Sports - Ski to Sea

POSTED: Friday, May. 22, 2009

New mountain bike leg is latest change for Whatcom County's showcase event

There wasn't enough time or the right trail systems to figure out a suitable way to take the mountain biking leg to the mountain, so the Ski to Sea Race Committee hopes to bring a taste of the mountain to the mountain biking leg, instead.

A completely reworked sixth leg of the race will highlight Whatcom County's annual seven-leg relay race from the Mt. Baker Ski Area to Marine Park in Fairhaven on Sunday, May 24.

When the race committee was informed last fall that it could no longer use a dike along the Nooksack River as part of the mountain biking course to link the canoeing and kayaking legs, the committee looked at swapping the mountain biking leg with the running leg. The switch seemed natural, because it put the mountain biking leg on the mountain and got runners off the infamous eight-mile torture test down the Mount Baker Highway.

"The problem was we didn't have enough time to find a suitable trail system to take the mountain bikes on to get them down the mountain," race director Pete Coy said.

Plans to send mountain bikers on some off-road loops between the ski area and the Shuksan Department of Transportation shed still revolved around getting them down the mountain by using the highway, which in turn created safety concerns as riders would have raced down the 2,000-plus foot decent at breakneck speeds.

The race committee instead had to turn to Plan B - keeping the legs where they were finding a new route to get competitors from Ferndale's Hovander Park to Squalicum Harbor.

"No. 1, we wanted to find a route that used the roads as little as possible," Coy said. "And No. 2, we needed to avoid the railroad tracks. The Amtrak trains come through on a schedule, so we could predict them, but we couldn't predict the freight trains. And if one of them came through when we had racers on the course, it could cause a whole bunch of problems."

What Coy and the race committee, along with the assistance of local biking groups such as NorKa Recreation and WHIMPS, were able to put together was an entirely new route that loops back into Ferndale and heads behind the Haggen shopping center before paralleling Interstate 5 on some back roads and going through some back lots before linking up with trail systems in Bellingham and even using a portion of unused railroad track. The new route also keeps riders off the beach.

Coy estimates that 65 percent of the new course is off the pavement, which is an improvement from the plan to move the leg to the mountain.

The only draw backs are that the leg still has a large part of its route on private property, which limits the amount of time competitors can learn the route and practice for race day, and it still is in the wrong part of the county to give riders much elevation change.

"It's pretty flat," Coy said. "The whole course has an elevation swing of 100, maybe 200, feet."

But Coy doesn't think riders will notice with the number of new features and surprises the race committee and mountain biking groups have created to test competitors' technical skill and athletic ability.

"We think the riders are going to have a blast," Coy said. "I believe this may be the most fun leg of all seven. I think every rider is going to get done with their leg and have a huge smile on their face. There are going to obstacles they need to work their way through and over. There's going to plenty of jumps, mud and dirt and bushes grabbing at their handle bars. We think they're going to have a blast."

In short, it's about everything a rider would expect from a mountain biking course ... except the mountain.

The new course is longer, growing to approximately 14 miles in length and making the entire race about 90 miles long. That necessitated an earlier start time for the entire race, as the cross country leg is now scheduled to start a half hour earlier at 8 a.m. That means the Mount Baker Highway also will close at Canyon Creek Road in Glacier earlier than normal at 7:30 a.m.

While the mountain biking leg underwent some major changes, the six other legs are basically the same as in years past, which is great news for the race committee and competitors after last year. In 2008, high spring runoff created unsafe conditions on the Nooksack River and forced the race committee to make a race day decision to cancel the canoeing leg.

As if that weren't enough for one race, afternoon winds whipped up on Bellingham Bay, and the committee had to shorten the kayaking leg because of more safety concerns.

"We certainly hope we won't have to make any changes like we did last year, but if the conditions get to the point where we worry about the safety of our competitors, we have the plans in place to make those moves again," Coy said.

Other areas the race committee focused on for 2009 were continuing to reduce the race's carbon footprint on the environment and improving the way it delivers results.

In its second year as part of the race committee, the Green Team hopes to improve recycling by increasing the use of environmentally friendly materials and providing more recycling containers and monitors to make sure that the right items go in the correct containers.

Milliseconds also is in its second year providing electronic timing for Ski to Sea, and the race committee hopes that a more active timing system can provide results quicker online and allow them to send out text messages with results to teams each time one of their competitors completes a leg.

"We listen very carefully to the post-race reviews that we get from racers, and we work very hard to try to provide the best racing experience that we can for everyone out there," Coy said.