Bootpacks and Skintracks: NarvikRando- a track setters perspective #2

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

NarvikRando- a track setters perspective #2

The second NarvikRando skimo race went down this past weekend, and was a vast improvement on last years event. Participant numbers were down a little from 55 last year (combined "competition" and "non-competitive" classes) to 39 this year. However the course was much better, the weather was A+ and everyone I spoke with after the race seems pretty stoked.

With the lessons learnt from last year's race, my role as "løypesjef" (ie. track-setter) was both a bigger job but also much more organised. We bought 500 new marking flags, and borrowed another 700 from Skittentind, meaning we had 4x more than last year, aside from a bunch of yellow bootpack flags, we pretty much used them all!

The snow conditions were challenging, with close to two weeks since the last snowfall, and a few days of gale force winds followed by mild temps and then a complete refreeze the surface conditions were icy in some places and windpacked in others. Mild temps early in the week allowed us to set some of the skintracks on the lower mountain. Things stayed firm on the upper mountain though and we ended up having to actually level the skintrack with shovels on some key sections of the course.

I ended up clocking 9000+ metres in the days leading up to the race, marking the course and setting the track. It was really fun and satisfying seeing it take shape from day to day, but also kind of tiring. I had hopes of taking place, but on the morning of the race while out on one last reconnaissance, I realised that I was more interested in being proud of a decent course than I was in competing myself.

A big shout out to Micke, Andreas, Trond, Jan Eirik, Marte, Trond, Einar and Jon for help with setting the track and course markers as well as all the other work behind the event!

The result list is here: https://www.webscorer.com/narvik_rando

And here are some articles in norwegian published about the race:

Fri Flyt- Spekest i Narvik

I Narvik- Vant Narvik Rando