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.

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:

1. Parking. From the south, you’ll turn right off of Highway 63 in to the new Birkie Ridge parking lot. From the north, you’ll turn right in to the Como Lot. Assuming the Birkie Ridge lot doesn’t become a marsh or isn’t way too small, this is fantastic, as it will eliminate cross traffic and should double the throughput of vehicles in and out of the lots.
2. The trail got a little longer. For a while, the Birkie was billed as a 51k race, then pulled back to 50k. Well, it’s back to 51. There’s a new loop down through the fish hatchery area, which moves the feed off of Highway 77 and adds a bit of new terrain. It will be fun to see how it skis. If you’re going to warm-up before race day, that’s probably not a bad place to go.

This Guide has been laying low for a while. We’re sorry! (Well, I’m sorry.) Too much time skiing, running stairs, and planning that trip to Wisconsin in February. (And Norway earlier in the month.) Oh, and working with the Birkie to chat with them about many of the upcoming changes. But there are some changes coming, and we’ll detail them on this post, elsewhere on this page, and in the future.

The big thing are start line enhancements and the Birkie Bridge, all part of the Birkie’s Five Year Plan (I knew it was a Commie plot!). The start line could always use some enhancements, especially now that Telemark is closed. While the airport has plenty of space, there is no permanent structure there, and staging 10,000 starters over two hours is daunting, especially on a cold or snowy day. It would be nice to have a building, but that level of infrastructure needs long-term planning as well—you need to finalize the trail before you put up a barn. The idea is to build a start area which will have infrastructure and a permanent routing to the rest of the trail, as opposed to the current start which crosses several easements and is only used on race day.

The pros of a new course? No driveways, all-year access, and a better experience. The cons: the course would no longer start with the same gravitas of facing down the Power Lines Hill, but take a more gradual route. But there will still be hills on the Birkie Course. We likely won’t see major changes this year.

But there will be a Birkie Bridge. 49.5km away, there will be no more soft snow festival crossing Main Street, but a bridge instead. The bridge will be, well, interesting. It will give a bit of a climb right before the finish, and then a steeper downhill to Main Street. It should be plenty wide enough (24 feet), although a climb is always going to require more room than would normally be required. It will be fun to watch skiers crest the bridge, take a dive down the hill and carry that momentum down Main Street. And it should make for some fast finishes. And in the long run, there is some chatter about underpassing other main roads in the future. (And by main roads, I mean “roads.” It’s not like there are that many of them.)

It’s also a good segue to talk about traffic. The bridge will mean that there will be no more Highway 63 detour, and all the traffic through Hayward will no longer back up all afternoon. This should be nice, although it will mean that the course to the lake will no longer be a pedestrian zone during the race, so take care if you’re crossing the road to the lake during the race. (I can only assume traffic will be gawking at the skiers above and be going quite slowly.) And the snow on the bridge should be much firmer than in past years (but hopefully they can get the snow to stick to the bridge deck on the inclines).

But parking. This is the big thing. In the past, this page has proposed a change to how parking works at Como Lot. Last year, the entire transportation system to a halt. The Telemark Field filled, and traffic from the north and south tried to access Como Field at the same time. The entirety of Highway 63 gridlocked for an hour in both directions, people missed starts, and it was obvious that the system needed to work better.

Well, it seems the Birkie has listened. According to rumors, the “Ofsevit Plan” will be implemented this year. Southbound traffic will detour off of Route 63 via Cable Sunset Road. Northbound traffic will have an unimpeded turn in to the parking lot. There will be two lanes of entry. If this goes according to plans (and I will contact the Birkie to make sure that it does, since it is basically the “Ofsevit Plan”) it should double the throughput in to the parking facility, rather than funneling all traffic on to one road, which should also help buses from the south navigate the area. With the larger race, and fewer facilities at Telemark, this dramatically increases the utility of the current lot and should allow traffic to move at a much better pace (i.e.: not complete gridlock). Still, it will be a learning curve, so leave extra time. Especially if there’s two feet of snow beforehand.

It’s time to train, plan, buy exorbitantly-priced plane tickets (no $175 round trip for me this year), and get to Cable! (On plane tickets, it seems that they are starting expensive this year, but prices likely won’t go much higher until a couple weeks from race time.)

That’s the word on the street from people with gold and purple bibs. I’ve done nine now—including one with a replacement pole after breaking a pole at the start—and this one was appreciably harder. I finished relatively well, all things considered (having a cold, not drinking enough on an hour-long bus ride where I had to use the john the whole time and then almost missing the start) and my time was 20 minutes off of last year (a slow year) and 40 minutes off my fastest time. So, wow.

I’ve been traveling on the icy roads since, and just gotten around to the Internet. Much more coming soon. Certainly race results. Certainly data (yes, we will be analyzing the number of people who missed starts, as well as how much slower skiers were this year versus last year). And as with last year, we have an open call for Birkie race stories that we’ll post here. Simply email them to me (ari.ofsevit at gmail) and I’ll post them with some celerity. If you are looking for guidelines, find them here and check out last year’s entries. The more the merrier.

Stay warm and ski fast.