It’s back! Currently scheduled for May 29,2022, this iconic race should be operational again after taking a covid-enforced hiatus for 2021. The Ski-to-Sea race is composed of 7 legs (8 people) that travel 55 miles past the 6500 foot level of Mt. Baker to the shores of Bellingham Bay in Fairhaven.
The Nooksack Nordic Ski Club has nothing to do with the Ski-to-Sea race, except that many teams have trouble filling their cross-country ski slot and are looking for experienced skiers who can finish a 4 mile loop in ‘soft’ conditions. So this page is designed to provide wanna-be Nordic racers with some additional information.
To calibrate things, I (Pete, age 68, relatively experienced, middling athletic condition) skied it with skinny classical fishscale skis and finished in the middle of the pack. And the team that added me appeared to be happy with what they got…
You can peruse all the results. You can scroll down to find me at place 201 in 2019…
If you are interested in entering the race and looking for a team, check out this message board (part of the Ski-to-Sea site).
The course is listed at 4 miles. It’s relatively hilly (it is part of a downhill ski area) – it’s either going uphill or downhill – but having said that, the hills aren’t all that bad. Unfortunately (but understandably) they do not set any classical tracks. The course is usually fairly solid at the start of the race, but with 400 skiers, it gets churned up fairly quickly. Given the late May date, the weather is warm and the snow soft – picking a kick wax would be difficult. Skin skis, fishscales, or skating!
I did the ski to sea in 2017 and 2019. As an experienced, but not fast, skate and classical skier, I chose skinny (48 mm) fishscale classical skis rather than skate skis because of all the uphills and how the snow gets churned up. I finished a little slower than right in the middle. There is no question that skating is faster, but you need the stamina to blast up the hills in soft snow. I’d say that if you are aiming for the top 30-40%, you need to skate – go out fast enough to be with the quicker skiers and then stay with them (general strategy in a mass start race is to line up on one of the edges, so you can work forward along the edge and not get caught in the jam in the middle.). But if you are aiming for more the middle of the finishers, get the fastest classical skis you can find and ski your own race through the heavy traffic. I felt that I was limited by my stamina, not by the traffic. All this is of course just my humble opinion…
