Winter travel

More and more interest in going cross-country

By Sam Pfeifle

Though my family has always comprised a gaggle of big skiers (my grandparents built the Sugarloaf Inn, I’m proud to say), I was strictly an alpine man. Of the original four ski events that true skimeisters used to compete in — downhill and slalom (alpine), cross-country and jumping (nordic) — the fast, gate-crashing, on-the-edge events were far more attractive than either the simple insanity of launching oneself 90 meters off an iced ramp on a pair of wooden boards or the (to me) similar insanity of jogging miles through the snow with wooden boards strapped to your feet.

God, cross-country was so much work! And if you tried to go downhill even a little bit the turn at the bottom generally ended in full-blown disaster. For my money, cross-country was for fitness nuts and people with small children they wanted to drag around in sleds.

Now, I might be changing my tune. It’s everywhere, cross-country is. First, sitting around at Christmas time, I’ve got relatives extolling the virtues of the cross-country trails that have been groomed out at the wonderful new Pineland.

“Right,” I say, “great fun.” Expecting sympatheticly sarcastic hmmms, I, rather, get glares.

Then I see that L.L. Bean is hosting “world-class skier David Chamberlain,” this Thursday, January 23, and he’s, get this, a cross-country skier. Is this guy a minor celebrity or something? As a nordic skier? Insanity! Julie Parisien, Bode Miller, sure, they go fast and they win Olympic medals, but all I can imagine is standing at the side of a cross-country race and timing the span between “here he comes” and “there he goes” with a sun dial (alright, I can feel the continued glares from here. I know he goes fast, really).

Plus the January 6 Nationals event held in Rumford was actually a big deal that people were actually talking about. But here’s the kicker: On Tuesday, January 28, the Portland Ski Club and the City of Portland will announce a joint venture whereby the Riverside Golf Course will be open to the public for cross-country skiing over the span of 15 kilometers of groomed trails. That’s exciting, right?

Well, it should be, as it’s the result of some very hard work on the part of the ski club. Founded four years ago because some sons and daughters wanted to take their favorite winter sport to a competetive level, the PSC (purely as an aside, note that PSC is becoming an increasingly popular acronym in Portland) started out with seven skiers on the middle-school level. Today, they’ve got 12 athletes competing for Deering High School, where they’ve succeeded in getting the sport recognized as varsity caliber, and 19 at the middle-school level. They will even host an event February 11 at Riverside where 75 middle schoolers will battle it out. (Bring your, ahem, stopwatch.)

It’s this increased popularity that led the PSC to donate to the city an Arctic Cat snow machine and TiddTech grooming equipment that will allow for a roughly eight-foot-wide track to support a classic (always straight ahead) skier and a scissors-style (more like ice skating) skier to travel side-by-side.

The PSC’s Barbara Whiton has been involved since the beginning: “Before, my husband, Craig, [coach of the Deering team] would tramp out trails behind Deering High School in his snow shoes and the team would practice there.” They didn’t want to go to known locations like Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook or Tin Brook in Cumberland because “if we take the kids outside of the city limits we have to pay for buses. This is all supported by fundraising efforts that the club does pretty much year round.”

It’s been enough so far that the high schoolers compete just about every week between Christmas and mid-March, but that doesn’t mean people are rolling in cash (i.e., it’s not the Falmouth ski club (with apologies to any actual Falmouth Ski Club, about which I know nothing)).

“The reality is,” continues Whiton, “some of our generous parents funded loans for that grooming equipment, so we now need to do the fundraising to pay back those loans. There’s still a big push to develop the facility even more: Hot chocolate on the weekends, and a ski shop, and citizen races, and holding clinics, and just ski groups to support community.”

There’s already a bike club that meets in the Hannaford parking lot to ride around in the freezing cold, why not a cross-country club for those who like it even colder?

“On Saturday night,” Whiton says, speaking of January 11, right smack in the middle of Portland’s deepest cold snap in years, “we did a midnight ski. It was a little cold but it was still beautiful.”

Well, that’s proof positive right there. These people might be swell and well meaning, but they’re clearly insane — it was a solid 15 degrees below zero that night! I guess jogging all over the place with wooden planks (okay, they’re not made out wood anymore) strapped to your feet keeps you warm.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com. “Game On” tackles all manner of marginal sports and runs once a month.