FAI

It's Alaska Nordic Cup weekend.

Fairbanks, in the Golden Heart of Alaska

 

When you're on this ski team, you learn to make air travel a low-stress activity.

Every year around this time, UAA and UAF get together for our annual showdown to establish December dominance. At the moment, we're one race into our two-race contest. We raced today. Tomorrow we race again. Then we fly home to Anchorage.

We do some ski-testing on this team.

The Alaska Nordic Cup venue switches back and forth between Anchorage and Fairbanks each year. Last year was Anchorage. This year it's Fairbanks. When we come to Fairbanks, we've always raced at Birch Hill, the trail system located about five hundred feet higher in elevation than the city of Fairbanks. This has historically been of critical importance, because Fairbanks is frequently a COLD and windless place, where the cold air settles into the valleys, and the hilltops can be significantly warmer in comparison. Birch Hill is often far warmer than the UAF campus. International Ski Federation rules wouldn't allow racing at downtown Fairbanks temperatures during large parts of the winter. But Birch Hill is often well above the FIS limit even when it's brutally cold downtown.

Constance and Trond. Talking race strategy.

Trond, testing the course at race-speed.

But this summer, a new racing trail was built on the UAF campus, and we're contesting the Alaska Cup on this new racing trail. The timing couldn't be better. It's warm and rainy in Anchorage this weekend. The Alaska Nordic Cup is a good excuse to leave town for a few days. Meanwhile, Fairbanks is comfortable, with plenty of snow. I can't think of a better place to go ski racing this weekend than on the UAF campus. 

Tuva and Trond. Dinnertime's a good time to work out the program.

UAF has a good record against us in this event. I'm no statistician, but the word on the street is that Nanooks have, historically, won the Alaska Nordic Cup more often than the Seawolves.

Matteus

At this point, one race into the two-race weekend, we're in position to buck the trend. We currently hold a 51 second lead over the Polar Bears, and we're hoping to protect it - a task made more manageable by the fact that the team results are scored based on total time of the top three skiers for each time. Today's race was 10 kilometers. Tomorrow's a sprint. It would require overwhelming dominance to overcome a 51-second deficit on a sprint course that will only take around three minutes to complete. To be more succinct: we're glad we skied well today.

But we're looking forward to doing our best, and improving, tomorrow.

This is Beth. Maybe you've heard somewhere along the way that there's a "golden hour" for photography: one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset. Fairbanks' "golden hour" lasts about fourteen minutes.

Astrid

I really like how this racing trail is surrounded by the academic campus. It makes for a very nice milieu.

Marit

And whom can we thank for this new racing trail that we've been enjoying this weekend?  The guy in the middle. That's John Estle. He designed the new race trail. The guy on the right is Derek Deuling. He's a Seawolf. His mom, Amanda, was once a Nanook, and she was coached by John Estle. The guy on the left is Peter Alden. He was Derek's mom Amanda's teammate, when they were both Nanooks, and coached by John Estle. 

As for Dereks's mom, Amanda, here's an old photo from her time as a UAF Nanook, back in the good old days: