WMOC Ski-O

Sjusjøen, Norway, Friday, February 4, 2011

Colin Blackburn

I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down

Many Striders will be aware that I bang on a bit about orienteering. Some of you will be aware that I have started to bang on a bit about cross country skiing. Well, they are both great sports and I really want other people to share in the joy and excitement of both. Here I get it all out of the way in one article… welcome to the ridiculous, fun world of ski-orienteering!

Me, Rob and Chris - 3/5 of teamgb
photo courtesy and © Helen Murray

Some time last year my friend Chris suggested doing some ski-orienteering. As a middling orienteer and a middling cross country skier I thought a nice low-key event might be worth a try. What I didn’t anticipate was that my first ever attempt at the sport would be the World Masters in Norway. Yes Norway, where there are some quite good orienteers and some quite good skiers. Yes, the World Masters. A few weeks later everything was in place and along with four other Brits: Chris, Helen, Rob and Chris, all ski-O virgins, I found myself in Lillehammer wondering what I had got myself in to.

WMOC took place on the back some major championships for younger, fitter and more talented people than me. But that meant it was also a big event: music, commentary, giant display screens with live GPS tracking. It’s a small sport so pretty much everybody involved must have been in Sjusjøen.

A few legs from the sprint.Ski-orienteering maps are similar to MTBO maps, they map the quality of the tracks. Green tracks give some indication of skiability. Thick solid green show properly pisted loipe, the permanent winter trails put in for track skiers. There are then a series of tracks put in specifically for the event: thin solid, dashed and dotted green lines mark increasingly difficult to ski tracks. The trails shown by the dashed lines are skidoo width and only softly pisted. These trails are only limited by the ability of the skidoo driver making them so some of them can be very steep and winding. Tracks marked with a solid black line, small roads, could also be skied if there was enough snow on them, this sometimes gave options to ski through small residential areas. In ski-orienteering you are allowed to ski off-piste if you wish which means that later in the day there may be significant unmapped tracks in some places. You are also allowed to remove your skis and run. This is a completely valid technique that even the top skiers resort to when faced with some hills.

A typical dashed green track
photo courtesy and © Helen Murray

Ski-orienteering is a freestyle event, competitors can ski using classic or skate technique. Most serious skiers skated though a reasonable number, including me, stuck to classic. It’s whatever you are most comfortable with – skating is my weaker discipline. On the narrowest trails it is difficult to use a full skating motion so having classic skis can mean less double poling. For me this was a benefit though having shorter skating skis would definitely have been a big advantage for descending and cornering. The one tip I had been given before setting out for Norway was to fit big baskets (the sticky out bit at the bottom of a ski pole) to my poles to limit the poles sinking into the soft snow when off the main tracks. Unfortunately I had no choice but to set off for Norway with the smallest racing baskets imaginable.

The first event on our four day schedule was a training event. This was a self-timed event with short, medium and long options. But first we had to collect our map holders. With both hands needed on the poles a ski-O map is usually placed on a rotatable board which is mounted on a chest harness. The organisers had put some aside for us novices. Once strapped in the whole thing felt a little strange. I was no longer able to see my ski tips in front of me and I worried a bit about what would happen in the event of a face-plant.

Once we’d tested our skis (to get the wax right) we set off for the training event start. The hairiest bit was getting to the start! The start was at the top of the main Alpine ski slope and the only way up there was to use the chair lift. Having never done downhill skiing this was a new experience for me. Getting into a chair lift holding skis and poles and with a map board sticking out at the front is by no means easy. But we all did get to the top without losing or breaking anything. Once at the top we located the start and set off as a group to tackle the short course. Everything was white! – it took me a good while get a feel for where I was, especially as you are unable to keep your thumb on the map. After the first control there was a long descent to the second, it was at this point we realised that a thin solid line wasn’t as skiable as we first thought it might be. It was also at this point that I realised the value of taking the skis off! We also all found out how disastrous small baskets were when try to use poles for propulsion. Towards the end of the training event we even did a little street orienteering as we dropped down through a small housing estate, very strange skiing past people’s front doors. It was a short but very sharp introduction to what was to come.

Going...Gone!Trying to get upNearly thereUp, now where's my map?

A typical fall, though this is not me!
photo courtesy and © Stein Arne Negård

On the Friday there was the open sprint event, for me this meant just 2 km and 11 controls. Before the event I had been down to the ski shop in Lillehammer and had huge baskets fitted to my poles. For the competitive events we would be using touch-free punching system. The units for this system are about an inch square and worn around the wrist on a Velcro strap. At each control there is a control box, about 6 inches square. Holding the wrist unit within about 60 cm is enough to register, confirmed by a flashing LED. It is possible to ski through a control at speed, though I was rarely travelling at any significant speed.

At the start you have to collect your map and then get it into your map holder within 60 seconds, no mean feat with poles strapped on while balancing on skis. Once the beep went I deferred to the other skiers and paused at the start triangle, even with this cautious start I still messed up the first control. It wasn’t until the third control that I got my head around the technique of simply remembering a sequence of turns at junctions: first left, second right, right fork…. The pole baskets worked a treat although my skiing ability was sorely tested on some of the hills. I spent more time getting off my backside than I did skiing. Forty-five minutes later I was done, over three times the winning time on my course.

The weekend brought the masters event proper: Saturday was the long-distance event, which for M50 meant 10 km, while Sunday would be the middle-distance at 6.7 km for my course. For the long-distance event I had two map exchanges. This is partly because the maps sizes are limited by the map holders but also to facilitate looping back without making the map too complex to read. My long course stated 400m of climb and it turned out that almost all of this was in the first part of the course in a killer long leg. Of course with hindsight I could have made the hill easier and even run part of the leg on roads. At the time though I failed to see this option and so this leg really took it out of me. With a late start and a limited amount of time to finish before our bus back to Lillehammer I decided to retire after the second map exchange. Though getting to that exchange was an adventure as I decided to follow an off-piste track that was certainly going where I wanted to go. What I hadn’t appreciated was how difficult it was to ski between mature pine trees, I clearly had less ability than whoever made the tracks ahead of me. Luckily I survived to ski another day.

A cautious start
photo courtesy and © Stein Arne Negård

On the final day I was determined to finish the middle-distance race to make some amends for the previous day. The middle-distance race reused some of the sprint area and I was getting to know some of the controls quite well. What I still wasn’t doing effectively was thinking ahead. Too often I kept close to the red line rather than looking for the longer routes that avoiding the hills. In foot-O these hills would be nothing but in ski-O they really test your ability to both climb and descend on narrow tracks. Finding longer flatter routes is clearly key if one’s skiing ability is limited. At one point I discovered exactly what a dotted track was like due to a slight navigation error. As I decided on the dotted track to get me back on my line I saw two hazard warning signs just before the hill plunged away from me. Needless to say I took my skis off and jogged down what turned out to be a very steep hill with sharp bends and sizable trees. I did finish the race this time though I was still very much last. The rest of the team bubbled around the bottom places in their classes and our combined times weren’t going to get any of us near the podium.

I must have fallen more times in these few days than I have in my entire, short, career of XC skiing. But it was fantastic fun and it is probably the craziest sport I have ever taken part in. I’ll definitely be looking to find a competition somewhere next season, maybe a smaller one next time – though the 6-day Swiss Ski-O Tour sounds interesting!

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