Greeting from Hayward!
In a demonstration of great weather-related foresight and judgement, we hit the road Monday evening instead of Tuesday morning in order to drive in cold snowy conditions instead of terribly icy conditions. The most recent majorly disgusting eastern El-Nino driven storm was pretty easy to read, and us easterners know when we don’t want to be driving on the roads!
We arrived in Birkieland yesterday afternoon to picture-perfect winter conditions, and news of no grooming on the Birkie trail, and a full course closure effective Wednesday at 11:59PM until the race start. Because, WARM! I heard one person refer to the forecast as “ARMAGEDDON”. What could possibly cause all of this mayhem? You might well ask. It appears that the temperatures will go above freeing for a couple of days, and there may even be non-frozen precipitation! Armageddon indeed. These people need to spend some time in the east.
Because of the course closure our plans for testing waxes and skis are currently pretty fluid. Last night the temps here at Cresthill resort hit -15F. The first real warm-up will come Thursday, with afternoon temps hitting the mid-30s as the warm and wet weather system (ARMAGEDDON) moves in. There’s a sure bet of some rain on Friday, ending before the race start on Saturday. We will be testing a lot of different things starting Thursday afternoon, and of course on Friday. For our elite athletes there’s a good chance that we’ll be making a lot of different race ski options and testing skis first thing Saturday morning.
In order to help our friends, readers, and customers make informed decisions, we’ll post our “best guess” recommendations on Thursday evening, and again on Friday. Please understand that there are a lot of moving parts here. All of our recommendations will be based on testing, and on our expectations for how grooming and course preparation will unfold.
We will be available on-snow somewhere on Thursday afternoon, and are happy to consult on email as our time allows. Please send me a message anytime!