MINNEAPOLIS — As the Loppet Foundation prepares for the biggest February in its history, executive director Claire Wilson will accept all the support she can get.
"Please cross your fingers for cold weather," Wilson said with a laugh. "Other snow areas are sending us equipment and (snow) guns, but right now all we can do is look to the forecast and do our snow dances, do serious snow and cold dances for February."
Wilson says there are contingency plans to make sure they pull off all three big events on the calendar at Theodore Wirth Park, including the Luminary Loppet on Feb. 3, the City of Lakes Loppet Winter Festival on Feb. 3 and 4 and the Loppet Cup, which is the long-awaited COOP FIS World Cup event on Feb. 17 and 18.
Claire Wilson: "We're looking at a historically unprecedented time period right now, but we're going to do everything we can to put on some spectacular winter events."
Kent Erdahl: "You getting much sleep?"
Wilson: "No sleep. Not sleeping."
Unfortunately, her team can't use those sleepless nights to make snow either.
Because overnight temperatures aren't expected to dip below freezing in the next week, they have already decided to alter plans for the Luminary Loppet.
"We are definitely not going to be on the ice at Lake of the Isles," Wilson said. "Given the warm-up that's still ahead of us, we have been told it's just not going to be safe. So we will move the event to the shore, which we have done in the past. I have already made all the luminaries, during the deep freeze, they are all tucked together and hopefully, they are going to stay all cold together, through this warm-up. So we're going to have a spectacular event, it's just going to be different."
Next weekend's City of Lakes Loppet Winter Festival will look different too.
"The festival, which is usually a point-to-point race from Bde Maka Ska to the (Wirth Park) Trailhead, will obviously not be a point-to-point race due to a lack of snow," Wilson said. "So we'll be doing laps here at the Trailhead on our manmade snow. The only thing that would interfere with that is if it just doesn't get cold enough at night to groom the snow and if we start losing more trail."
And if temps don't drop, concern will rise about the World Cup Race on February 17th. The event, which will bring in the world's best ski teams and tens of thousands of spectators, was canceled due to COVID in 2020 and the Loppet Foundation won't get to decide whether or not it happens this year either.
"FIS, which is our international federation for skiing, they will make the call once we see how much has deteriorated during the warm-up," Wilson said. "Then we'll look at the next two weeks of that forecast, and if we have temps that allow for snowmaking, and if we've saved enough trail, we will be all systems go to rebuild the trail, to make more snow."
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