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Friday, May 15, 2009

Race Schedule for 2009/2010 posted!

Here's the schedule for the Grand Mesa Nordic Council's 2009/2010 race series:

Sunday Dec 6, Winterstart 5k classic 11am, 5km freestyle 12:30
Saturday Jan 2, Skyway Skuffle 10km freestyle 11am
Sunday Jan 31 Grand Mesa Classic 10km classic 11am
Saturday Mar 13 Mesa Meltdown 5km/20km freestyle 11am


Thanks to race director Tom Ela!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Another Season Bites the Dust





There's still plenty of snow on the Mesa, but unfortunately it's covered in desert dust and that makes for lousy crust skiing. What a shame! What had been shaping up to be a fantastic crust season turned into a pretty marginal one.

The Washington Post, of all places, has an excellent article about a problem that could get worse.

Dave Buchanan writes in the Sentinel, "High winds lifting dust from the red-rock canyon country of eastern Utah and dropping that load on the Colorado mountains occurred at least 12 times this spring, according to a report issued by Chris Landry, director of the Silverton-based Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies."

A Greenwire report quotes Tom Painter, director of the Snow Optics Laboratory at the University of Utah and a leading expert on snowmelt, saying, "Already we have more than doubled the amount of dust we've typically observed during the last six years."

Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come!

Enjoy your summer and keep your browser pointed here for updates on all things related to xc skiing.

--Christie