Parallax is an effect where the objects in the background of an image appear to move more slowly than the objects in the foreground. In animation, it’s traditionally been used to add depth to an otherwise two-dimensional world. With the background moving slowly, the faster movement in the foreground implies that time is moving. In effect, parallax is a way of adding time into one’s understanding of a place. I reckon that the essential experience...
For the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation (the Birkie) it’s been a long time coming. The dedication ceremony held Saturday for the new projects that encompass the Mt. Telemark Village, the former site of the legendary Telemark Lodge, have been in the works for five years. All together, Mt. Telemark Village is “the biggest thing the American Birkebeiner has ever done.” Its $10.2 million dollar capital campaign, though, doesn’t capture what, for skiing, might just might...
February is here, and Nordic skiers in the Upper Midwest are at a teetering point. Many of us are remaining cautiously optimistic that all we need is “one good snow” to salvage our ski season. The Canadian Birkie, American Vasa, Finlandia, and Vasaloppet USA have already cancelled their races. Many skiers are starting to wonder how races like the Birkie will look this year. What a stark contrast from last year’s record setting snowfall throughout...
“You’re skiing along, and you look up at the green of the pines and look down and see golden tamarack needles peeking out of the Wisconsin snow, and you find yourself gliding along thinking, ‘my gosh, how lucky can one guy get…and Go Packers too!” – Grandpa Theyerl, Wisconsinite, Birchlegger. The American Birkebeiner turns 50 years old this weekend. And although it didn’t ask for it, I’m doing some existential rumination on its behalf....
The Youth Olympic Games are an Olympic-style competition (both summer and winter) staged for athletes between the ages of 15-18. In the winter of 2024, Gangwon Korea hosted over 1,800 young athletes in this celebration of sport, sportsmanship, and fellowship. Start young athletes early on all three, and the world is likely to be a better place. The Youth Olympics is also a chance for young stars of the future to step on to the...
At the edge of the parking lot at the Wild Wings Ski Touring Center stands a strategically placed, much used, and much loved snow pile. Getting up speed by dropping down the short slope in front of the main building, young skiers catch air off the top of the pile, daring each other to ever-bigger, ever-trickier leaps. They’ve been doing it for years. Ben Ogden, Sophie Caldwell, Simi Hamilton, Katharine Ogden, Bill Koch, Fin Bailey....
Watching the Stifel U.S. Ski Team during the first half of the 2023-24 World Cup season has, at points, been a sublime experience. That feeling of overwhelming exhilaration when looking out from the mountain top has been something literal for American athletes on top of podiums—and literal Alpes too—as they’ve traveled week-to-week, race-to-race, across Europe this winter. From Jessie Diggins’ Overall World Cup lead and Tour de Ski win, to career firsts way into her...
A tale of how I skied faster than Kikkan Randall for exactly five minutes and 39 seconds until I got tired and she hit more rifle targets than I did. Once upon a time, I was a serious, though definitively not successful, cross-country skier. I raced for my college team in Maine, then kept at it afterward and one time finished 17th (I think, I can’t find the results any more) at the Tour of...
Imagine toiling tirelessly an entire lifetime to build a successful business. Decades pass. You are now in your sixties contemplating some version of retirement. Standard operating procedure in this circumstance is to put your business on the market, see what it will sell for, and sell out to the highest offer. Most of the time, that’s how the game is played. Maximize return on investment. However, a different model is being played out at Active...
Like most Midwestern states, the majority of Minnesota is an unending grid of corn and soy fields. Land isn’t so much land as it is commodity. Inhabiting that landscape tends to be a constant reminder to think in terms of economy. Life, like farming, is a series of inputs and outputs, costs, and benefits. Unlike most Midwestern states, though, things get wilder the farther North you go in Minnesota. Lakes, lots of them, jut in...
This is Part II of an article reporting on the recent appearance of the SMS T2 team at an evening where FasterSkier partnered with The Memory Clinic of Bennington, Vermont. The video posted below features the entirety of a wide-ranging Question & Answer session that involved most of the SMS T2 team, including Julia Kern, Jessie Diggins, and Ben Ogden. It was a treat to be among so many of our skiing heroes, and to...
The world of professional skiing is big and broad, but each professional team has a community they call “home.” For SMS T2, they are definitely the Home Team in the Nordic community of southern Vermont and western Massachusetts. It’s always fun and inspiring when the team and the community get to come together (as SMS T2 has always been devoted to doing) for events, for conversations, for competitions, and for cameraraderie. FasterSkier recently teamed up...
Finn Sisu may not have been the first place to sell skis in the Twin Cities, but it was the first “ski shop.” Ahvo Taipale, a Finnish immigrant and Agricultural Engineer, had spent a decade competing (and often winning) cross-country ski races across the Midwest before he looked around at the growing number of Twin Cities skiers doing new races like the American Birkebeiner and realized that someone would need to provide all those skis....
BENNINGTON, VERMONT – FasterSkier is excited to team up with The Memory Clinic to present an evening with Olympic Athletes Julia Kern, Jessie Diggins, and Ben Ogden to discuss the Integration of Physical and Mental Health. On Monday, September 25, in Bennington, Vermont these SMS T2 team members will be on hand to discuss the importance of goal-setting and maintaining motivation for athletes and non-athletes, alike. The evening’s keynote speaker will be World Championship bronze...
In 2008 and 2009, a teenage skier from Minnesota won the 23 kilometer Korteloppet race at the Telemark Resort in Cable, WI: that’s how Jessie Diggins got her start. Way back then, she probably imagined that her future would one day include contending for the win in the full-length Birkebeiner race. That was many years, and many kilometers, and many races, and many headlines ago. Now, Jessie Diggins will finally get her chance to line...
And, so, it’s back to school . . . The day after Labor Day: it’s always been the day of packing lunches and organizing pencils, of combing cowlicks and catching buses, of searching for new classrooms and picking new desks. Friends re-met after a summer off, and teachers newly met in topics as yet un-mastered. But every few years—every six, or eight, or twelve—the first day of school is a different sort of thing. Some...
Even for the US Postal Service, delivering mail to the end of the road at 9,000 feet is a challenge. Home delivery is out of the question: in Crested Butte, Colorado, you need a PO box, no matter who you are. As a consequence, a trip to pick up packages at the Post Office is something you make a day out of, and each member of the disparate factions that make up life in our...
White-knuckled, we caravanned down I-94 from St. Cloud to Minneapolis in the midst of a bomb cyclone of wind, snow, and ice. Braving the conditions, we crawled toward our destination: the 2021, hybrid City of Lakes Loppet at Theodore Wirth Park. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic—and a hearty desire to stay healthy for the remainder of the ski season—we decided to drive separately. Now, we were inching our way to a late start for our...
Tony Wise could see 10,000 years at once. The last ice age had sent a glacier down over Wisconsin, and then tore it back. In the process, the landscape and lilt of a place emerged. Deep-pocketed kettles, ridges, gentle and subtle rolling hills, all draped in the needly green of the pines. Gaze at it, and time didn’t seem like something that moved forward, but instead danced within the bounds of a whole epoch. A...
If you need a little diversion from whatever you do in the off season and want to connect with skiing’s past, check out this 30 minute documentary on YouTube about Jackrabbit Johannsen. This 1975 video produced by the National Film Board of Canada chronicles the life of the Norwegian outdoorsman turned backwoods legend. Johannsen is widely credited with being one of the first Europeans to popularize cross-country skiing in North America. I’m not certain how...