Ski-O Results - B.R.E.I.A. Alder Creek Trails (24 January 1999)
Short Course - GREEN - 9 controls - 6K
Medium Course - RED - 9 controls - 8K
Long Course - BLUE - 9 controls - 10K
Place Place ## Name NYSSRA Class Course Time in Class on Course 1 Verna Engstrom-Heg ? FM M 2:32:11 1 6/6 2 Heather Barker 2139? FO L 1:22:50 1 5/8 3 Melissa George ? FS S 1:29:25 1 5/6 4 Philip Hawkes-Teeter 2439 MM M 0:55:05 1 1/5 5 Mitch Hansen ? MM M 1:14:33 2 3/5 6 Steven Sweet ? MM M 1:15:41 3 4/5 7 Bob Engstrom-Heg ? MM M 2:29:41 4 5/5 8 Graham Baird 2159 MO L 0:44:24 1 1/8 9 Owen Baird 1759 MO L 0:49:10 2 2/8 10 Steve Halasz 2442 MO L 1:02:00 3 3/8 11 Eric Smith ? MO L 1:19:22 4 4/8 12 Eric Hamilton 1231 MO L 1:34:24 5 6/8 13 Aims Coney 3171 MO L 1:35:52 6 7/8 14 Brian Edwards 914 MO L 2:04:18 7 8/8 14 Matthew George 2700 MS S 0:37:12 1 1/6 15 Michael Waterhouse 2665 MS S 0:42:49 2 2/6 16 Steven Sweet II ? MS S 0:45:49 3 3/6 17 Willem Oswald 2737 MS S 1:02:38 4 4/6 18 Bryan Sweet ? MS S 1:36:33 5 6/6 15 Art Baird non-ESG RM M 1:12:22 1 2/6
If you decided to bypass this event because of the torrential downpour of rain on Sunday morning, you missed an excellent Ski-O. From the results (above) you can see that 20 brave souls arrived at the (relatively) dry Alder Creek BREIA trails to see PLENTY of snow. Even with the rain, which stopped at 9:00 AM, the snow cover was plenty deep. There were two areas that actually had two bare spots (the highest knoll on the course, and a sharp "U" turn area in the SW corner of the map). The snow was wet and granular, with the air temperature 36.5F at 11:00 AM. It dropped to 33.4, by the time the last control was picked up, and it actually began to snow.
The courses were set up with the deep snow pack considered to eliminate a lot of "bushwhacking". With the week long warming trend and the rain, some of the bushwhacking options were shorter (timewise). The trails consisted of 4 steep (approximately 80 foot) re-entrants with trails above and below. The area below, ran along Alder Creek (which was running deeper and faster than I had ever seen it before), and consisted of three linear trails with 4 bridges over the creek. All courses had to go down and then up at least once and the LONG course did it twice.
The highlight of the event was watching Owen Baird finish. As he was skating toward the warming hut used as the finish, he bent over and released his bindings. Then in the same motion as he was stopping, he leaped off of his skis and continued to RUN into the warming hut, without faltering. The bad news (for Owen) was that even with his release stunt, he still could not beat his brother Graham, who time was 5 minutes shorter.
My thanks to my son Sean for running the registration and keeping the starting and finishing logs, and to Mitch Hansen, Heather Barker and Barb Sleight (who came up at the end of the event just to help) who picked up most of the controls.
Special thanks to BREIA for allowing us to use the trail system. It was an excellent area. I'm sure many will want to come back again during the ski season for recreational skiing, and even again next year for another Ski-O.
Thanks,
Ed Kobos, meet director