Update
The print version of this story was published prior to the Feb. 1 announcement on the cancellation of the Feb. 10 ski events at the Birkebeiner. The online version has been rewritten to reflect the cancellation.
St. Albert skiers won’t be racing the Canadian Birkebeiner this month — the race has been called off due to lack of snow.
The board of the Canadian Birkebeiner Society announced Feb. 1 that it had cancelled the Feb. 10 ski events for the 2024 Canadian Birkiebeiner due to a lack of snow.
“There is not enough snow on the ground and insufficient amounts are forecasted to allow this part of the festival to go ahead,” society president Dave Cooper said in the announcement.
“The board waited until the last possible moment to make this decision using the best available weather forecasts.”
No snow
The Canadian Birkie Ski Festival is one of three Birkebeiner loppets in the world and has been running since 1985. It typically draws some 1,200 participants and happens on second weekend of February (Feb. 10-11 this year).
The Birkie’s marquee event is a race in the Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area where competitors ski 55 km while carrying a 5.5 kg pack — a nod to the event’s legendary origins, where two warriors carried an infant crown prince that distance on skis in 1206. The race had been scheduled for Feb. 10, but had been in question for months due to an unseasonably warm and snow-free winter.
Speaking to the Gazette on Jan. 25, Birkebeiner society administrator Frank Potter said the lack of snow made the race’s cancellation a near certainty. Alberta Parks officials didn’t have enough snow at Cooking Lake to set the full course needed for it, and the trails it did set had patches of exposed dirt, which would be hazardous in a race. The race needed “tens of thousands” of cubic meters of snow for its starting ramp, which wasn’t available, and enough snow on access trails for emergency crews to use snowmobiles.
“Right now there isn’t any (snow) all those access roads, so we can’t actually run snowmobiles on them. Therefore, we don’t have safety, and therefore there is no event,” Potter said.
This is the fifth time that the Canadian Birkie race has been cancelled due to lack of snow or excessive warmth, Potter said. Some 450 people had signed up for this year’s race as of Jan. 25, about nine of which had St. Albert (T8N) postal codes.
Speaking to the Gazette on Jan. 25, St. Albert skier and Birkie veteran Anne Bradley said she planned to volunteer in this year’s race but would understand if it was cancelled.
“The volume of people they’d have to put on that course, they can’t sustain it with the snowpack they have.”
Backup plan
Potter said other parts of the festival, such as the Barnebirkie Family Ski and the Full Moon Birkie are still going ahead.
Anyone who registered for the regular Birkie race will get a free pass for the Virtual Canadian Birkie, which ask athletes to perform two-to-55 km of self-propelled activity between Feb. 12 to 24 and upload their results. They can also upload pictures of ski scenes or themselves dressed as Vikings to the to enter a prize draw.
Asked about the future of the Birkie given the realities of global heating, Potter said it would be tough to change its place or date, as there are few places with the necessary space and few dates that don’t conflict with other races or the weather. The Birkie society is instead diversifying into other events such as the Virtual Birkie and Biking Like a Viking.
“We can’t control the weather but we can develop better contingencies,” Potter said.
Visit canadianbirkie.com for updates on this year’s event.
New bibs
Competitors at next year’s Canadian Birkie may get some new duds thanks to the help of St. Albert quilters.
About 26 members of the St. Albert Quilters’ Guild were at St. Albert Place Jan. 25 to sew 25 purple bibs for the Birkie society.
Birkie participants are awarded purple or blue bibs if they have done the event’s 55 km race at least 10 or 20 times, respectively, Potter said. (Red bibs, of which there are currently three living holders, go to those who have done the 55 km every year since 1985.) The society was out of purple bibs this year, and could not find anyone who would sew more at a reasonable price.
Potter asked the quilters’ guild for help, said guild president Maureen Russell. The guild, which often does charitable work, sewed the bibs in an afternoon, using materials provided by the society.
“We’re proud to have been able to help them.”
Potter said the society was very thankful for the guild’s assistance.
