Is North America's largest ski race happening this year? Birkie organizers say hopefully

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: Speaking of golf, of course, the forecast is doing golf courses a big favor. Several in Minnesota are open for business this week. Tee times are booked solid. But on ski trails, well, it is a headache. The largest cross-country ski race in North America is just around the corner. The 50th American Birkebeiner in Hayward, Wisconsin is scheduled for three weeks from now.

About 13,000 people are registered including Olympic skier and Minnesotan Jessie Diggins. And after other winter events were canceled recently, like the Beargrease and Gunflint sled dog races, you might be wondering, is the Birkie really going to happen this year? Here's race director Kristy Maki speaking to racers in a virtual Q&A on Monday night.

KRISTY MAKI: We know that the next few days, the next two weeks, really, are going to make people nervous when they look at those forecasts. And they make us nervous too. So we're being realistic about what the 2024 American Birkebeiner week of events will look like. But we also know that it's the 50th anniversary of the American Birkebeiner, and people are excited, and we want to have that celebration.

CATHY WURZER: Birkie organizers have laid out a few possibilities for this year's races. Joining us right now to explain is Ben Popp, the Executive Director of the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation. Hey, Ben. Thanks for joining us.

BEN POPP: Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah, Paul is right-- we are looking for winter to come on back to the Upper Midwest.

CATHY WURZER: Well, but it might not happen in time for your race. What's the weather like in Hayward right now?

BEN POPP: Yeah, just very similar, of course, to the Twin Cities. Mid-40s. We too had a little bit of a snowpack up here. It wasn't much. But as he was referring to earlier, we're now starting to get some of that bare ground as well. And we start to see those temps, of course, rise a little bit.

And it's not great when you start thinking about skiing. And from the Birkebeiner standpoint, of course, nearly 13 or 14,000 skiers, and the trail, and the people-- but we also cross lakes and rivers. And so that also includes ice and some of those things. So at current, unfortunately, the natural snowpack up here in Hayward is not great, and certainly for hosting the world of skiing.

So it looks like we're going to have to take matters into our own hands, if you will. And certainly, like many of the venues in the Twin Cities at Wirth Park, and Battle Creek, and Elm Creek, and Highland-- we've been making snow. And typically, we make 3 or 4km of snow for early skiing, and it's just a great way to get the season kick started. And, well, of course, this season, as you can imagine, now we're looking at, is this a way to actually possibly save the 50th anniversary of the American Birkebeiner?

Because it does not look like natural snow, unfortunately, is going to help us out. And we may end up having to do the entire race on machine-made snow. So we will see.

CATHY WURZER: OK. Does that mean, by the way-- I'm kind of wondering, could you do shorter laps of about 10k? Can you reconfigure the race if you need to do it completely on manmade snow?

BEN POPP: Yeah. When we start to think about putting on a normal race, of course, if you just have 100, or 1,000, or a few thousand, it really logistically isn't too crazy hard when you think about a ski trail and its width. But when you're going to host upwards of 13 or even 14,000 skiers is when the challenge really begins to exist. So the staff is really hard at work looking at, what would it take to literally put 13 or 14,000 people on a ski trail and make it work?

So the goal is right now, we have about 4.5km of trail created on the ground. People have been skiing it. We've had races the last four weeks in January. They've been amazing. And we've created about, we think, in the excess of 10 or 11 acres of snow, if you will.

And we believe that would cover an additional 7 or 8km. So if all goes well, and Paul is right, and it starts to get a little bit cooler by February 10 and 11, we're going to actually bring in a fleet of dump trucks, and excavators, and manure spreaders even-- and you can ask me about that-- but the idea of spreading this snow out into a ribbon of snow, adjoining the adjacent trails that we currently have put together, with the hopes if all goes well to get actually close to a 10, 11, maybe even 12-kilometer ski trail-- and that we know that we have people coming from over 25 countries, from 50 states around the US to Northern Wisconsin.

It's just vital and critical to our economy to get folks here. And so we believe that if we can get that 11, 12k loop down, that we can safely get nearly those 13,000 skiers out on the snow. And the Birkie ski race. It's so much more than just a ski race. It's really this festival, this celebration of being active outdoors in the Midwest. And we just really want to make it happen in a year that maybe feels like winter forgot about us a little bit.

CATHY WURZER: Now, it hasn't been the first time-- if you needed to do it, it wouldn't be the first time that you would have had to cancel, though, right? And I was trying to think-- I think you canceled in 2017, right?

BEN POPP: Yeah. This storied race of over 50 years, it's not been perfect every year. This great mecca from Cable to Hayward that everyone loves, there's been years that it was canceled. And in 2000 and 2017, similar that it was a bunch of rain and the race had to be canceled. There's been years where it was shortened. There's been years where they did a lap race.

They had the Bikini Birkie in 1981 when it was 65 degrees, and they hand-shoveled a 1-kilometer course up at Mount Telemark. Now, of course, there wasn't as many skiers then. But I think the reality is this group, this community is amazingly resilient.

And it's really the celebration of skiing and being active. Of course, this year, having the absolute best skier in the world, Minnesota's very own Jessie Diggins here, really just caps it off. And so we have everybody from Ernie Saint Germain, the one person that has literally skied all 49 Birkies at this point, coupled with Jessie Diggins, coupled with Barna Birkie, Junior Birkie, you name it-- over 15,000 skiers when you add in all the kids, that it really is an event for everybody. And so we're going to do everything we possibly can to get the snow down and get ready to host the world right here in Northern Wisconsin.

CATHY WURZER: I hate to be a rain cloud, but, of course, we keep talking about climate change which is upon us. Part of the warm and dry weather we're seeing is attributed to climate change. Do you think there's going to be a 75th or a 100th Birkie just given what we're seeing in the world?

BEN POPP: Yeah, that is a great question. And I think we as an organization feel like it's our duty to do what we can to ensure that my kids, my grandkids, generations to come can have this opportunity. We really believe this event experience changed people's lives.

So what does that mean? That means investing in things like Mount Telemark village, and snowmaking, and the infrastructure that allows us to be able to do Birkebeiners in years like this-- meaning additional snowmaking, ensuring that our snowmaking is powered by things like solar power, because otherwise, we may just contribute to the same problem, ensuring that ski trails are really smooth almost like a golf course, so that you can actually ski on really low snow.

So absolutely. I think it's critical that we look at, how is it that we can adapt as an organization, and ski races all around the Midwest, because we love winter. Some people, of course, curse the winter. And we have to worry about shoveling and snow blowing. But at the end of the day, we embrace it and love it.

And so, certainly, figuring out ways to get out, and enjoy, and recreate, and really love winter and snow is our mission and our passion. So as we continue to adapt and look at how we can evolve so that the Birkie 75, Birkie 100, Birkie 150 is here, that's really our mission.

CATHY WURZER: So are you going to announce a final decision on what to do in February what? February 12?

BEN POPP: Yeah. The team, I'm so proud of this group. It's about over 30 folks working on this-- a whole army of volunteers, over 3,000 volunteers that make this happen. So we realized we can't pivot on a moment's notice. So by February 12, we're going to have a live Q&A.

The team is going to put all these contingencies through the ringer, looked at the data, looked at the long-term weather forecast, relying heavily on some of those forecasters to give us the best information we can on what Mother Nature might bring, how much more snow we can make, how much snow we can truck, how we can create a safe event that's going to inspire people to want to get back out there and keep skiing and biking and running year round.

And so tune in on February 12, 7:00 PM. We'll have a live Q&A on the Birkie.com website. And at the end of the day, hopefully we're going to have some great news to say, hey, come on up to Northern Wisconsin. We're going to have an amazing event. We've created a great trail for you to come and enjoy Northern Wisconsin.

CATHY WURZER: And, as you just heard Paul Huttner talking, as you're hoping and he's saying, there might be cooler weather to come to keep that manmade snow looking pretty good. We'll see what happens. Ben, thank you for your time, and good luck.

BEN POPP: Thanks for having us. And as we say, thank snow.

CATHY WURZER: Ben Popp is the Executive Director of the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation.