Double Hill Challenge

Christmas break wouldn't be complete without a trip to the Birkie trail.  This year it was just Jeff and I that went up to do some skiing on marginal snow (but still better than found anywhere closer than the UP).  I was debating a trip to the UP but wasn't really motivated to do that much skiing.  Not that the idea of 2-3 days of skiing sounds unappealing, just that my overall energy level to plan and go on a trip like that is really low.  A shame really, because once I hit the snow everything is wonderful.

We put in at OO and skied North.  The original plan was to head to the powerlines on the classic trail, but Jeff was falling a bit behind so we decided to cut it short and catch a quick break at the North end cabin before heading back.  The trail had pretty good coverage, but was very uneven and had a lot of debris everywhere.  The further north we got the better conditions became.  My arches hurt pretty bad the whole ski, just from lack of time on snow I think.

On the way back South the Birkie trail was in quite good shape for the first few km, so I put a lot of time into Jeff quickly as we headed through the climb/km section.  I decided to try the double hill challenge.  I came up with this challenge a couple years ago on my friend Mike's first trip to the Birkie trail.  I was a much faster skier, so it was my goal to ski with him until a hill and then try to climb the hill, go back down (initially to take pictures, then on subsequent hills because it was fun) and climb the hill again to see if I could make it to the top a second time ahead of him on his first time up.  Since Jeff is a much stronger skier than Mike was then I modified it a bit, so I would ski ahead of Jeff, climb the hill, go down and climb it again.  This gave Jeff time to catch up and me time to get some extra climbing in and burn off some of that excited energy one gets while skiing the Birkie trail.

After crossing the county line I decided to go ahead to the high point and see how many times I could climb it before Jeff arrived.  I figured it would be a double climb, but when I was starting my 3rd time up with still no Jeff in sight I decided I would not go past 5 times.  Luckily for me as I descended to start my 4th time up he was beginning his climb.  After 4 times up the high point climb my energy level was sufficiently subdued that I could ski the next couple km with Jeff (the downhill probably helped too).  The 18km hill I was not intending to double ski, but then I ran into Caitlin Wilke at the top and decided to ski back with her until we found Jeff.  Again at 21km I was not intending to double ski that hill, but I reached OO and knew I had some time to kill, so I went back down and found Jeff at the bottom.  This probably marks my best effort at the double hill challenge yet.  I don't know if that is a good sign for my conditioning or a bad sign for poor Jeff.