusted slightly at the start. In particular, the waves will be somewhat more spread out for skaters, especially for the big, early waves. From the Elite Wave through Wave 4, there will be at least 15 minutes between each wave. The elites will go off at 8:20, followed by Wave 1 at 8:35, Wave 2 at 8:50 and 70 year old-plus skiers at 8:55 (this relatively small and classic-skewed group had previously started with Wave 3; all will start together regardless of technique) and Wave 3 at 9:10. Beyond that, the waves will start every 10 minutes, but with fewer Birkie skiers in later waves and more spread-out times, it should reduce some congestion on the trail.

* Freedom isn’t free. (Actually it is, by definition.) But the Birkie Trail isn’t, so buy a pass if you’re planning to train there!

It’s snowing in Birkieland, putting down a good base. Hopefully the early-season woes will subside, the lake will freeze solid, and the race will be the best yet.

See you in February!

The New York Times is Stealing My Ideas

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Well, not really. And as usual I used the title here to reference a Seinfeld quote. But the New York Times has a data piece out about the NYC Marathon this weekend showing a time lapse of people running along the course:

Does that remind you of anything?

Well, I guess if I was two years ahead of the Times, that’s okay by me.

The new start area

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You may have seen that the Birkie is fundraising for a permanent start area. You may have gotten an email, or two, or three. The Foundation is pushing this start area, and we here at the Unofficial Guide think that it’s a good idea. So if you have some extra dollars floating around, maybe you don’t need another pair of Triacs this year, and can send a couple of bills over to the Birkie. (If you want to send a pair of Triacs to me, 175 cm, please, I’ll give you my address, and even pay shipping!)

Anyway, while a lot of us new-timers think of the Birkie as being a fixed route from Cable to Hayward, that has not always been so. Up until 1992, the race switched direction every year. In the ’80s, is started up Mount Telemark, before winding its way through the Telemark trails and on towards Hayward. The Foundation added a bit through Fish Hatchery this year (which probably needs to be widened), added the Classic Trail, and has rejiggered a few other sections as need be. The trails is a living, breathing organism, and change is not always for the worse.

The start isn’t going to change dramatically. It will be rebuilt near the current start, but off of the airfield, which the race needs an FAA waiver to use every year. The trail itself will bear the brunt of the change. It will lose about one kilometer of distance, so the Fish Hatchery joggle might be to keep it at 50k. And while the elevation will remain about the same, it will be much less steep. The first hill on the power lines—the one that separates the men from the boys—will be cut out, meaning there won’t be a gaggle of V1ers a kilometer in to the race, but a faster V2 start out of the gates. The main concern is that the course won’t be wide enough at the start, and hopefully the course designers keep it plenty wide. I would say the course should be at least 20m wide from the start to the power lines, especially since it’s climbing most of that way.

The major upside? A new start building. Tents are expensive, annoying, and can collapse when 18″ of snow falls on them. Having a building, however, would be supreme. Would it be able to handle 10,000 skiers on Birkie morning? Certainly not: you’d need an outright convention center for that (or at least the Hayward High School). But it would be an upgrade over a damp tent pitched on snow with a hay-covered floor. And, theoretically, it could serve other purposes throughout the year: a chalet during ski season and bike season, and an event center on weekends year round. What Birkie skier wouldn’t want to have their wedding at the Birkie start?

The Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Vermont is an interesting case study. It hosts the Craftsbury Marathon, a tiny ski race in New England (well, tiny by Birkie standards) but is similar to the Birkie in that it has low user fees, dependable snow and terrific grooming. It is basically funded by the Driessigacker family (of biathlon fame) and their family business: Concept2 rowing supplies. (They make the SkiErg, too. Why? Because they’re skiers.) Concept2 has done tremendous business in the past few years, especially since CrossFit has decided to use Concept2 in their “workouts.” (I speak only derisively of CrossFit, although now every time I run by a CrossFit gym and see people paying oodles of money throwing balls or whatever I smile and think of how they’re funding skiing.) Craftsbury has a huge new chalet and training center that the Birkie would be lucky to have, several large solar arrays, a fleet of groomers, and some of the lowest trail fees around. The Birkie doesn’t have such a benefactor, but it makes up for it with tens of thousands of skier-supporters Together, we can make that kind of difference.

With Telemark quite possibly past the point of no return, it’s time for the Birkie to decide its own future. Is it free? No, it’s not free. Can you gripe about how much the race costs? Sure, but I just paid $175 to run the Boston Marathon and wait to retrieve my gear bag from a tent in the pouring rain. And they didn’t have to groom the roads. If you want the Birkie to thrive, and you can step up to the plate, you should. This is just phase one, and a few dollars from each Birkie skier would go a long way towards assuring a top-notch experience for decades to come.