With Winter X Games hype still ringing in our ears, please indulge me in bringing attention to an upcoming Aspen event that makes up for an absence of “amplitude” with a connection to the soul of skiing.
On Feb. 10, Rocky Mountain Nordic will put a new twist on a venerable event, the Owl Creek Chase, in hopes of rejuvenating the cross country ski scene in Colorado. It is an ambitious idea and well worth supporting.
The main event involves some of America’s top racers in a 25-kilometer USSA “SuperTour” event that begins at the Snowmass Golf Club and finishes at the Aspen Cross Country Center, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Organizers are combining it with a “noncompetitive” tour for skiers who find the racing scene intimidating.
The idea is to make it a nordic ski festival in the European tradition, bringing together the elite side of the sport and its recreational base in a celebration of the sport we all love.
“It is a means for people to get out and not have to worry about racing against the watch,” Rocky Mountain Nordic president Ruth Brown said. “Some people are intimidated by racing and people skiing fast. This is a very welcoming, easy way for people to get out and enjoy other people’s company, in a social situation, and yet have a very individual and physically gratifying experience.”
Brown has nothing against competition. She ran track and cross country at the University of Colorado, won the second Bolder Boulder in 1980 and turned to cross country ski racing after high-level running became too hard on her body. She competed internationally and later coached for the Aspen Valley Ski Club. She has two children who are outstanding nordic racers.
Put it this way: I wouldn’t want to race her, on skis or the roads. But Brown wants the nordic scene to be more welcoming to folks with more modest gifts – or goals.
“You could enter the Bolder Boulder and walk it and be fine,” Brown said. “Many of the ski events, there isn’t that same welcoming attitude – you can’t just go out there and shuffle. This gives skiers an opportunity to go at their own pace, at much more of an enjoyable, noncompetitive pace.”
The Aspen event is the second of two noncompetitive tours in the nascent Rocky Mountain Nordic Tour series. I skied the first one three weeks ago (Tour the Summit), which began at the Gold Run Nordic Center in Breckenridge and ended at the Frisco Nordic Center. Despite cold temperatures and gusty winds, the tour was great fun.
Rocky Mountain Nordic hopes to expand the series. Already there is interest for tours next winter in Vail and Winter Park.
The Governor’s Cup used to be the kind of event Rocky Mountain Nordic officials envision, but it lost the casual skiers and became a pretty esoteric event.
“I think we lost something when we did not continue with the Governor’s Cup’s original intent: To support the grassroots,” said Mark Flolid, president of the Boulder Nordic Club. “It evolved where it was just a race, you had a bunch of people in Lycra, these supermen. We want to go back to a ski festival for everybody.”
Did I mention they had a beer sled at the Frisco Nordic Center during Tour the Summit?
Rocky Mountain Nordic believes bringing the competitive and casual segments of the sport together can achieve a synergy that benefits both.
“I think the way you get there is, you develop a tour series and you merge the racing side with it,” Flolid said. “You have high school, juniors, collegiate, masters, tourists. This is a big community, if you brought it together in one weekend. What we’ve lost is the coordination between those groups.”
The Aspen event includes a 15K option for recreational racers. The 25K for elite racers is open to them as well. The noncompetitive tour follows the 15K course and utilizes the same aid stations.
“The more people we draw into nordic skiing, the better it is for everyone,” Brown said. “Certainly (for) the junior athletes who are competing at a high level, just bringing the awareness of the sport and getting more people involved in it, there’s more support for it, it just has a ripple effect.”
For more information: www.rmnordic.org.
