Interest in Nordic ski activities remains strong in New England
The COVID-19 pandemic years saw a boom in cross-country skiing and gear sales as people turned in droves to the outdoors.
Even during this abnormally low-snow, warm and rainy ski season, X-C has survived in New England, with strong equipment sales before Christmas and solid participation levels despite spotty availability of ski-able snow and scratchy conditions even at X-C centers that have managed to stay open for decent stretches.
"The (X-C) areas that have been able to remain open have continued to see strong numbers," Vermont-based Reese Brown, executive director of the national Cross-Country Ski Area Association, said of the New England X-C scene.
"It's been a struggle these last two or three weeks. But hopefully, tomorrow night and into Thursday, things change a bit," Brown added, referring to the incoming storm expected to finally deposit significant snowfall at least in northern New England.
And consistent interest in the super fun, affordable and cardio-healthy sport of Nordic skiing is not limited to the land-bound X-C discipline these days.
Ski jumping is a thrill
Nordic ski jumping, once widely popular in New England and still a big-time sport in Europe, has not exactly experienced a resurgence here, but it is alive and still drawing young athletes from places like the New York Ski Education Foundation at the Whiteface ski area and the Salisbury Winter Sports Association in Connecticut.
The annual weekend Nordic ski jumping event at Brattleboro, Vermont's Harris Hill has been thriving in recent years. Last year, for the legendary hill's 100th anniversary, crowds peaked at 8,000, nearly reaching the all-time record of 10,000 set in 1951.
The jumping hill is a beauty, soaring 98 meters into the sky from a field off a winding road on the outskirts of the southern Vermont city.
It was rebuilt from 2006-09 and re-opened as an Olympic-sized jump built to International Ski Federation standards. Harris Hill is the biggest Nordic jumping hill in New England. The Lake Placid Olympic Ski Jumping Complex in New York is home to 100- and 120-meter jumps.
Each February, a volunteer organizing committee of the nonprofit group that owns, oversees and works to finance the Vermont hill puts on a sanctioned jumping competition that draws some 40 adult and youth athletes from across the country and Europe.
Beautiful spectacle
I attended this year for the second time, last Saturday. My friend and I were treated to a beautiful winter day with a fun crowd of 3,000-4,000, a busy food and beer court, and, of course, the glorious spectacle of athletes flinging themselves into space from a precipitously steep run-in on which they reach speeds of 55 mph.
Recent years have seen several improvements, including a powerful new PA system and a big leaderboard so spectators can see the standings in real time, according to media coordinator Sally Seymour, a member of the organizing committee and board of trustees.
The jump is on a sound financial footing. Proceeds from ticket sales are plowed back into the facility and an inventive fund-raising project is "selling" each of the jump's adjoining 184 metal steps to contributors for $1,000.
"We've just been steadily increasing our footprint as the popularity of it grows," Seymour said. "We're very solid."
Indeed, the event has built such cache that organizers no longer have to advertise on TV and can rely on local media and social media to draw crowds.
Euros on top
As for this year's winners, it was mostly the Europeans as usual.
The European athletes that come each year are gracious and humble, even though, hailing from a part of the world where Nordic jumping is huge, they have significant training and competition advantages over U.S. jumpers and so tend to jump farther and more consistently.
For the record, the longest jump in the open division at Saturday's Pepsi Challenge and U.S. Cup was by Vid Vrhnovnik of Slovenia, a mighty 95 meters. In second was Eirik Fystro of Norway, with a jump of 90 meters. And completing the podium was Ozbej Kotnik of Slovenia, with a 91.5-meter leap.
At Sunday's Fred Harris Memorial Tournament, it was three Slovenians on the podium, with Fystro in fourth.
In the under-20 division, it was all American jumpers on Saturday.
Champion Maxim Glyvka of Norge Ski Club in Illinois hit 93 meters, with Elias Oswald of Alaska in second with a top distance of 84 meters, and Tyler Phillips of Park City, Utah third with 80 meters.
Lift work at Wachusett
I reported in this column in November that Wachusett Mountain is planning to replace its 28-year-old summit quad, the Polar Express, most likely for the 2024-25 season, with either a six-passenger our four-passenger high-speed chairlift.
At that time, Wachusett president Jeff Crowley also told me that beginning this summer, the ski area will start work to completely renovate its shorter, but no less well used Minuteman high-speed quad. As to be expected, the lift has experienced more reliability problems as the years have passed since it was installed in 1999.
Over the weekend, Peter Landsman, author of the encyclopedic Liftblog.com, on which he chronicles the progress of every new ski lift in North America along with other ski industry news, discovered a job listing for a construction foreman at Wachusett with experience in Doppelmayr. That's Wachusett's favored lift vendor.
Landsman and I wondered whether this meant the probable six-pack headed for the Wachusett summit was on a new and faster track.
Instead, as Crowley explained, the job listing was for someone to oversee the $1.3 million overhaul of the Minuteman.
Overhaul
As Landsman detailed it in a Feb. 19 Tweet, the modernization project will entail the replacement of the Minuteman's electric motor, hydraulic system, brakes, auxiliary power unit and other parts.
I can say this: the old version has done its job.
The Minuteman has serviced a staggering number of ski races — from high school state championships to NASTAR racing to four-nights-a-week adult Night League races — plus race training sessions and ski and snowboard lessons, not to mention a gazillion hours of recreational skiing and riding.
Time for a tuneup, as Crowley puts it.
—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com .
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Interest in Nordic ski activities remains strong in New England
