I’ve met a lot of people in the past few days, and if I mention BirkieGuide, it’s amazing, but almost without fail, people say they’ve read the site and love it. That’s great—and heartening, this site doesn’t write itself. I’ve even had people who I guess heard my name and came up to shake my hand. Guys, go find the winners and do that. Or the guys who’ve skied 40 races (I’ve now done 10). But, yeah, thanks again! See you in Seeley!
A couple years back, I wrote about how the Birkie really needed to fix parking and busing situation. Then last year happened. I spent some time this past summer talking with the Birkie, and a team from Georgia Tech, about fixing the parking. (It helps that it’s kind of what I do for a living in the real world.) My idea was basically that they needed to split the parking and not have two streams of parking trying to access one road, and minimize the left turns and crossing traffic. The Birkie, using their new trailhead, did one better, parking northbound traffic at the Birkie Ridge trailhead.
And you may have noticed: it worked. It helped that there was 1.8″ of snow this morning, not 18″ inches. But, on a daily basis, I see traffic which increases by 10 or 20% and goes from free-flowing to gridlock. The Birkie was over capacity. By cutting it in half, they brought it way under capacity. It works.
I talked to Ben Popp and he said that, at one point, he saw a line of people waiting in traffic and was disappointed. Then he realized it was only 18 cars, and they were moving. That’s not an issue. The hour-long backups, those are the issues.
Last year, it took us 1:45 to get from Hayward to Cable. This year, we made the trip in 25 minutes (it helped that we were traveling with an elite elite racer who had a start parking pass, but even with the buses, it would have been less than 45 minutes, or an hour less than last year). It was a huge success. Parking is one of the biggest constraints on the capacity of the Birkie, and it has been dramatically improved. And, yeah, I’m taking just a bit of credit for that.
More on the race, of course, later. FWIW, 154th, best finish ever.
Looks like a pretty good day for the Birkie tomorrow. The temperature is now above 0, and looks to stay above 0 during the race tomorrow (it was certainly not above zero this morning, nor will it be above 0 on Sunday). The trail is in perfect shape: not as much snow as last year, but good conditions. The skate deck is very hard, but there are 2 or maybe 3 inches of powder on top, which should be incorporated in to give a nice pliable but firm skate deck. Conditions a la 2011. It’s likely to be a great race.
And the bridge. If you just went to the expo, you may have missed the Birkie bridge. But it’s impressive. No more will you just glide off the lake, around Marketplace and up Main Street: you now have a 20 foot climb. And then there’s a steep drop down on to Main Street for the finish before you have some momentum for the now-one-block-longer trip up to the finish.
Enjoy it!
Usually the Birkie posts information about the trail being closed some number of days before the race. This year I haven’t seen any information. So apparently the trail is open this afternoon. It’s probably a good idea to clear off of it by 3 or 4, as the groomers will be coming through for their final rounds to set down the skate lanes with the new snow. And to eat and get read to ski tomorrow.
From here
The Birkie is Saturday. The forecast low temperature on Saturday morning? 10˚. That’s cold—a couple degrees below average—but not too bad.
The current temperature in Hayward? -30˚. Not with the windchill. It’s thirty
below in Hayward. Or as they say this time of year: “Thirty.”
We’re very luck the race is two days later. While the race has started in temperatures around or a bit below 0, there’s no way the Birkie could have held the race today without a significant delay. But the race can’t be pushed too far back because many later-wave skiers take several hours to get to Hayward, and darkness falls around 10. I would bet the Birkie staff is thanking their lucky stars this morning that they don’t have to deal with the logistics of a -30 race start.
See you Saturday!
One of the great things about the Birkie is that you ski in whatever weather is thrown your way. 18″ of snow? Ski it. -11˚? Ski it. But it’s especially nice when it’s not brutally cold, or when you don’t have to push your car out of a snowbank the morning of the race. It won’t always be 2010-esque (10 at the start, 30 at the end, sunny on the lake) but we haven’t had a year with even moderate weather in quite some time.
And that might change, although it looks like we’ll be incredibly lucky. While last year the Upper Midwest was in the center of the cold air in the US and got shellacked with snow and cold, this year it’s more on the western edge. There’s less moisture but, at least in the past few weeks, no shortage of cold. Much of this month will dip below 0 in Hayward, and the next week or so looks especially cold. Hayward looks to go well below zero five of the next six months, and readings of -15 or -20 are not out of the question. The one exception? Birkie morning.
It might be downright balmy! A small disturbance will add a bit of fresh snow to the course (maybe even a post-grooming blanket to soften the well-packed base) and also keep temperatures from free-falling. Temperatures should drop to about 5 overnight, and rise to 15 during the race. Considering the rest of the week, this will be warm. Winds look to be light, and maybe even out of the north—a slight tail wind to propel us to Hayward.
In any case, a repeat of 2011 (frigid Birkie) or 2014 (the blizzard) are not likely in the cards. It should be a much easier race, logistically, and, compared to last year, physically as well.
That’s Norwegian for “Birkie Trail.” And today, on a rest day from Ski Orienteering World Championships, we drove up the road past the Lillehammer Olympic Stadium and, that’s right, skied on the real, actual Birkie Trail. Let me tell you this: if you haven’t gone skiing in Norway put that on your list. Even in the fog today, the trails were freshly prepared, fast and beautiful. And apparently there are views when you can see more than 50 feet in any direction. Two more races, then back to Snowtown a.k.a. Boston, Mass.
Also, if anyone wants, Triacs here are $320 (well, the equivalent in Kroner). None long enough for me, but if you’re skiing less than 170 cm, let me know. Taxes included.
Weather speculation: Cold. Dry and cold until the Birkie. Nothing on the horizon anywhere near freezing, so it should be skiing on what’s there, which is plenty. In the past people have said “oh, cold and dry, it will be rock solid.” Those people forget that there is a veritable Armada of Pisten Bullys preparing the trail. Expect it to be firm but pliable. And expec tthe race to go off as planned.
Of course, we could have 18″ of snow the night before. But the way this season is going so far, I’d expect that in Boston.
… Home of the World’s Slowest Internet. That’s not entirely fair. It’s just that where we’re staying and at the race venue, the Internet runs at pre-dialup speeds. Loading the text from a weather model comes in line-by-line, if it comes in at all. We’re in a town, and nothing happens. Folks with international data plans don’t fare much better. But, it’s enough to obsess over weather, and post updates here.
What’s happening in the weather? Well, it’s warm-but-not-too-warm in Norway. 30s during the day, 20s at night. The ski orienteering trails are fast and icy, and I broke a ski today (an all-too-common occurrence in Ski-O). First race is tomorrow! And home in Boston, they’ve had 70 inches of snow in two weeks. That’s the most snow a major city in the US has ever received in that short a time. It’s more than all but 11 of the past 122 years’ total snowfalls. It sounds like great skiing, but a total cluster in the city.
Oh, but you want to know about weather at the Birkie? Well. Some snow in the next couple of days. Woohoo! Should freshen things up and get it in good shape for the race. The main concern now is a meltdown, and it doesn’t seem to be in the cards. As we get closer to race day, there really haven’t been any warm temperatures showing up in the forecast, so barring something unprecedented (say, 70-inches-of-snow-in-two-weeks-unprecedented) the course should be in good shape.
The issue could be the cold. Several recent model runs have shown some chilly weather down in to Birkieland around the start of the race, the most recent with temperatures around -20. Farenheit. This is not likely, but not out of the cards. It would be nice to have a good 2009-style race—10 at the start, 30 at the finish—again, but it seems like we can’t get lucky with good snow and decent conditions. Either too cold (2011) or too much snow (2014). But things can change, and the long-term trends are good. Hopefully we’ll hit the peak of a rise in temperatures and can eke out something without a minus sign in front of it (in ˚F, we certainly want a minus-something ˚C).
You probably got the email from Birkie about changes to expect this year in Birkieland. There are a couple of very notable changes:
Greetings!
It’s February, I’ve bought my plane ticket to the Birkie (you can even save a couple bucks using the Delta meeting code NMJDQ, see here), and there’s some snow on the Birkie Trail. Not feet, like last year, but enough. So things are looking okay for the race, which is barely more than two weeks away!
So, it’s time for some good weather speculation. Which might be paltry this year. In the past few years, we’ve had a lot of weather speculation. Is it going to snow? Is it going to be cold? Is it going to rain? And we’d do that this year, again (and by “we”, I mean “I”) except I’ll be abroad. No, I’m not taking a vacation to Cabo, or something silly like that. I’m off to Norway. Quick aside: plane tickets to Norway in the winter are pretty cheap, as are hotels. Why would you go in the summer anyway? I’m going for ski orienteering world championships (yup, a real thing) to ski for a week (oh, and I’m going to have a chance to ski around Oslo as well), and won’t have a ton of internet connectivity; I’m not sure how much. So I won’t be on top of all the model runs, and hope there’s lots of snow when I get back.
Right now? It looks pretty okay. The past few runs have shown cool and mostly dry weather heading towards Hayward, but hinted at a few inches of snow in the next week, and no warm ups in the near future. I’d take that.
Anyway, if anyone wants to take over Weather Speculation, let me know, and I’ll give you the Elite Wave credentials to get in to the site. (Okay, it’s a password.)
Of course, you know what else I’d take? 42″ of snow in a week. That’s what we just got in Boston. The old record was 31. Everything ground to a halt for a couple of days, but the skiing is great, and the scenery along the river spectacular. I may or may not have run across the frozen, windblown Charles the other day. If it crusts over, the river crust skiing would be epic. So I’ll try to send some karma the way of the Birkie. We don’t really need much more snow here, but we’ll take it.
Finally, a note on race reports. Several people have emailed me 2014 reports and I’ll try to post them, but I’m leaving for Norway on Friday and barely have time. Looking ahead, I’d love your reports for 2015. I am going to try to set up a blogging template on WordPress so that you can create your own race report (and I can do as little as possible …) but doubt that’s going to be in place. In lieu of that, a couple of guidelines to keep in mind (I’ll repost this after the race, but keep these in mind):