Park City, Utah.
You will never find a more concentrated hub for cross country skiing in America.
When I first got into cross country skiing, and I mean really into cross country skiing, I was about 17 years old. This was the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. I had rollerskied before, but this was the first summer I did it with regularity. I had gym equipment at home, but this was the first summer I actually got stronger. I started my first training log (a yellow Staples notebook), filmed my technique on a chunky Canon digital camera, and started a ski blog, just like everyone else in 2007.
YouTube existed back then, but you weren’t going to find many cross country ski clips on there. The only one I vividly remember was this finish from the 2007 World Championships, where Petter Northug first did the “Petter Northug thing” and announced his presence to the world. We didn’t have smartphones, but this clip was all we talked about on the bus ride to Eastern High School Championships in Rangely, Maine that spring.
So where did some of my earliest cultural understanding of skiing come from? Two books:
“Momentum” (by Pete Vordenberg) and “Endless Winter” (by Luke Bodensteiner)
These books are vastly different reads when it comes to tone:
Vordenberg’s “Momentum” is a philosophical memoir that skips back-and-forth through time, pondering success and failure in both sport and in life. Big questions about human nature abound, creative metaphors tie chapters together, and deep introspective sections are relatable to many athletes.
In sharp contrast to this style is “Endless Winter”, written chronologically in journal form over the course of the 1993/1994 season. Endless Winter was written by a college student (this was Luke’s senior thesis, I think?) and very much for the college crowd. It is dripping with machismo, loaded with MTV and Street Fighter references, and dotted with misogyny.
For every line in “Momentum” that embraces the nerdy, eccentric world of endurance athletics, there’s an outrageous line in “Endless Winter” that tries to insinuate the US Ski Team was living in a cheesy Hollywood ski movie during the time of writing.
The juxtaposition of these styles means that, depending on your mood, you can pick up the title of your choosing and flip to a favorite passage for any occasion. Both are amazing snapshots of the mid-90s, though the journal form and steady stream of pop culture references of “Endless Winter” do more for capturing the decade than any nostalgia in “Momentum”.
What else do these titles have in common? Park City, Utah.
You probably have to go all the way back to Putney in the 1970s and 80s to find anything as close to a centralized home for US cross country skiing. Even in the 90s, before the Salt Lake Olympics, training groups and coaches and athletes from around the country flocked to Park City. Although it’s currently a collegiate powerhouse, the University of Utah was no slouch 40 years ago, either.
Before I had ever set foot in Utah for the first time, with only the internet and books to learn about the broader culture of skiing in the US, I read about mythical trails and hills and locations…Hermods Hill, Emigration Canyon, Agony Hill, Mid Mountain Trail, this place called “SoHo” which was not, in fact, the same place Warren Zevon sings about in “Werewolves of London.”
Despite starting to learn of the legendary people and places of SLC, Park City, and Heber City in 2007, over ten years passed before I set foot in the area. I stepped off a plane in the Salt Lake airport for Junior Nationals in 2018 and I felt like a scholar of ancient history finally being guided to a holy land after years of studying scripture. And no, that’s not a LDS reference or joke.
In the six years since that JNs, I’ve found myself in Utah many more times. During the warmer months we’ve grown fond of the area for the same reason many skiers have always gravitated toward the area: amazing trails, good rollerskiing, abundant lodging, varying elevation for training, and great spots for downtime. During the winter?
US Nationals
MNC was represented out in SoHo by a team of 4 MNC athletes. We joined forces with 5 athletes from Ford Sayre, in what felt like an awesome collaboration. Travelling with, living with, racing with, and just spending time with different athletes and coaches and groups is a really rewarding part of our sport.
Utah was also experiencing a pretty snowless winter, so ironically we left behind artificial snow loops in Vermont for a 3km artificial loop in the west. However, a trip up to Bonanza Flats on a training day left us all pretty speechless…this was a trail network at 9000′ publicly groomed by Pisten Bully. With blue skies, sun, and mountains in every direction, we were feeling pretty spoiled and grateful to be there.
But of course, you can’t go to US Nationals and not race in the races…things kicked off with a 10km classic featuring lots of steady climbing. Despite the absurdity of it, we actually did classic rollerski intervals the day before we left Vermont, in order to get some hilly striding in…the snowmaking loops we’d been on most of the winter just didn’t have many hills!
The whole crew looked great striding, but not everyone felt amazing with the altitude (a theme for the East skiers in general, not just our MNC/Ford Sayre group). However, it’s important to note that part of this whole US Nationals experience is just seeing the broader ski world, and learning about racing at altitude. You have to rip the bandaid off somehow…
Julia striding the first climb. These are the kind of tracks and snow we dream of…
With a brief one-day pause to hang out on the couch, recovery, visit some thrift stores, and catch up on homework, we then tackled sprint and distance days back-to-back.
Some super strong races were had…Gillian had an awesome classic race and a strong sprint, and Anders had one of his best classic races ever and battled in the Junior rounds of both the skate and classic sprint. Annie Hanna and Sarah Glueck had strong mass start skate races, and James Underwood really popped-off (or was “locked in”?) during the skate race.
But there were certainly tougher times as well, and while not everyone had the highest of highs, everyone experienced some difficult moments or races. I’m really glad that our skiers got to take on a challenge like this: sometimes the most important memory won’t be the thrill of crossing the finish line, but thinking back upon a 20 minute conversation had while sitting on the back bumper of a Uhaul box truck. These can be equally important moments in a ski career.
So whether it was the first time in Park City/SoHo for some, or the 200th time for some of the longtime coaches at this event, the week was full of action, ups, downs, and stories.
Mexican food: a critical part of ski trips!
