It’s Monday November 14th and a major winter storm is hitting us here in Grand Marais. It’s supposed to last until 6 pm Tuesday with 7 to 13 inches of snowfall. So far we’ve received almost 5 inches so we are on track. Lots of trail work was completed about a week ago with two bridges getting repaired, seven trail sections were re-done to correct erosion problems and about 15 culverts had work done on them to cover the exposed plastic back up or being dug up and reburied. Today, the lights that highlight the trail from the warming building to the parking lot had a new timer installed. The string of lights that were out last winter were fixed this summer with a short in the line being the culprit. More updates in a few days…

Or… The Sweden Project is going to be the next phase of Devils Track Nordic Ski Shop, a training and racing program to be established domestically first, and then globally. With the name “Sweden” in it, that is one of the places I hope to base out of, but it will probably involve a multitude of places to explore all of what cross-country skiing has to offer.

Here is a sketch of some of the details for the Sverige Projekt, more will be cleared up once we have good snow to train on. Master’s World Cup is coming to Canmore, Alberta CANADA in March of 2022, so that’s my focus for the program.  Send an email to ski@devilstracknordic.com if interested.

$675 High training program 2-3 days/week (6-8 hrs.)  Tuesday &Wednesday (11 am to 1 pm)/Sunday (afternoon 4-5 pm)

3 free ski waxing

Distance and technique work; sprint intervals on Wednesday evenings

Planning training for World Masters

$175 Learning program 1 day/ week (1-2 hrs.) Sunday (afternoon 4-5 pm)

2 free ski waxing

Distance and classic/skate progressions

Planning basic weekly training

As Tom Petty said, “The waiting is the hardest part”.  That’s been true with the ski shops inventory this season (almost two months behind schedule) and skiable snow (I skied about 300 kilometers by this time last year). Luckily, my first batch of skis, boots poles and bindings are scheduled to arrive mid-week (Dec. 8-9th). All my gloves and mittens should be there by that time too and all of wax order has made it too. After a relatively long snow drought, that may be over soon too as snow is forecast to begin falling the night of December 4th and extend into the morning of December 6th. The storm has been upgraded to a “Blizzard” so we’ll see what happens. I’ll be heading out one last time to cut up some already tipped over trees alongside the Pincushion ski trails so the when the groomers start grooming these trails should be passable. As with any early season storm, the first snowfalls usually bring down a few large trees.

Or… The Sweden Project is going to be the next phase of Devils Track Nordic Ski Shop, a training and racing program to be established domestically first, and then globally. Of course with the name “Sweden” in it, that is one of the places I hope to base out of, but it will probably involve a multitude of places around the world to explore all of what cross-country skiing has to offer. More information on Sverige Projekt will be forthcoming in the spring of 2021.

An important part og improving one’s skiing is to begin training in the late spring/ early summer period. And by this I mean training using a variety of methods using all of the opportunities which are in close proximity to where you live. Another important part of improving your skiing is early access to skiing on snow; preferably by mid-October. I mean that! The last part is having a variety of skiing experiences either regionally, across the country or globally. These experiences expose oneself to other methods and the variety of cultures within the cross-country skiing community.

Bra yule!

A new ski season is upon us. We started in mid- October here in Grand Marais and was able to ski a little over 210 kilometers at Pincushion and the Golf course. After a warmup though it was back to dryland training – ski walking, ski bounding and running with ski poles. There is no shortage of training options for one to do. Devils Track Nordic Ski Shop is up and running with fewer core hours than normal. We have most of what we ordered now but still are waiting on some ski boots and ski poles. A big shipment of ski poles arrived from Madshus on Saturday and a few went right out the door to eager customers. It is snowing at the moment with a little more significant snow expected on Tuesday. May be able to ski on the trails again by then!

Upper Snowman after completing some human powered grooming!

We’re almost at the half way point in March. After a brief warmup and some melting we’re cooling down and back to adding some more snow to our snowpack again. It’s been spring like the past week and a half with fast icier trails and warmer temperatures. The snowpack fell about 15-18 inches but we still have at least 16-20 inches on the Pincushion trails so we are in fine shape. Today, 3/12, we’re getting some snow and the temp’s are around 32-34 degrees. So this is how the trails look this week.

It has been a snowy December around here. Although, over Christmas the temp’s rose a little and has crusted over our packed powder snow conditions. Our Cook County High School/ Middle School Nordic Ski team had an excellent ski meet in Cloquet last week. First time in a long time that they were able to hold a classic race at Pine Valley. Plentiful snow and the temp’s were not overly freezing too!

It’s mid-November now and it’s starting to look like winter. It’s been cold enough and we have had some snow but we’re still waiting for that first big snowfall. The trails at Pincushion  are in excellent shape and are eagerly awaiting the snowmobiles and grooming machines too! Our local middle and high school ski team has been out dryland training on the trails, but they too are hoping for skiable snow soon too. Currently the coverage is about 1-2 inches with a few ice patches in some low areas. We’re not here yet but soon our trails will look like this!

It’s cooling down in the Arrowhead of Minnesota. Yeah! That means ski season is getting closer. We’ll be in the shop a lot more then too and updating the store content of the website with more current information and products. Some leaves are starting to turn too. Our training will get a boost too and we’ll be doing more ski specific activities like roller skiing and grass skiing. Until then… I’ll keep up my cycling and move into cyclocross season.

Every day this past week we got a few inches of snow. Then the wind came up too blowing it all around so that it made it look like our tails had not  been groomed the next morning, even though they had as our groomers were kept busy daily. Here’s a report from grooming central:

The trails at Pincushion are in great shape, following a week of snow (6-7 new inches on Thursday) and blustery winds.  All trails were groomed for classic and skate on Friday.  Base is 24+ inches.  

We really do have abase of 24+ inches too!