Kikkan Randall leading the 2017 Alaska Run for Women with a smile on June 10. (Photo: Scott Broadwell)A little U.S.-based news to get your Tuesday going:
— Watch out, World Cup, Kikkan Randall is feeling good. The longtime U.S. Ski Team (USST) and Alaska Pacific University (APU) skier took first place in the 25th annual Alaska Run for Women road race, held over Anchorage streets and bike trails this past Saturday. Randall led the field of several thousand women to the finish in 28:41, a pace of 5:44 per mile for the 5-mile, largely flat-road course.
Mid-5:40s for five miles (in June) is nothing to sneeze at on its own, but let’s let the 34-year-old Randall put it in context: “I’m in the best shape of my life now,” she told the Alaska Dispatch News. This is so even though Randall was a few seconds per mile off her previous best on this course, a 28:18 that she clocked while winning this race in 2012. That winter, she went on to win her second of three consecutive Sprint Crystal Globes.
“I’m in the best shape of my life now.” — Kikkan Randall in a recent interview with the Alaska Dispatch News
Finishing just over a minute back for second place on Saturday was recent local high-school graduate and multi-time state track champ Briahna Gerlach, who will race Division I track and cross-country running this fall in the Lower 48. “I didn’t even know it was Kikkan Randall,” Gerlach told the Dispatch News of her competition over the first mile before Randall pulled away. “When I found out I said, ‘OK, she can go.’ She’s crazy. She didn’t even look tired.”
Other skiers in the top 10 included Mandy Vincent-Lang (formerly University of New Hampshire) in third, Becca Rorabaugh (APU) in fourth, and Lauren Fritz (APU) in 10th.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVLNwkqDp3i/
— If it’s summer, the rest of the APU Elite Team must be running up mountains. APU skiers took nearly every race in the seven-stage Alaska Mountain Runners Grand Prix last summer, highlighted by David Norrissetting the course record at Mt. Marathon, the insanely steep climb and descent outside the harbor town of Seward, Alaska, that was first run as an organized race in 1915 and is believed to be the oldest mountain race in the country. (Norris took the record back from Kilian Jornet, a man widely acclaimed as the world’s best mountain runner.)
This summer, they’re at it again. On the evening of Thursday, May 25, Norris took first place in Kal’s Knoya Ridge Run, ascending an uphill-only course in the Chugach foothills on the eastern edge of Anchorage. (Runners had to descend under their own power, but the clock stopped when they crossed the finish line.) Norris weathered an early-summer snowstorm to cover 8.5 kilometers, and 4,500 vertical feet of elevation gain, in 58:08 for a substantial margin of victory. First place among the women went to Jessica Yeaton (APU/Australian National Team).
In a shorter version of the race (5.6 k and 2,900′ of climbing), APU skier Forrest Mahlen was the first across the line. Marine Dusser (formerly University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA), currently affianced to USST skier Erik Bjornsen) was the first woman, less than 90 seconds behind him. Other top-10 skiers included APU junior Maggie Meeds in third, APU junior Aubrey LeClair in fourth, and Jaime Bronga (formerly UAA) in seventh. In the long race, Kate Fitzgerald (formerly APU) was fourth among the women, while Kenny Brewer (formerly University of Alaska Fairbanks) was third and Mark Iverson (formerly APU) was sixth.
— Nine days later, on the morning of Saturday, June 3, it was newly minted U.S. Ski Team memberScott Patterson edging out his APU teammate Erik Bjornsen (also of the USST) by the slimmest of margins, 0.3 seconds, after slightly more than 42 minutes of racing up 3 miles and 3,500′ of elevation gain in the uphill-only Government Peak Hill Climb outside of Palmer, Alaska. “I led the whole thing till maybe a minute to go, then we duked it out as I tried to come up with a little bit of a sprint,” Patterson told the Alaska Dispatch News after the race. “With three feet to go, Erik would have won. Even with two feet to go. He seemed to stumble a little when it was down to one step and I got him.”
APU junior Hamish Wolfe was 8th.
Dusser once again took the victory in the women’s division, in a time that would have placed her 12th among the 105 men in the field.
— So who’s still skiing? More people than you might think, thanks to an epic winter in the western U.S. that brought dozens of feet of snow to the High Sierra and has the Squaw Valley alpine area making noises about running at least one chairlift all summer long. For example, here’s fresh grooming (!) on the Auburn Ski Club trails on June 6 (!!):
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVBZo3GAt-A/
Here’s Paul Kovacs (Australian National Team) on the ASC trails on the morning of June 7:
Here’s FasterSkier contributor Jon Schafer with a Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club junior camp, driving up to the nordic trails at Mt. Bachelor in Bend, Ore., in a June 10 snowstorm:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVKdwcMhDYL/
Finally, farther north, the APU Elite Team arrived at Eagle Glacier earlier this week for their first Glacier Camp of the summer:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVQYFY1lGOo/
– And earlier this month in Albuquerque, N.M., the University of New Mexico (UNM) announced that athletic director Paul Krebs will retire on June 30. The university’s press release did not indicate a reason for his departure, but the news came two days after the state auditor informed UNM Interim President Chaouki Abdallah that its athletic department would be the focus of a special audit, according to Deadspin.com. The Office of the State Auditor reportedly “received information raising concerns related to athletic fundraising activities and expenses of the University of New Mexico.” Krebs, who was UNM’s athletic director for 11 years, was criticized for spending nearly $65,000 dollars in taxpayer money on a 2015 golf trip to Scotland and was at the heart of the heated proposed discontinuation of the UNM ski team.
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This article has been updated to reflect the correct historical status of the Mt. Marathon Race as believed to be the oldest mountain race in the country, not as “the second-oldest footrace in the country behind the Boston Marathon.”
Jenna DiFolco (c) of FXC, Abby Amick of APU (l), and Addison Gibson of ANR (r) on the podium for the U18 girls division of the Besh Cup 5 k skate race in Fairbanks, Alaska, Feb. 4, 2017.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Alaska Airlines operates roughly 10 flights a day between Anchorage and Fairbanks. Last Friday morning many of those flights were packed with skiers, and ski bags piled up at baggage claim in Fairbanks, as Anchorage skiers streamed north for the final weekend of Besh Cup racing to select Alaska’s representatives to next month’s Junior Nationals in Lake Placid, N.Y. Two days later many of those same skiers returned south with plans to fly all the way to Lake Placid, where Team Alaska will have roughly equal representation from the state’s two largest cities.
The 2016/2017 Besh Cup series concluded with a pair of distance races at Birch Hill ski area: freestyle interval start on Saturday, classic mass start on Sunday. The weather for both days was Fairbanks at its mid-winter best, clear and sunny and relatively warm. Cold powder and hard glide waxes were de rigueur.
(The emphasis here is on relatively, as national FasterSkier readers might find Saturday’s race-time temperature of 10 degrees Fahrenheit, or Sunday’s reading of 2 degrees, objectively not all that warm. But it was -16 degrees at the airport on Sunday – Birch Hill’s elevated location on a hill above town often keeps it significantly warmer than the low-lying areas of central Fairbanks where official temperature readings are taken – and it is forecast to be -35 degrees in Fairbanks by later this week. So, relatively warm.)
The first race on Saturday was the boys 10-kilometer freestyle individual start for racers in the U18 division and older, 45 starters in all. The overall podium on Saturday was U18 skier Ti Donaldson of the Nordic Ski Club Fairbanks racing team (FXC), Senior skier Cody Priest of Alaska Nordic Racing (ANR), and U18 skier Josiah Alverts (ANR).
Among U20 men, FXC skier Benjamin Koenig was first, leading his teammate Logan Mowry in second and Dax Cvancara of ANR in third.
The U18 boys division, which saw two of the top-three overall finishers, had Donaldson in first, Alverts in second, and APU skier Tristan Wiese in third.
U16 boys raced a 5 k skate individual start, covering one lap of the blue course that 10 k skiers completed twice. Eli Hermanson of Alaska Winter Stars (AWS) led the all-Anchorage-area podium in the 5 k, followed by George Cvancara of ANR and Zanden McMullen of APU.
Finally, the U14 boys raced a 1 k skate ski-cross event, with jumps, gates, slaloms, and other technical challenges. The event is a crowd favorite that, race organizers wrote, “helps develop skiers’ abilities to ski in a ‘pack’ along with developing technical skills.” (It may also soon be coming to a race series near you! Here is an example from the 2016 Youth Olympic Games in Lillehammer.) In another Anchorage-area sweep, Aaron Maves of APU took the A-Final, followed by Rudy Schumacher of AWS and Konrad Renner from ANR.
On the girls side, a field of 57 racers (U16 and older) contested a 5 k skate individual start. At the end of one lap around the blue course, APU skier Maggie York took the overall victory by 40 seconds over FXC skier Jenna DiFolco, with Kendall Kramer (FXC) another 14 seconds back.
York also topped the U20 podium. She was followed there by Alyeska Daniels and Lupua Oba, both of FXC.
DiFolco, second overall, was first among U18 girls. Second in this division was Abby Amick of APU, with ANR’s Addison Gibson third.
U16 girls took third through fifth overall in the combined U16/U18/U20/Masters field for the 5 k (there were no Senior skiers in the race). Locals Kendall Kramer and Kaya Ratzlaff of FXC led this division, with Annika Hanestad (ANR) third.
U14 girls also raced a 1 k ski cross. First here was Quincy Donley of AWS, continuing her winning ways from the Anchorage and Soldotna Besh Cup weekends. She was followed across the finish line of the A-Final by Marit Flora of APU and Katey Houser of ANR.
Ti Donaldson of FXC (r) and Josiah Alverts of ANR (l) on the podium for the U18 boys division of the Besh Cup 10 k skate race in Fairbanks, Alaska, Feb. 4, 2017.
Saturday’s overall winner for the boys race, U18 skier Ti Donaldson, was racing on home turf. “I’ve had a few wins [in the Besh Cup series] in the past,” Donaldson told FasterSkier in an in-person interview following the race. “Most of them have been in Fairbanks. I’m from here, so definitely a home-field advantage.”
Donaldson came in expecting a “brutal” race, based on his knowledge of the course and his time previewing it. “But I knew it would be pretty fast conditions,” he continued – “it was nice and hard, and it wasn’t too cold. So I was pretty excited to see how it would go, and really just wanted to work the transitions and stay strong on the climbs, and crest over. So I stuck to that plan, and it worked out pretty well.”
Donaldson was looking forward to 2017 Junior Nationals in March.
“I’d be thrilled with a top-five finish,” Donaldson said of his goals for next month. “Two years ago, when I was racing the same kids, I placed fourth in a race, and so I’d like to repeat that result. That would be a good goal of mine.”
Jenna DiFolco, the U18 girls winner and second-place overall skier, was also racing at home. She credited “my FXC coaches” for waxing her winning skis, and had hot cereal for breakfast, with raisins and dried cranberries, at home before heading out to Birch Hill.
The race was “really fun,” DiFolco recounted in an in-person interview. “Warming up, I didn’t feel so good, I was feeling kind of tired, maybe I’d overdone it this week. And then I expected this course to be really hard, because there are so many hills. And it was definitely, like, it was a rough course. But it went a lot better than I expected it to.”
DiFolco described her strategy for racing a one-lap 5 k course with nearly constant climbing or descending: “The first part is mostly downhill, so I kind of just started out like a sprint almost, because I knew I’d be able to recover on the downhill. And the first couple of hills I was just trying to keep it light, keep it relaxed, and then really start hammering up South Tower [the high point of the course], because I got a big break after that. And then the last two hills are basically just hard, really hard.”
Looking ahead to Lake Placid, DiFolco said that she was “hoping to get a couple top-10 finishes.” She added, “A big dream, it’d be a big stretch, but I’m hoping to get, like, a podium would be really, really cool. But top 15, top 10 would be awesome.”
Sunday saw classic mass starts instead of freestyle individual starts, and temperatures around 10 degrees colder, but otherwise it was more of the same. Seven of eight age-group winners from Saturday picked up a second victory on Sunday, as a pair of distance races rewarded skiers who were consistent in both techniques. (The first two weekends had featured one sprint and one distance race apiece, leading to greater variability in the podium finishers.)
Sunday’s classic race also rewarded skiers who were good at traditional classic skiing, in light of the relatively slow snow and the impressive elevation change of a Birch Hill race course.
The trails at Birch Hill are built on the side of, well, a hill (also, there are birch trees). The courses used for this weekend’s races were marked by an impressive Height Difference (the elevation change between the lowest and highest points on the course) of 89 meters within a 5-kilometer course. The World Cup skiathlon race that was contested in South Korea the same weekend, on the trails that will be used for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, featured height differences of only 58 and 41 meters on the two skiathlon courses.
In fact, a height difference of 89 meters is a greater elevation spread than was present on most of the traditional World Cup courses this season, including in Davos (84m), Lillehammer (74m), Falun (69m), and Ulricehamn (57m). That said, some of those courses had more average climb per kilometer than the Birch Hill 5 k course. But only some of them. This may help explain why the winning time for a 10 k skate on Saturday was 29:22 for the men, and 16:15 for 5 k for the women, in a race with some of the top junior skiers in the country. (Winning times for Sunday’s 10 k classic races were 32:17 and 37:53.)
Coaches compete in the final ski-cross heat of the day, the coaches’ race, on Feb. 4 in Fairbanks, Alaska. Racers include Galen Johnston (129), Eric Strabel (125), Anson Moxness (126), and Pete Leonard (101). (Courtesy photo)
APU Devo and Master Coach Galen Johnston shared his thoughts on the effects of such a course profile after spending the weekend watching his athletes race up and down these hills. “One of the best parts of the weekend was to see how the combination of slow snow and lots of strideable sustained climbing put the focus of the [classic] races on striding and fitness rather than simply double pole strength,” Johnston wrote to FasterSkier on Monday.
“Courses designed like this can keep striding a viable, and even necessary part of classic skiing,” Johnston continued by email. “Birch Hill has some of the most progressive course designs that I’ve seen and it’s paying off. Skiers ski differently than they did even 10 years ago, and it’s really neat to see a course that can accommodate and challenge that change in style without turning things into an unskiable death march. Estle is keeping people very honest, but still allowing for ample fun,” Johnston concluded in reference to longtime Fairbanks race director and ski-course designer (and former U.S. Ski Team coach) John Estle.
On Sunday the best strider was DiFolco, who took first place in the 10 k classic mass start race by 19 seconds over Saturday’s winner York. Third overall was ANR skier Heidi Booher (ANR), another 23 seconds back.
York was again first in the U20 women division. The rest of the podium was also unchanged from Saturday, with Daniels in second and Oba in third.
DiFolco was again first among U18 girls. Second on Sunday was Booher, with Emma Nelson of ANR third.
There was a substantial drop-off in distance from U18 girls to U16 girls, with the latter group racing not 10 k but a 3 k classic mass start. First after just under 10 chaotic minutes was Kramer again, edging out her FXC teammate Ratzlaff by 0.7 seconds. Tjarn Bross rounded out the all-FXC podium in third.
U14 girls raced the same 3 k course as the U16 girls. And after 11 to 12 minutes of racing, it was precisely the same U14 girls podium as on Saturday: Donley, Flora, and Houser.
On the boys side, U18/U20/Senior/Masters skiers raced a 10 k classic mass start on the same course as the girls. First overall was Lukash Platil (officially unaffiliated, but listed on the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) ski team roster), followed by Donaldson of FXC and Wiese of APU.
Platil was also first in the Senior men’s division. He was followed there by Kenny Brewer (now unaffiliated, formerly of UAF) and Matt Muffoletto (The Other Guys).
Among the U20 men, Koenig picked up his second first place of the weekend, and Mowry his second second place. Hamish Wolfe (APU) was third.
Donaldson and Wiese led the U18 boys. They were followed by Alverts, as the age group podium remained largely unchanged from Saturday.
The U16 boys raced a 3 k classic mass start. This was the only age group to see a new winner on Sunday, as Cvancara moved up from second the day before to nudge Hermanson down a step on the podium. Everett Cason of APU was third.
And the U14 boys (also 3 k classic) were again an all-Anchorage affair: Maves once again in first, Rowan Morse (APU) in second, and Schumacher in third.
Later Sunday afternoon a crowd gathered in the Birch Hill Recreation Center, ignoring Super Bowl LI then in progress, for the naming of Team Alaska for this year’s Junior Nationals (JNs).
The Besh Cup Trophy, photographed in Fairbanks, Alaska, in February 2017.
Cross Country Alaska also awarded the Besh Cup Trophy, given to the U18 or U20 skier with the greatest number of JN qualifying points across all six races combined. This year’s winners were Josiah Alverts for the boys and Jenna DiFolco for the girls. Their names will be added to a trophy, Stanley Cup-style, that includes on its plinth recognizable names from American skiing such as David Norris, Becca Rorabaugh, Reese Hanneman, Andy Liebner, Zach Hall, Eric Strabel, Kate Pearson, and Rob Whitney.
While winning the Besh Cup Trophy is undeniably prestigious, it also necessarily rewards the best skier who was in Alaska all winter for the races, as opposed to competing Outside or internationally. For example, among U18/U20 girls, you may have heard that the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Hailey Swirbul was racing in Soldier Hollow, while Molly Gellert was on the Scandinavian Cup trip in Norway.
DiFolco graciously acknowledged as much, telling FasterSkier on Sunday soon after receiving the trophy, “I think some of the fastest skiers are not here, because they pre-qualified [for JNs] and they went on big trips.” But DiFolco still skied the races and earned the results, including two firsts and two seconds in the final four races of the series.
“It’s pretty cool,” DiFolco said of the season-long honor. “I never would have really expected this to happen a year ago. … I’m pretty proud of it. I’m happy with it.”
Shortly after the awards ceremony ended the migration began to repeat itself in reverse, as out-of-town skiers loaded up cars in the Birch Hill parking lot for the 7-hour drive south to Anchorage or paraded ski bags through the Fairbanks airport. The flight home for Anchorage skiers was marked by ski hats, team jackets, and quiet chatter, as athletes talked about next month’s trip to the East Coast and parents fretted about missed school days and makeup work.
Junior Nationals begin in Lake Placid in early March. The first race is a 5/10 k freestyle individual start on March 6.
FasterSkier is seeking contributions (written, photography or videography) from regional race circuits across North America. Please email info@fasterskier.com if interested.
David Norris (APU) leading up the 2016 Mount Marathon Race before the turnaround at the top. He went on to win the race. (Photo: Nat Herz)
David Norris (r) descends while Scott Patterson (l) continues pushing to the top of Mount Marathon on Monday, July 4. Norris went on to win the 89th annual race while Patterson placed fourth. (Photo: Nat Herz)
Fairbanks resident David Norris, who skis for Alaska Pacific University (APU), won Monday’s Mount Marathon Race outside Seward, Alaska, in record time. The 5-kilometer race — which takes racers from the shores of Resurrection Bay up 3,022 feet to the summit of Mt. Marathon and back down again, on slopes as steep as 60 degrees — was first held in 1915 and is among the country’s oldest footraces. A crowd estimated at 30,000 people crams into Seward (pop. 2,500) each July 4 to watch a race that has been described as the “Olympics of Alaska.”
The former men’s course record was 41:48, set last year by Killian Jornet, a man widely acknowledged as the world’s best mountain runner.
On Monday, at the 89th edition of the race, Norris took 22 seconds off that time. Running alone for most of the race, Norris was first to the halfway mark of the ascent, first to the turnaround at Race Point (elevation 3,022′), and first across the finish line (elevation approximately 20′, depending on how high the tide is). He finished in 41:26.
Jornet tweeted his congratulations to Norris within minutes of the race’s conclusion. His Twitter feed made it apparent that he had been watching the live feed of the race.
Three-time champion Eric Strabel, a former APU skier and current APU coach, was third in 44:19. Scott Patterson, Norris’s teammate on the APU Elite Team, finished fourth in 44:43 after reaching the turnaround point in second.
In the days leading up to the race, Norris and his teammate Patterson, both race rookies at Mt. Marathon, were marked by the local mountain running community as strong climbers but unproven downhill runners. There was also a suspicion that they might hold back slightly on the descent, in deference to their professional ski careers and out of a desire to avoid injury.
APU’s David Norris ascends Mt. Marathon en route to a course-record time, above Seward, Alaska, on Monday. (Photo: Rob Whitney)
Speaking on live television soon after the finish, Norris acknowledged that this was his race strategy.
“I had enough of a lead that I knew I could take it easy [on the descent] and not hurt myself,” Norris said in his interview with Anchorage’s KTVA Channel 11.
Describing his descent, in which he lost 3,000 vertical feet in roughly 10 1/2 minutes, Norris recounted sliding down a snowfield for roughly 250 meters near the top: “The snow was totally out of control, the scree was fine,” he said.
Norris admitted that he had not come in expecting to break the record. “I thought that my down would be so slow,” he said, “that even if I had a good up, it wouldn’t even matter.”
But as things turned out, Norris said, “I felt awesome.”
So was there anything that marred his performance on a day in which Norris set a course record in a century-old footrace? “I crashed into the willows right in front of the crowd at the bottom,” Norris recalled. “Other than that it was a perfect race.”
Other nordic skiers in top ten in the men’s race included former University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) skier Kenneth Brewer in ninth. Sixth-place finisher Lyon Kopsack, a current member of the UAF cross-country running team, has also competed in local ski races.
Women’s race
Christy Marvin, a stay-at-home mother of three from Palmer, Alaska, won the women’s race in similarly dominant fashion. Competing in the prime-time afternoon spot for the first time – the men’s and women’s races began alternating their positions this year, after decades’ worth of the men getting the most prestigious last race of the day – Marvin ran away from pre-race favorite Yngvlid Kaspersen, a Salomon-sponsored professional mountain runner who flew over from Norway just for the race, early on and never looked back.
Much like Norris before her, Marvin was first to reach halfway on the uphill, first to the turnaround point, and first to the finish. She collected her second Mt. Marathon victory, and first since 2013, in a personal record time of 51:02. Kaspersen finished over two minutes back in 53:22, followed by Denali Strabel in 53:40, giving Eric and Denali a pair of third-place finishes on the day.
Notable skiers in the top 10 included Anchorage’s Ann Spencer (daughter of former Olympian and long-time Mt. Marathon course record holder Bill Spencer), who currently skis for Middlebury, in fifth and Seward native and former FasterSkier reporter Aubrey Smith in seventh.
Junior race
Nordic skiers dominated the podium in the first race of the day, the junior race that goes roughly halfway up the mountain before turning around and returning to downtown Seward. Luke Jager, an APU junior skier from Anchorage who won the U16 10 k skate race at this year’s Junior Nationals, won the boys’ race for the second year in a row, this time in 27:29. He was followed by fellow APU junior skier and Anchorage resident Hamish Wolfe in 28:01. Anchorage’s Trent Fritzel, who skis with Alaska Winter Stars, was third in 28:49.
Both genders race together in the junior race; in 2014, Allie Ostrander beat the boys to finish first overall. This year, Molly Gellert was first in the girls’ race in 31:55, good for 10th overall. Gellert, of Anchorage, skis with Alaska Winter Stars and has podium finishes at both Junior Nationals and Alaska’s Besh Cup to her name. Second place went to Riana Boonstra of Ninilchik, last year’s junior girls’ champion, in 33:11. (Riana Boonstra’s father, former Olympic skier Todd Boonstra, is a four-time champion of the men’s race.) Local Ruby Lindquist, who runs and skis for Seward High School, was third in 34:02.
![Jenna DiFolco (c) of FXC, Abby Amick of APU (l), and Addison Gibson of ANR (r) on the podium for the U18 girls division of the Besh Cup 5 k skate race in Fairbanks, Alaska, Feb. 4, 2017. (Photo: Gavin Kentch)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/02/U18-girls.jpg")
![Ti Donaldson of FXC (r) and Josiah Alverts of ANR (l) on the podium for the U18 boys division of the Besh Cup 10 k skate race in Fairbanks, Alaska, Feb. 4, 2017. (Photo: Gavin Kentch)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/02/U18-boys-1.jpg")
![Coaches compete in the final ski-cross heat of the day, the coaches' race, on Feb. 4 in Fairbanks, Alaska. Racers include Galen Johnston (129), Eric Strabel (125), Anson Moxness (126), and Pete Leonard (101). (Courtesy photo)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/02/16473459_10154026978381707_8091249889848533635_n.jpg")
![The Besh Cup Trophy, photographed in Fairbanks, Alaska, in February 2017. (Photo: Gavin Kentch)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/02/Besh-Cup-trophy.jpg")
![APU's David Norris ascends Mt. Marathon en route to a course-record time, above Seward, Alaska, on Monday. (Photo: Rob Whitney)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/07/13600163_10157007610170462_5401236706025590322_n.jpg")
