I knew it was going to be a good weekend when the ladder that disappeared under the ice at the plunge hole last weekend (which has never happened before) surfaced back under the ice at the opening.
Take your pick. Opening the plunge hole, which includes cutting the ice and pushing the blocks cut in to four, under, is a full body workout and have managed not to fall in (very close) after all the years.

The weekend started out as good as it gets with fresh snow falling that we groomed as it was snowing. George took my advice to clear the rink with skates and cuts the time in half. For never being on ice and snow, the foreign staff have adapted nicely and enjoying winter.
The final races in the JOQ series wrapped up at Green Acres which was moved from Battle Creek. Jake was outside of qualifying for the National team and knew if he wanted to punch his ticket to Salt Lake, he would have to have a career weekend. He did just that cashing in on group racing skills from mountain biking and Lotvola Cup racing to post his best distance finish at third place. Saturday he followed up with another top five finish posting the fourth best time and taking third in the pursuit. He was named to the team later that day. A huge accomplishment being a first year JO (last year was a J1) and the qualification was a bit harder this year possibly with the combination of J1 and JO classes.
Jonell and Jack down to catch the action. Nice for them to stay at the Aunt and Uncles and keep it homey. Thanks to them! We are both super proud of his year long hard work. We take a different approach, training wise, compared to most JO skiers and feel it is paying off. Keeping balance, a peace of mind and focus on the little things key but having fun mixing it up.
(Thanks Bruce Adelsman of skinnyski for the photos and nice job with video from Saturday)

Jens had his first game of the season. He was super excited to play and had fun. His game was Saturday am and rest of weekend spent skiing and learning how to wax. Jens probably skate skied 25km this weekend and just heads out on his own skating all over the place and making up "short track courses". Jon's season is starting to wrap up and despite a bunch of kids being sick, they took a win over Roseau (always big to win against Roseau even if a down year for them) and a big league win on Sunday against Alex. A few days off to get healthy before the home tourney this weekend.

Sunday morning snuck out to check out the trails and enjoy some of the tracks that groomed up nicely Fri, Sat and Sun. Pretty much as good as it gets. Lower teens, sunshine and light winds made for best classic skiing of the year.

There are lot of things to blog about the past weekend...with all the goofy stuff, a storm was certain to roll in. And, as forecasted, a nice shot of snow resulting in 4" with some lingering flurries and incredible frost on the tail to take the skiing to the next level.

JO racing resumed last weekend with racing at Theo Wirth on the man made snow. Jake had a great race on Saturday in the classic as Bruce Adelsman of skinnyski, captured above, posting a solid result. I am still trying to figure the exact placings as they had SR skiers mixed in with the JO results. Sunday was the skate race and not feeling as punchy as the day before before but still a solid showing. The last two races on tap this weekend, ready to make it count!


In the mix of weekend hockey games and everything else, piano recital for Jens and Jack. Grandma Mary photo.


With snow falling Sunday, grooming resumed full force Sunday and all day Monday with high school race on Tuesday and getting the other trails set for recreational skiing. With limited snowfall this year, each inch that fell was packed on the key trails in effort to get the most out of the snow. Lee holding stick he uses to chase timber wolves off the trail. People comment it would be nice to get a 8" snowfall but sometimes you can get more mileage out of less snow managing it proper versus waiting til a 8" dry dump has stopped and a lot of it gets pushed to the sides.
Mark Morrissey and his family visting for a few days and took a hour break to ski in the fresh snow with Mark. Mark and Monica lived one year while we were in Essex working at the Izaak Walton Inn and good to catch up reliving the crazy stories in the soap town of Essex. The year Mark was there it rained at least one day out of the week the entire year. That might sound for bad skiing but when you live in the Pacific NW, it is part of the weather and rain is good for settling the snow pack. Mark and I did a few backcountry trips with the most memorable being a hike to the top of Spot Mountain along the continental divide in East Glacier area, and tele skiing down on wind swept slopes that had been subject to wind speeds highest ever recorded off the divide. It was probably the sketchiest skiing I have ever done.
Ski race on Tuesday, Bemidji Pursuits. A few of the Finnlandia crew down to help with timing and starting and fun working with these folks. Mark Walters, head coach at Bemidji always does a great job. Nice having background music in the start finish area.
Hockey players in the Richards family alarmed seeing skiers in the snipers edge room. Each team uses a room to change, hang out etc. in between racing and skiing. More space once everyone cleared out, all good.
Team mates Riley Nelsen and Zean Baker battling it out for the win as Zean overcame 500 meters to go to take the win. It's a lot of work setting up for the races but fun having the positive environment of hs ski racing in your back yard and the enthusiasm of the kids.

Jake did not race, instead skiing around with me. Tuesday I kept track of the time on the boards and # of km skied. Zipping around taking pictures, moving course tap for the five different courses and smoothing out snow on the corners etc and make sure things were flowing along resulted in about 5 hours clicked in and around 35km.
One of the things that happened you don't want to happen as a weekend starts is a break in the water line around the well. Since the well crew can't dig before locaters come out to mark lines, not able to fix the problem which was a hole in the pitless. Like I said before, no big deal to Elsner. Fixed middle this week before too large of a new ice rink was formed and all good.


Warmer temps and softer conditions, I keep Carlos off the trails as much as possible. Good reason to head up to the Sugarbush forest road for the first time with the fat bike. Riding on the singletrack is hard. But the forest road with more gradual hills, previous packing by snowmobile/atv with fresh snow made for ideal conditions for the fat bike. I didn't get all the way down but riding the downhills with no worries definitely a huge advantage over the ht and no way could ride those conditions without the big wheels. Would be good to incorporate this road in to a race and still trying to figure out a course and date for March.

Frosty tunnel on North Loup Tuesday. Welcome winter!

Last weekend Jon and his team were in Hibbing for the 12 team Bantam A tourney.

They started out with a win which is always good and ended up winning the next two games, allowing only 2 goals and winning the pool winner tie breaker allowing the least amount of goals. I caught the Saturday games after the morning groom and the second one was probably the best game I have seen them play all year. Great hockey. Played with heart and passion. The automatic bid to the championship game was on the line, and they stepped up to the plate and delivered. I don't like to single out individual accomplishments in a team sport but Jon had a nice weekend with a hat trick in the Sat evening game en route to 10 points on the weekend.

The played Hopkins in the championship game and lost, probably in a emotional low from being "up" from the day before. Still, a solid weekend earning the second place.

In between games I snuck over to Giants Ridge to check out the Silver trail which is the skate course for the state meet. I have high expectations for the Ridge with the events they put on and was disappointed to see 3" of fresh snow not groomed. I hate to be critical and negative but with the low snow year in the Midwest, it pretty much burned me not to see this snow packed out. Don't get me wrong, it was great to be skiing in fresh powder and the opportunity to do so but concern of hosting a state meet 3 weeks ago was not evident, imo.

Overall the coverage was good and the skiing was great and skiing under the lights was a blast.

Warroad and other towns claim to be the hockey town of USA but I would put Hibbing up there as well. There is so much history in the area with hockey, the mining, Bob Dylan, Kevin McHale, there really isn't a town like Hibbing in the state. The memorial arena is a classic. I made a too long of a video capturing a touch of the local flavor.

(skoyles photo)
Monday I made the trip back east to catch the action at MT Itasca for the Little Falls invite. I have never been to the LF Invite which is normally held at Ripley but wanted to check it out this year since it was Jake's SR year. Unfortunately, they weren't able to have it at Ripley. Jake won the classic and put 12 more seconds on in the pursuit to take the overall win. Mt Itasca is a great place to watch and during the skate race I was able to ski next to Jake and watch maybe 70% of the race.

For Christmas, Jonell and the boys delivered a Mukluk fat bike. The fat bike is becoming super popular and I had my doubts. I have done a lot of snow riding with the 26 hardtail and looking at some of the conditions people are riding with fat bikes, I asked myself "why"? I have been riding at least once a week on Twin Lakes singletrack and this week it was much better with a line to follow. It is amazing what the bike can ride through and can ride much more than I imagined. The ski and snowshoe trails are perfect but I am staying off. I feel snow is meant to ski on and singletrack is meant to bike on and if there is a bike that can handle it in winter mode, all good. I am hoping to have a fat bike race either late February or early to mid March. Thinking of a course, it would probably start on the lake, go through a marsh area, little bit of ski trail, bushwhacking through the woods and finish up on some singltrack. Dates and time to be posted, hopefully, soon.

The ski season is in full swing. The winter has not brought a lot of the white stuff but somehow we are making it work with only 6-7" of total snowfall for the season. The warm days have transitioned the snow to a granular state which allows for a higher melting point during the spikes in temps. The low angle of the sun, short days and glazing of the trails at dusk with falling temps is keeping the snow on the trails. Another key factor is the frost is deep in the ground and with the thin base, the base keeps refrigerated from the cold temps below, much like ice in hockey arenas that can have ice even in the hottest days of summer.

Last weekend we had the Rochester team come up for a ski camp. The team is 140 members strong which is amazing. There were just over 130 here with coaches and chaperones. That is more ski club members than FM/DL/FF etc. combined! The coaches and leaders doing a fantastic job keeping kids interested and motivated. Their trip to Maplelag was the first time on snow.

Early December I needed some snow to help fill in some low spots on the rink in our back yard but we had none so I loaded up snow from behind the arena to make slush and fill in. Since than, I have been loading up pickup loads to fill on thin and bare spots at the start area exposed to the sun and wind and also on Kamikaze hill on the skaters waltz trail. A couple nights, Jon and one of his team mates, Cooper, helped unload. Having Kamikaze covered, we could ski the full loop.

Jeff Robertson is one of the directors of the MNMBS and helps out as a coach with the Rochester team.
Getting a fresh load from the boni. The snow that hasn't been sitting as long is easier to shovel. The comments of people passing by have been good. Making snow men, building up for fish houses, snow ball fight, beer cooler..yep, sure.

With lack of snow causing most races to move to Mt Itasca, decided it was time to do the DL Invite. Once we set the date, went to work building up the thin areas in anticipation of the mid 40's the day before the race. Instead of hauling more loads, I got a hold of a excavator guy I knew. He had a 40 yard box and stopped by the arena and filled it up and dumped it at the trail head.
I spread some of it near the trail head and than used the remaining to cover a long section that was thin on Skaters Waltz. I loaded in to the pick up than drove out to the section via some other trails and the REA line.

Also had some help from Lars and Jack Ellefson who skied along skaters, covering dark spots.
When I started sliding I saw the writing on the wall. There was nothing I could do to pull back and prevent the bucket from hitting the rear window. It wasn't snow. I knew to be aware of that, and filled in middle but the wet ice provided no traction.
Steve and this years foreign staff members helping spread on a thin area from a pick up load.

Ended up covering this sun exposed hill all way around the corner. Temp started dropping Monday afternoon earlier than expected so got out to groom it out right away before it set up like cement and do final grooming touch ups and all systems go for Tuesdays race.




I was committed to do everything possible to pull off the DL Invite for Jake's Sr year. The morning of the race I skied the 5km doing touch up work with the shovel and by race time, everything was full covered. After living in Essex, MT in Glacier Park where 425 inches fell the last year we lived there, I learned to appreciate the shovel and the health benefits. I will never own a snowblower for as long as I live. Video recap of the race above.





Jr High race was on the lake which worked out great and was nice the older skiers came down and cheered them on. We closed the trails after the girls Varsity/JV race so the trails wouldn't get skied out. There is no sport like Nordic. Brainerd kids checking out a beaver lodge.


Buses and Maplelag aren't the best mix but it works and always something interesting that happens.
Current snow depth map on Jan. 6.
Look at the topo of MN and interesting comparisons between elevation and snow. We are located in the dark brown, just below the blue (probably Strawberry mountain) in wnw part of state.
Wednesday the temp dropped 47 degrees. Snow froze down hard and base is bomb proof. Lars getting some hill work in.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. This has to be one of the most memorable Holiday seasons. (No, I am not doing a electronic Christmas card. Maybe by Valentines day the Christmas card will go out. Just having a hard time picking which pictures I want to use of the dogs and cat).

The time before, during and after Christmas/New Years is the busiest of the year at the resort and other activities. Time flies by and now we are in January. With the lack of snow in December, it seems like we went from a long November to January. The only thing making it like January is have the ground white and the trails skiable and temps in single digits. But today felt like March..which means February will be cold and snowy?!?!

This is the first Christmas eve and definitely latest I have ever mountain biked in December on the mtb singletrack at Maplelag. Jake and I rode the twin lakes singletrack Christmas eve and the riding was really fun even with a couple of inches on the ground. Plenty of traction and fast rolling.

Suicide hill was hanging on to snow and a quick ski Christmas eve to check the skier traffic. Not often you can do both.

Over to Park Rapids for church and family fun. Pretty lucky Santa still swings on by.

Triple crock pot action.

Anything edible with bacon wrapped around it.

Took 13 years to knock off the first two bottles of aquavit, now on to the third. Always helps when more family is present. Hard to describe to feeling in the stomach when potato alcohol mixes with lutefisk, the above and everything else.

All good when club soda is chilling on the deck. Not sure who invented it, but amazing. Good way to cap the evening. The best thing is you can make it at home now.

Ski meets and hockey games keeping the wheels moving on the Yukon across nw MN during the Holidays. Jens and I caught one of the meets at Mt Itasca which has hosted all the meets this year. The snow is fast and 33 degrees and sunny doesn't get much better.

Having to cancel the ski camps and all the ski teams canceling after Christmas was a major bummer but as we moved closer to new years, the occupancy went up and folks came even if the skiing was marginal at best. Lake skiing added to the activities and was a different but fun time frame. We had two guests from D.C., Claudia and Holly who came with attitudes that are priceless and motivated a lot of people. Super positive and making the most of the situation doing everything they could.

Set up the two Salsa so they could do some snow biking for the first time. Very fortunate to have guests such as them.

Three days of snow blanketed the trails to end the month and grooming back in action. Great to have Lee back again as he really dialed it in the end of the year and between the two of us, can knock out the entire 60k plus in 4-5 hrs.

Put the dark house out and tried the luck at spearing. We don't have the patience to sit it out like we should but some guests did spear a few northerns. Hope to get out there during the week this winter.

After a lot of late nights working on the rink, finally got it going just when the snow came shutting down the lake skating. Jon had a bunch of hockey buddies over for New Years and seeing them goof around is as good as it gets and worth all the cold hands and frozen parts. Even had the goalie which is awesome.

Good times on New Years eve and some good stories adding to the memorable Holiday season. 1:30am swing by the warming house to stoke the fire and shut off lights but someone other than Carlos enjoying the chair! Cheers!