It was a snowy Friday morning, but the pistenbully tracks were amazingly fast and secure. Thank you, Tom Helmers! Even at -25 deg F, the firm tracks made it possible to ski fast enough to keep all the appendages thawed and warm.
Today’s discoveries bring the SCUM total of LOL ornaments past the halfway mark. We have located 7 of the 12 ornaments for this season.
Hopefully, the recent accumulation of almost a foot of fluffy snow doesn’t conceal the five ornaments that we need to find.
Preparing to do the military transect (down Sunnyside and Cliffside and up the Sonot Connector) meant protecting SCUM noses and faces from the cold. Here are some of the novel approaches to this challenge (top 4 photos by Joanna Fox)
These SCUM actually made it up to the White Bear loop where en route they were treated to the moon rise over the Sonot Connector:
It was chilly but a beautiful day on the trails.
SCUM raced on three different Turkey Day Relay teams on Friday and despite one broken pole during the race, and a fall or two, the TDR skiers showed up on Sunday.
We found the Tower Loop to be much more enjoyable with the SCUM rest stops that weren’t available on Friday.
Come join us on Tuesdays and Fridays at 1030 a.m. and Sundays at 1000 or 1100 a.m. We won’t be meeting next Sunday because of the Super Tour Race being held at Birch Hill. Volunteer to help out and you’ll get to watch skiers who don’t need to stop for rest breaks.
With cold temperatures and very little snowpack on the trails throughout the Fairbanks North Star Borough, the SCUM need to be resourceful to find snow that geezers with broken body parts can safely ski. Although counterintuitive, the black loops have been less skied so the trails had a little forgiveness in them in the form of untracked snow. Today the “no Y SCUM” outnumbered the male ones. Nobody fell but Mom, but she’s learning to get up more quickly.
Negotiating the Outhouse Loop to access the Flat Black loop proved no challenge to the guys among today’s SCUM. The trees were magical with their hoarfrost icings, but the trails were not the beautiful corduroy that we become accustomed to by mid winter.
Join us at 10 am. or 11 a.m. Sundays.
With enough snow to groom the Birch Hill trails, the SCUM met for the first time this season on Tuesday and Friday.
We were just getting our snow legs, so trying to get the entire group together was challenging. Please join us on Tuesdays and Fridays at 10:30 a.m. Note this is a change of time on Friday, which will allow SCUM to take FXC Masters yoga and ski on Fridays.
When the SCUM started back in the 1995 to 1996 winter, most of us were in our 40s. SCUM offspring were skiing for high school teams. Thirty years later, most SCUM are in their 70s and many are grandparents. In our first two decades, the 50 km Sonot Kkaazoot was our end-of-season goal and our “final exam.” However, by 2022, winters precluded the Chena River staying frozen to late March, so the Sonot Kkaazoot was moved entirely to Birch Hill. The new course traded 20 km of flat terrain on the river for 20 km of challenging hilly trails. Fewer of the SCUM were able to ski the 50 km course.
Now the SCUM can no longer ski and volunteer for organizing the Sonot Kkaazoot. With no race director for 2026 stepping forward to date, we will continue to ski and volunteer, but at an intensity and duration that is feasible given our advanced age.
Many years ago, Bill Husby, a SCUM and longtime NSCF groomer, issued the challenge for the SCUM to complete 4 ski walking ascents of the Fort Wainwright alpine hill by the Fourth of July. This season, between travel and air quality issues, only three SCUM (Bill Husby, Eric Buetow and Dave Prusak) successfully achieved that challenge. Five more SCUM (Joanna Fox, Mom, Robert Hannon, Bernardo Hernandez, and Tim Wooster) did their 4 ascents in the week following the 4th of July.
Carl Hemming, who spent much of the early summer rebuilding an outhouse at his Quartz Lake cabin and then spent several weeks in Michigan visiting family, finished his 4 ascents today. They weren’t fast, especially compared to those we’ve done in the past, but they were done under brilliant blue skies and golden leaves. Instead of mosquitoes, only a few no-see- ums flew around our faces.
Although negative splits would be desirable for well-trained athletes, for SCUM who are closer to 80 than 70 years old, and injured, we were happy to do 4 ascents.
Our workout included 735 m (2414 feet) of climb and a total distance of 9.24 km. The average climb on the chairlift ascents was 22% (170 m climb over 0.84 km).
So, please let us know if you know anyone who is willing to take on the organization of the Sonot Kkaazoot. Bad Bob Baker and the rest of the SCUM will be happy to help you out. Woodels for this year have been cut and sanded already.
Note from Scott Brucker, Minto trail builder, skier, musher, and teacher:
If you know any skiers or outdoor enthusiast, there’s a Middle School and/or Sci-Math opening in Minto. It would be nice to share these trails with another person.
Thanks
Scott
If you have any questions, you can contact Scott at: sbrucker@yksd.com
After last Sunday’s delightful Easter ski on over 10 km of pistenbully-groomed trails, weather conditions weren’t favorable for additional grooming. We skied Wednesday and Friday as more ground and less snow as visible on the trails. So today we made the switch to dryland training and headed up Ester Dome.
Ester Dome Road was ice free and dry to Ullerhaven and had patchy wet spots beyond the first set of towers. However, at the second set of towers, the trail was still wet and icy. The roadway lacks sufficient dry ground to turnaround so park at or before the first set towers. While we were on the top of Ester Dome, one offroad vehicle ended up backing up on the road from the second towers to the first towers.
It was a great day for an Ester Dome ascent as it was 45 deg at 10 a.m. when we started and in the mid-50s when we finished 2 hours later. We saw a number of runners on Ester Dome Road–all of them in shorts.
Thus, Wednesday SCUM workouts will officially move from Birch Hill to Ester Dome starting 30 April 2025. We’ll start from the bike trails parking lot on Ester Dome Road (roughly one mile above St. Pat’s Road) at 10 a.m. The general plan is to ski walk down to St. Pat’s Road from the bike trails and then ski walk up to Ullerhaven for a 5 km uphill ski walk and then walk back down (2 miles) to our cars. Starting out, you could just start ski walking uphill (like we did today) and you can turnaround whenever you feel like you’ve done enough or have to get back to work.
Ski walkers, hikers, or runners are welcome to join us for all or part of our workout.
4/28/25 NOTE: The SCUM made their training transition Sunday before the Nenana Ice Classic tripod on the Tanana River had gone out. We make our weather observations based on our 29 years skiing together and act accordingly. We’re not climate deniers.
This post was actually assembled after a SCUM workout on 16 February 2025 at UAF. However, I was lacking enough brain cells then to figure out how to embed a large video that was a key part of this post. Now with my MFA thesis defense postponed until Fall 2025 and training for and assisting with the organization of the 38th Sonot Kkaazoot finished, here is a look back to 16 February 2025
Joanna earned the right for a finish line collapse after setting a new segment record for the Double Theta today in -3 deg F chill.
After our approximately 2.5 km time trial chasing the youngest skier among us (and the most stressed this week), our bodies were fatigued but our minds were more relaxed, so our judgement was slightly impaired.
Somewhere on the t-field, the decision was made to wallow in the untracked snow. While in other areas of America, winter swimming in frozen lakes becomes an extreme sport, snow wallowing requires just taking the path less traveled.
Bill started out the challenge on the T-field:
Following Bill’s leadership, Dan accepted the challenge in the middle of the potato field:
Only to be outdone by Joanna, who was ready to really take a dive:
Sonot Kkaazoot 