Most of the winter the SCUM meet on Sundays at Birch Hill. However, on Sunday, 5 March 2023, many of them competed the Skiathon at UAF, which was a mass start event this year. It was slow going on the graveyard loop for non-lightweight SCUM, but fun was had by all. From entry fees and donations, $1,734 was raised for UAF trails.
By definition, SCUM rises to the top, but nowhere does being a SCUM signify possessing speed. Thus, during SCUM workouts, Mom is frequently left far behind, and she subsequently takes unplanned diversions to amuse herself. So today, Bill Husby, decided that I needed to carry an Apple AirTag so that overachieving SCUM could come back and find me. (Aside: 25 years ago, when the SCUM were much younger, Sgt. SCUM, aka Mark Haas, would ski back and find all the lagging SCUM without any electronic gadgets. FWW Army band members were better at tracking than former Lathrop High School teachers, apparently.)
However, out the South Birch Hill Parking Lot, I had multiple Rosie Brennan moments where my left ski was not attached to my left boot.
Fortunately, after I had inserted my ski boot to binding a dozen times without successful attachment, Dermot came to my rescue. Seven minutes later and with cold fingers and thumbs, we headed up the stadium ramp without a lot of glide.
We started out on the newly groomed and tracked trails by skiing the Tower, Medevac, Blue and Outhouse. At the Sunnyside cutoff, Mom and Dermot decided that Sunnyside would be much more enjoyable since the sun was out today, unobstructed by clouds. Since we were headed downhill the extra inch of snow on the trails wouldn’t be a problem.
However, eventually the air tag told Bill that we weren’t following them:
The SCUM caught us as we had decided to go down Cliffside and up the Sonot Connector. Dan and Bill wanted to turn back at the Cliffside gate because Dan’s feet were getting cold and Bill said Sonot Connector wouldn’t be groomed until Friday. When Dermot and I pointed out that it WAS Friday, the SCUM followed us down Cliffside and up the Sonot Connector, where apparently, Bill was pinging the AirTag:
However, I couldn’t hear the pinging because Dermot serenades everyone around him when he skis with a cacophony of groans, moans, and other animal sounds:
Dan, Tim, and Bill waited for us in the sun at the road crossing at the top of the Sonot Connector, wondering why I hadn’t heard the pinging. We finished off the incoming White Bear, where Doyon Utilities had removed a number of trees touching the power lines recently. Much more daylight was seen on the last km of the White Bear as a result. Finishing on the Warmup Loop, Bill and Dan were humored by their IT success before they headed off for the Skiathon on Sunday.
Dermot and I won’t be at the Skiathon as we need to do a several hour skate workout as we prepare for the 50 km Sonot Kkaazoot. We’ve already signed up at the early registration rate, which ends at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday.
The warmer weather and winds have brought down gobs of snow from trees along the Birch Hill trails. It also brought down a good-sized white spruce on the lower section of the N40 trail.
Here are the SCUM heroes that moved it off the trail. Doing a good deed is easy when you’re still fatigued from the 30 km Frank Soos Distance Race on Sunday.
Sunday’s Frank Soos Distance Race #3, The Unpleasantry turned out to be a tough tour on trails that were in immaculate condition at 9:00 a.m. before the 2 deg F snow started falling. The 70-year-old SCUM wave started at 10:00 a.m. when the PistenBully corduroy was still visible beneath the fluffy half inch of new snow. The tracks were ghastly slow so the three skiers on classical skis were skiing in the skate platform as were those of us who arrived with skate gear. The snow was absolutely lovely, but we didn’t see any lynx or moose tracks to distract us from our 3-lap tour of the White Cub and White Bear loops. Our tour took the “kid” among us 3:23:44.6, a full 1:34.16 behind FXC coach Jesse Wilkins. I had the opportunity to enjoy almost an hour more time on the White Bear than this “wannabe 70-year-old SCUM”.
A number of skiers didn’t start or finish because of illness, equipment failures, or better judgement than those of us who prevailed. A huge thanks to Chris Puchner, Pam Laker, Anna Sorensen and all the other volunteers who hung in there with smiles and encouragement. We really appreciated you.
Here are the results by distance:
Comment from groomer Bill Husby, “Today’s ski was definitely a change of pace ski. Burned more energy climbing out of snowbanks after crashing than I did skiing today (6+ falls).”
When the trail groomer takes off his skis and walks the downhills that he groomed, you realize that you might have made a mistake.
Snow on Dermot’s vest isn’t from any of his tumbles on the North Classics. However, he chose to bail out of the South Classics and do the Sonot Connector to Sunnyside instead.
However, we all made it back to our cars intact, although some of the snow from the trails was still on our ski gear.
The SCUM skiers were too focused on their workouts so were unable to find all 12 of the LOL Christmas ornaments. However, we did find 8 while skiing:
Bill Husby saw LOL ornament #12 on Little Bird while grooming, but we never got out there on skis, so we failed to nab that one, too. We thank the LOL for this fun addition to our December skiing and an excuse to take a rest break–a SCUM necessity.
Even though the SCUM hadn’t been skating for several weeks because of the the recent cold spell, they took full advantage of the pistenbully groomed trails today and skated 15 km of them in around 2 hours. We took rest breaks once we had crested the uphills as seen above at Hilltop and below the summit of Heartrate Hill.
We saluted Bob Moloney, who at 79 years old, skated Heartrate Hill without stopping for any rest breaks. After we finished White Bear, Moilanen Meadows, Big Surprise, and Warm-up, it was Bob, who pointed out that we needed to ski some additional trails to get our 2-hour long overdistance skate ski today. So, peer pressure made sure we did ski our full 2 hours.
We thank the NSCF groomers who made today’s workout possible. We’ve donated to the NSCF trail fund and hope you will join us.
To those unfamiliar with the Birch Bakken challenge, it was dreamed up by groomer Bill Husby, who was suffering a chest injury today from his fall skiing the Chinook loop on Thursday after he had set it. The course takes a 4.0 km route from the low point to the high point of the Birch Hill Recreation Area. The red line in this GPS trace is the course:
From the FWW alpine building (point 1 on the map), we headed up Cliffside, at the Cliffside gate, we head up the downhill section of Sunnyside to Section Line junction (this is much steeper than the regular inbound trail shown in blue). We then skied the inbound Sunnyside trail to the Outhouse Loop, then to Relay Return, backwards to the Blue Slot, then back on Relay Return to South Tower to the light pole at the highest point of the Tower Loop (point 2).
Here are the statistics for the oldest and slowest No Y SCUM, who was skiing at “Sonot Kkaazoot pace” and kept her HR within level 2:
Hopefully, finish photos will be added as they become available. The temperature inversion on the BB Challenge was about 20 degrees today. After finishing the BB Challenge, we skied back down the South Tower to look for wayward SCUM.
As promised, action photos by Eric Troyer and Corinne Leistikow. Corinne passed me on the Outhouse after she skied White Bear to Sonot Connector, Blackhawk, Chinook, and the rest of the Sonot Connector. She saw the SCUM gathering at the bottom of the hill so skied by most of us while chasing Eric. The day before Dr. Leistikow told me the importance of recovery days. I guess that only applies to her older patients.
With temperatures at Birch Hill in the high 20s and nearly a half foot of new snow this weekend, wayward SCUM like Carl Hemming and Steve Clautice rejoined us today for our ski around the Frank Soos Distance Race #1 course. The entire course had been groomed and tracked last night so tracks were firm and fast. I wish I could say that my body was fast, but such wasn’t the case. However, I got around the 15 km course (plus Moilanen Meadows for some extra credit) in just over 2 hours.
Here are some views from the trails:
After we finished our 15 km ski, we retired to the warm-up hut for coffee and ginger snaps (Frank Soos’ favorite cookie). Carl had been AWOL for so long that he found what he thought was a rat turd in his coffee cup:
Meanwhile, the ageless Dan Johnson posed next to his framed retirement photo:
We hope that you will join the SCUM in skiing the Frank Soos Distance Race #1 next Saturday starting at 11 a.m. It’s great training for the Sonot Kkaazoot. The grooming crew will make the trails fast, and you’ll have fun with the SCUM.
Thanks to the volunteer brushing by Mike Schmoker and David Prusak, the SCUM were able to ski Blackhawk (and Chinook) on set tracks today! The volunteer effort by Mike and Dave not only assisted the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks in contributing labor match for the club’s RTP grant, but their work also allowed us to ski these classical only trails on machine set tracks in November (with half the normal snowfall to date).
As groomer, Bill Husby had the inside information on where the tracks were lifted on downhill corners, so he avoided falling. But he did drop one knee to the trail causing a three-SCUM-pile-up on Chinook.
However, these skiers didn’t have the quantity of snow on them that others had.
They just had the misfortune of falling when someone had access to their phone. Given the -5 deg F weather, most of us were well dermotized and our phones were zipped into inner pockets. However, one phone was recovered from a Blackhawk tumble when its owner got up too quickly to note its absence.
Enjoy the groomed trails and please contribute to the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks grooming fund: https://nordicskicluboffairbanks.wildapricot.org/Donate/
Sonot Kkaazoot 