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Tag: PistenBully

  • Davos World Cup Still a Go Despite Lack of Snow, to Host La Clusaz Races as Well (Updated)

    Davos World Cup Still a Go Despite Lack of Snow, to Host La Clusaz Races as Well (Updated)

    Davos is struggling to produce and collect enough snow for the weekend competitions, but will manage to pull off both a distance race and a sprint. Photo: Holly Brooks
    Davos World Cup organizers have struggled to produce and collect enough snow for this weekend’s competitions, but will manage to pull off both a distance race and a sprint. (Photo: Holly Brooks)

    Note: This article has been updated to include Friday’s announcement from the International Ski Federation (FIS), that Davos will host next weekend’s World Cup races as well, after the freestyle races in La Clusaz, France, were canceled because of a lack of snow.

    ***

    The upcoming World Cup races in Davos, Switzerland, have been scaled back due to lack of snow — but it’s still better there than La Clusaz. On Friday, the International Ski Federation (FIS) announced that next weekend’s canceled races in La Clusaz would instead take place in Davos.

    For the next two weekends, racers will compete in individual 10- and 15-kilometer distances and freestyle sprints in Davos. The Davos Nordic Organizing Committee, in conjunction with Swiss Ski and FIS, had already shortened the originally scheduled Davos races from the men’s 30-kilometer classic and women’s 15 k classic on Saturday, to a men’s 15 k classic and women’s 10 k. Freestyle sprints will take place Sunday.

    Next weekend, Davos will host 10/15 freestyle individual starts and a freestyle sprint.

    Athletes on a thin base at the 1.3 k track in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: FIS)
    Athletes on a thin base at the 1.3 k track in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: FIS)

    American Holly Brooks was among the flocks of skiers training in Davos this week before she headed to slightly higher grounds in Livigno, Italy, for her first marathon of the season at La Sgambeda on Friday.

    “Davos, like much of central Europe, is having one of the driest early winters on record,” Brooks wrote in an email on Wednesday.

    She provided a few photos to illustrate the scene, one of which (see above) showed a truck dumping snow in front of a PistenBully, which then spread it across the World Cup course.

    “The organizing committee in Davos is blowing snow at a mountain pass above (where it is cold enough) and trucking it down to cover a 5 k loop for this weekend’s upcoming World Cup,” she explained. “The effort and $ going into this project is incredible. I feel very luck that just over the mountains in Livigno, the site of my marathon, there is enough snow to hold the races on a larger, 35 k loop.”

    According to FIS, the Davos Organizing Committee (OC) produced snow high up on Flüela Pass — some 2,380 meters (7,800 feet) above sea level — where temperatures were cold enough to make it.

    As of Tuesday night, the organizers has spent more than 70 hours bringing it down to the race course. They did so using PistenBullies, which also pushed natural snow down the nearby mountainsides. That snow was then collected and transported down to the Davos World Cup trails in trucks.

    “After two tough weeks with many difficult decisions, we are very happy to present the athletes our tracks,” Adriano Iseppi, head of the Davos OC, said in a press release. “Even if we were able to produce snow only for one night on the competition area, we made the impossible possible. Many thanks to all the helpers up in the mountain and out in the tracks who have been working day and night.”

    The Davos Organizing Committee is producing snow up high for the World Cup races this weekend. (Photo: Holly Brooks)
    The Davos Organizing Committee has been producing snow up high for the World Cup races this weekend. (Photo: Holly Brooks)

    A local alpine skiing legend, Paul Accola, who now owns a forestry company, also donated his time and equipment for three days to help the organizers move snow.

    Hippolyt Kempf, a Swiss Nordic-combined gold medalist (1988 Olympics) and current head of Swiss Cross-Country, was complimentary of Davos Nordic.

    “They did an amazing job working all day and all night long to make sure that the cross-country track in Davos will be ready,” he said in the release. “We are convinced that athletes alike visitors can expect stunning competitions.”

    While Davos assumed responsibility for hosting next weekend’s World Cup freestyle races as well, start times had not yet been set for Dec. 20-21.

    Davos World Cup schedule:

    • Saturday, Dec. 13
    • 11:15 CET women’s 10 k classic
    • 13:30 CET men’s 15 k classic 
    • Sunday, Dec. 14
    • 12:30 CET women’s and men’s freestyle sprint prologue
    • 14:30 CET women’s and men’s freestyle heats
    • Saturday, Dec. 20 (moved from La Clusaz; times TBD)
    • women’s 10 k freestyle
    • men’s 15 k freestyle
    • Sunday, Dec. 21 (moved from La Clusaz; times TBD)
    • women’s and men’s freestyle sprints
  • Grooming the Plateau (Exclusive Video)

    Grooming the Plateau (Exclusive Video)

    WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. — Doug Edgerton is the man, literally, in West Yellowstone. A resident since 1971, he’s been the town’s primary nordic groomer for nearly as long, getting his starts as grooming snowmobile trails in the ’70s then towing bed springs and a track setter up on South Plateau for then-U.S. Ski Team coach Marty Hall and his crew for the first time in 1978.

    Doug Edgerton, Yellowstone Ski Festival chief of grooming, founder/owner of Yellowstone Track Systems, Inc.

    Thirty-four years later, Edgerton, 62, has worked several Olympics and is widely considered a go-to guy when it comes to grooming. Technology has changed and the number of people seeking early cross-country skiing in November has grown significantly from the first fall training camp in West Yellowstone. In 1984, Edgerton started his own grooming-equipment business, Yellowstone Track Systems, and remains the man in charge to this day.

    He’s the head and only groomer at Rendezvous Ski Trails, which occupies most of his nights in the winter, and works around the clock for nearly three weeks leading up to the annual Yellowstone Ski Festival (YSF) each November. This year, low snow forced organizers to move the SuperTour opening races from Rendezvous to South Plateau, exactly where skiing got going in West Yellowstone.

    While the trails and roads up on the plateau, at elevations between 7,000 and 8,000 feet, are mostly used by snowmobiles after December, they’re also a dependable backup for skiers in November. Has West Yellowstone changed much then?

    “Oh yeah,” Edgerton said. “The whole world has changed.”

    This year’s lack of snow is nothing anyone can control, and it’s similar to what YSF organizers experienced in 2008 when they had to move the SuperTour races to South Plateau for the first time.

    West Yellowstone chief groomer Doug Edgerton sits in his PistenBully with summer tracks while talking to Steve Hoovler, assistant director of the Yellowstone Ski Festival, after grooming South Plateau early Nov. 22.

    The difference this year is the amount of snow up on there, about 1,000 feet higher than town. With about a 3-inch base on Wednesday morning, it wasn’t much and about the least Edgerton had ever seen. Then again, Thanksgiving fell earlier this year, moving the festival up to mid-November.

    At 3:45 a.m. Edgerton waited in his illuminated PistenBully Edge, one he recently bought used from Mount Baker in Washington, as a FasterSkier reporter hopped in. From there, he drove the 14-foot-wide snowcat several miles up an access road to the plateau and proceeded to groom the 14-foot-wide snowmobile routes: first the Whiskey Trail, then South Plateau.

    Check out FasterSkier’s firsthand experience of the nearly four-hour trip as Edgerton prepped the trails for hundreds of skiers to use throughout the rest of the week (see video above). For an idea of where they went, and where people are skiing, refer to the map below.

    (click to enlarge)

    Map of South Plateau trails, including 5-mile Whiskey Trail (where Friday’s point-to-point SuperTour distance race will be held) and the South Plateau road/trail to Black Bear Cutoff near the Idaho border.
  • Rolling Out Hayward’s Main Street (Video)

    Rolling Out Hayward’s Main Street (Video)

    All American Birkebeiner coverage is brought to you through the generous support of Concept2, makers of the SkiErg.

    HAYWARD, Wis. — Ever wonder how they get all that snow, about half a kilometer’s worth and 6 inches to a foot deep, all across Main Street and out toward Hayward Lake for the finish of the American Birkebeiner?

    FasterSkier’s Alex Matthews tagged along for a four-hour grooming session in downtown Hayward with two of the Birkie’s main men, Chief of Course Bill Pierce and PistenBully sales rep Greg Toomire.

    With more than 40 years of combined experience, Pierce and Toomire worked together to spread about 120 truck loads of natural snow. About seven town and state highway trucks carried the piles down from a soccer field two or three miles away. An industrial snowblower churned up the white stuff, and a skiff prevented grass and dirt from mixing into the pristine white snow.

    According to Pierce, the head coach of Hayward’s F.A.S.T. high-performance ski club, this winter was  drier and warmer than usual, but there was plenty of snow in the area to lay down on Main Street for the Birkebeiner and preceding elite sprints. Three inches of fresh snow Tuesday night and a couple on Monday evening helped.

    Grooming Main Street in downtown Hayward, Wis., on Wednesday night before the 39th American Birkebeiner on Saturday, Feb. 25.

    “There’s snow out there, it’s just having the power to make it happen,” Pierce said. “That’s the thing the Birkie has, resources to make it happen.”

    This year’s 39th American Birkebeiner, which includes 50 k skate, 54 k classic and 23 k Korteloppet races, attracted a record number of participants at just over 9,000.

    Pierce said he and his crew had been working for the last three weeks since Feb. 1 to make sure the event goes off without a hitch on Saturday, Feb. 25. They patched the trails with snow from the woods when needed, unloading 500 totes of snow — each weighing 300 pounds — on the course. He said they shoveled 75 totes by hand.

    A Birkie staple for about 32 years, Toomire typically brings one PistenBully to events for demo purposes, but goes the extra mile at the Birkie, grooming Wednesday through Saturday. At 65, he’s considering retiring.

    “They don’t even tell me what to do anymore, I know what to do,” Toomire said. “I used to know all the mail boxes in town; I used to hit them all.”