Whistling in the Dark:

The sun sets early, and Nordic skiers across the Midwest are anxiously checking forecasts in hopes of cold and snow. The last two years have been tough, starting with the winter of 2023/2024 that repeatedly shattered heat records. Last winter wasn’t as warm but saw a snow drought that caused the cancellation of one of the nation’s oldest ongoing ski races. For more than 60 years, skiers have gathered for the Eric Judeen 10k Classic, held on the elbow-ticklingly narrow ski trails at Korkki Nordic, in the Clover Valley north of Duluth. Long regarded as safely ensconced in the boreal snow belt and receiving on average 90 inches of snow, last winter Duluth got just 38 inches. In recent years, Korkki trail tender Mark Helmer has struggled to keep the place going.

“Climate change has de nitely impacted our ability to exist,” says Helmer, who has been nurturing these trails since the 1980s. “We aren’t ready to call it quits yet, but at some point, if snow does not come we will have to close. For small, volunteer powered organizations, snow making is not a practical option.

Another of the region’s most venerable races, the Marine O’Brien Race, has been canceled the last two years. Its name is a play on William O’Brien State Park and Marine on St. Croix, the park and town of its setting, both just east of the Twin Cities. Hall of Fame Stillwater High School ski coach Bill Simpson was a founder of the race and has been involved with it for more than fifty years. Not so many decades ago, Simpson recalled that every winter William O’Brien State Park was socked in with reliable snow. Last winter, desperate to groom ski trails after two trackless cycles, the park tried blazing trail during a slushy snowfall and the result was, Simpson
says, “skiing in slush up to your ankles.” He continues: “Right now, down in the Twin Cities, if you don’t have a snowmaking venue nearby, you don’t ski. If you’re not a high school skier, or training for the Birkie, people don’t get on skis anymore. I think the sport is really in trouble.”

The Minnesota State Climatology Office states on its website: “Winter warming rates in particular have risen even more sharply in recent decades, and from 1970 through 2021, average daily winter low temperatures rose more than 15 times faster than average daily summer high tempteratures." Still, skiers are holding tight to the sport that they love, and Simpson says Marine O'Brien organizers will keep preparing for the race, "every year for the forseeable future. It's almost like we're whistling in the dark with Nordic Skiing. There's all this interest in it now and all this participation, but on the other hand the sport is disappearing. People talk about it and are concerned, but the general population doesn't seem to make that connection."

The Twin Cities have the biggest concentration of Nordic skiers in the nation, and ski areas there and throughout the Midwest are adapting to milder seasons, Elm Creek in Maple Grove is part of the Three Rivers Park District and Maple Grove is part of the Three Rivers Park District and has 18 kilometers of ski trails, though the full roster hasn't been open in years due to lack of snow. Says Dominic Ray, the park's operations supervisor: "Last winter was manageable. While our natural snow trails never fully opened, the temperatures stayed cold enough for us to
make adequate snow on our 2.5-kilometer Valley Trail.” He went on to say how even with snowmaking equipment, the ‘23/’24 season was so warm they were barely able to maintain the Valley Trail. Skiing many laps surrounded by dozens of other skiers is a very di erent experience than following one of Elm Creek’s natural snow trails into the woods on the type of journey that attracted most crosscountry skiers to the sport in the first place.

North America’s grandest Nordic race, Wisconsin’s Birkebeiner, hasn’t had to cancel since 2017, though the 2024 running came “wicked close,” says American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation Executive Director, Ben Popp. “The biggest thing you’re always thinking about is how you do more with less? How do you have a better experience with less snow?” The Birkie’s moves toward this goal include rethinking trails on south facing hills that melt out sooner and evening trail surfaces to a golf course level of smoothness so that grooming can be done with less snow.

The Birkie can make enough snow to cover seven kilometers of trail. “We’re strongly considering storing snow,” says Popp. “Snow making in January and February when it’s cold and storing it through fall so you can deploy in early winter.” This is o en done in Europe and would entail producing a huge pile of snow—10,000 cubic meters—then covering it with sawdust or insulating blankets (a Finnish company called Snow Secure makes these), which would protect the snow through the summer and into next fall. Incredibly, after nine months of storage under blankets, almost 90 percent of the snow would survive until the following spring. 10,000 cubic meters of faux snow covers 5 kilometers of trail and would allow some Birkie trail to open for skiing by Thanksgiving.

Snow making, however, is not a perfect solution, Popp acknowledges. “More people want to ski into nature and get onto trails. We can create snow options, but they’re not the experiences people want to have, which is heading into the woods, having an adventure of sorts.” So as not to add to the climate change problem that’s looming ever larger, the Birkie Foundation is installing more solar panels to power their snowmaking and reducing weekly trail grooming, which is done by dieselconsuming Pistenbullys. Popp is under no illusion that the Foundation’s efforts alone will make a dent in slowing the warming of winters, but the Foundation has a large

The ABR Trails Foundation has been very fortunate with our location right in the snowbelt of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In times when most ski areas have no snow, the trail system is covered in natural snowfall. Still, trail managers are working to harness that natural snow cover more e ciently. “We are working on an early snow loop, or rather set of loops, that would make skiing earlier even more of a reality. We have carefully selected trail segments near our trailhead with limited forest overstory, which would otherwise hold snow rather than allowing it to fall on the ground,” said Matthew Shruck, operations manager, ABR Trails Foundation. “We are working diligently to level out bumps, holes, and also the camber of these segments, or rather the le to right tilt of the trail. This will allow the snow to fall more evenly on the ground and help prevent snow from lling in pockets instead of blanketing the trail.”

One side e ect of increasingly unreliable winters was the rise of fat biking. Fat biking can be done on snow too crummy to ski on and surged in popularity until several years ago. A er the industry wide pandemic bike shortage, however, fat bike sales have lagged. “Locally, fat bike sales are very low, in part due to high numbers of closeout bikes the previous few years,” says Ansel Schimp , executive director of Duluth’s extensive COGGS trail network. “Fat bikes don’t change much and see much less abuse than a mountain bike.” Despite fewer fat bikes being sold, Schimp says COGGS trails receive consistent winter bike tra c. One Duluth trail was ridden last winter between 30 to 200 times a day. As with snowmaking, though, even the fat biking season was disrupted by the shockingly warm winter of ‘23/’24. “We had so many warmups that we had to close the trails to all users, even in what should have been the dead of winter,” Schimp recalls. “Personally, I’ve spent more time at Spirit Mountain, both alpine skiing and doing loops on the snowmaking loop, and I think that was the case for many diehard cross-country skiers.”

The ultimate appeal of skiing is rooted in traditional Norwegian values of spending time amidst the glory of nature, often with loved ones, and bettering one’s community through improving individual health. The Birkebeiner Foundation embraces these principles. Ben Popp again: “Our goal is getting people outside, and that means winter, and that means snow. We think skiing has a positive e ect on peoples’ lives, from a health and a community standpoint, and want to ensure future generations can have those experiences. We can create snow and ensure skiable trails, but does that mean the sport lasts? That’s hard to say. If there’s less and less snow, there’s less and less people.”

Bill Simpson thinks Nordic skiing’s continuing relevancy despite a warming planet stem from youth: “I think it’s high school skiers who are keeping it alive. Kids come out in November; they know snow isn’t coming until late December anyway. Warm winters haven’t a ected overall numbers. They aren’t like adults who say, ‘there’s no snow, I’m not going to buy new skis.’”

Starting in the 1970s, Simpson’s coaching style helped build today’s Nordic culture. Prior to him, one of the very few coaches who operated in a way that would still be recognizable was Charlie Banks, coach of the Duluth Central High School team. In the 1950s ski jumping was a mainstream popular sport and a new specialty called downhill was taking off. Banks always loved classic striding, though. With an axe he built a trail network on his property in the Clover Valley. Banks’ team was so small that the kids all t into his station wagon for after school drives to practice. Unleashed on Banks’ personal trail, the young skiers would chug along on wooden skis.

Skis are now space age synthetics, and many high school Nordic teams are so big they take two buses to practice. Yet long snowy winters seem a thing of the past. Still, the season is dawning, and the region’s Nordic skiers have scraped o their layers of summer storage wax and are watching the forecast with tempered optimism.

Mark Helmer is no exception. After having to cancel last year’s Eric Judeen 10k Classic, the race Charlie Banks founded in 1963, Helmer has tended to the winding forest paths his old friend Banks blazed so long ago. “In the meantime,” Helmer says, “the trails are mowed and I remain hopeful.”

Have the last couple of low snow years a ected ABR, or are you far enough up there in the snow belt that it hasn’t been an issue?