Warm rain on an accumulation of cold snow is not good. Until mid December Lapland Lake Resort in Benson, NY had received over 16 inches of cold snow. By cold I mean that the temperatures had been in the single digits when it snowed. I used my best skate skis to set out controls on Wednesday as additional snow accumulated. I found the trails immaculately groomed by Olympian Olavi Hirvonen and his newest grooming equipment.
A warm drizzle developed over Friday night and showers were predicted for Saturday. It was raining as I set out the remaining controls on Saturday morning as the snow changed to “mashed potatoes”. My skate skis with polar glide wax still worked reasonably well, but I noticed strange things happened when I “bushwhacked”. The cold dry snow under the surface would accumulate on my wet skis. As long as I could see my ski tips bushwhacking still remained a viable route choice. Because of the slow skiing conditions I was unable to finish hanging the controls until 10:30 AM, so the first start was delayed from that which was advertised.
The open area south of the lodge and the slope up to the lodge were sufficient for a practice and warm up area. There were three courses:
- Yellow – 2.6 k (straight line distance) with 9 controls for M & F -18, and F55+
- Green – 5.5 k with 14 controls for M 55+ and F 40+ and
- Red – 7.9 k with 17 controls for M & F 19+. Those on the red course had two maps.
The rain continued as the 14 competitors started and as the winter solstice occurred, shortly after noon, fog and pockets of warm, mild air moved through the woods further complicating navigation. By the time we finished collecting the controls you could find rocks poking through the slushy trails in a few locations.
Results are summarized and additional pictures are posted on line.
I want to thank Travis Koziol for helping hang the last few controls, Gabor Bobok for handling registration and chip timing, Aims Coney and Pavel Korniliev for their help retrieving controls after the meet, and Ann and Olavi Hironen for their hospitality. This is the first in three years that we have had sufficient snow for the season opener. My only regret is that more people didn’t join us for a “Finn-tastic” season kick off.