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Alex Kochon

Alex Kochon (alexkochon@gmail.com) is a former FasterSkier editor and roving reporter who never really lost touch with the nordic scene. A freelance writer, editor, and outdoor-loving mom of two, she lives in northeastern New York and enjoys adventuring in the Adirondacks. She shares her passion for sports and recreation as the co-founder of "Ride On! Mountain Bike Trail Guide" and a sales and content contributor at Curated.com. When she's not skiing or chasing her kids around, Alex assists authors as a production and marketing coordinator for iPub Global Connection.
Ukrainian XC Family Lands in Bend—Of All Places

  Anhelina Hryhorenko is a typical 14-year-old girl in many ways—she loves art and isn’t a fan of math. And she’s excited to have her freshman year of school over. But she’s got a lot of unique qualities, too. For one, she’s a junior national champion with more medals than she can hold in two hands. She’s also the daughter of a former national cross-country ski team member team and the niece of a three-time...

A Skier’s Dream: Adaptive Athlete Otis Loga Finds It All at Snow Mountain Ranch

What a gap year it’s been so far for 19-year-old Otis Loga. After graduating high school in Montpelier, Vt., in September, the aspiring Paralympian decided to spend a winter skiing and training out West before starting college. He landed at Snow Mountain Ranch, the YMCA of the Rockies, in Granby, Colo. It was a dream for the relatively new sit skier, who was first invited to a US Paralympic camp in Canmore, Alberta, a year...

Spring Skiing on a Volcano: The Novelty of Mt. Bachelor

If there’s ever a place for a cross-country skier to put on their bucket list, Mt. Bachelor in central Oregon is it. With a ski season that typically lasts into late May and can even extend to June—with natural snow some 6,400 feet above sea level—the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center is spring skiers’ paradise. According to Nordic Manager Sydney Powell, Mt. Bachelor (about 22 miles west of Bend, OR) has been inundated since January with...

Snow Mountain Ranch Gets a Late-Season Boost

FasterSkier has been fortunate to have the support of Snow Mountain Ranch for many years now.  If you are looking to extend your ski season we hope you will consider visiting our friends at Snow Mountain Ranch. If you’re a kid in Granby or Winter Park, Colo., snow days aren’t a thing—until last Thursday, March 13. According to Mary Ann Degginger, the program director at Snow Mountain Ranch, students in the East Grand School District...

This Week in Canmore: Biathlon World Cup Season Finale

Canmore is having a year. Just over a month after hosting the International Ski Federation (FIS) Cross Country World Cup, the Canmore Nordic Centre is pulling out all the stops and showcasing its brand-new biathlon facility as the host of the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup Finals from Thursday, March 14 to Sunday, March 17. The world-class venue amid Canada’s Rocky Mountains is no stranger to World Cup nordic and mountain bike events. It...

Local Olympians Crawford and Atkins Excited for Canmore World Cup

This week in Canmore, the Bow Valley will host about 200 athletes from 19 countries at the International Ski Federation (FIS) Cross-Country World Cup, the 11th stop on the international docket and the first time in North America in eight years. The races include 10 k freestyle individual starts on Friday, freestyle sprints on Saturday, 20 k classic mass starts on Sunday, a day of rest, then classic sprints on Tuesday, Feb. 13, at the...

World-Class Canmore Gears Up for Another World Cup

Canmore is one of those places that truly lives up to the hype. Nestled in the Canadian Rockies in southwestern Alberta, the small town with an authentically outdoorsy and Western Canadian vibe is definitely “bucket-list” worthy for anyone who hasn’t visited yet. Locals say it’s a combination of the scenic backdrop, with jagged peaks on all sides rising around the town and Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park, and the community—most everyone here lives and breathes...

Dyrhaug Outlasts Pack in Sub-2-Hour Birkie; Yeaton Shatters Women’s Record

Several course records were shattered on Saturday in a largely faster-than-ever 46th annual American Birkebeiner, with temperatures steadily rising from the 20s at the start into the 30s by the finish of the point to point race from Cable to Hayward, Wisconsin. Eight men broke the two-hour mark in the Birkie’s 50-kilometer skate race, half of which are American, and an Australian national team member who trains in the U.S. broke the women’s race record...

Soon-To-Be Parents, Caitlin and Brian Gregg on the Winter Ahead

The questions started rolling in this spring. How’s training going? Are you going for 2019 World Championships? What’s the plan for next winter? When you’re Caitlin and Brian Gregg, Olympians and local superstars in the Midwest, it’s hard to keep your athletic profile on the DL. Since buying a house on Theodore Wirth Park seven years ago, the couple has immersed themselves in the greater Minneapolis community — both in and out of skiing. They’ve...

Keeping Up the Positivity, Randall Nears Day 60 of Chemo

Day by day. That’s how Kikkan Randall is approaching her battle with breast cancer after being diagnosed about three months ago. Now more than 50 days into her treatment — with six rounds of chemotherapy over an 18-week span — Randall, 35, is becoming more familiar with the ugly side effects and adjusting to her new normal. While beating what is believed to be announcing her diagnosis on social media, Randall has been promoting AKTIV...

Wednesday Workout: Team Sprinting with the U.S. Ski Team

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — This past Sunday, July 15, FasterSkier visited the U.S. women’s cross-country team in Lake Placid, where the team has been holding a dryland camp since July 11. Most all of the team’s top athletes are there — sans those that train with Alaska Pacific University (they’ll largely stick to Anchorage and nearby Eagle Glacier for summer training) — for a “semi-intensity focused” camp that will last through Friday, July 20. Their...

CCC Lays Off Four Staff Members, Including Babikov

Cross Country Canada (CCC) has appointed a new high-performance and development advisor, CCC’s CEO since November 2016. On the upside, he explained that another sponsor and investment firm, Haywood Securities, has agreed to sponsor the NorAm circuit as it has in the past. Asked if budget cuts were among the biggest challenges affecting CCC at the moment and the reasoning behind the latest layoffs, Pearsall said, “Yes. If things had stayed the same that would’ve...

Cockney on Growing Up with Skiing, Retiring and What’s Next

Strength. Balance. Agility. Jesse Cockney had all of those qualities as a child growing up in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories — just like most Inuit kids — according to his father, Angus. But what he could do with that talent was what Angus hoped to nurture. Since he had put his son on skis at age 3, Angus reflected in an email that he “knew then that [Jess] had incredible potential to succeed.” And so the...

(Press release) 2500 Donors from 37 states & Canada Help ABSF to Reach Capital Campaign Goals Hayward, WI (May 25, 2018) — The American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation (ABSF) has been enhancing the quality of lives for nearly half a century. For generations, ABSF events and the award-winning Birkie Trail system have been motivating adventurous spirits to embrace an active, outdoor lifestyle. In support of providing the infrastructure, spaces, and places to keep that spirit alive,...

Hanging Up the Boots: Kershaw Retires from Skiing, Embraces Next Challenge

On April 26, Devon Kershaw posted a photo on social media of Alpina boots hanging on a line. The next day, he spoke on the phone with FasterSkier from his new home in Lillehammer, Norway, after a day of running around outside with his 15-month-old daughter, Asta Isabel. Kershaw was tired, but in a good way. For the first time in 17 years, he was ready for a new challenge, a new focus and much...

Beatty Caps Season with 160 k Arctic Circle Race Victory

Canada’s Dahria Beatty closed out her World Cup season with the rest of her international-racing peers on March 18 in Falun, Sweden. After three straight days of races, the 24-year-old Whitehorse, Yukon, native finished World Cup Finals in 54th overall. Five days later, she endured a three-day 160-kilometer classic race in Greenland, 65 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. And Beatty didn’t just survive the 22nd-annual epic adventure, she won it. In her first Arctic...

The Andy Newell Anti-Retirement Story

When Andy Newell took to social media about a week and a half ago to announce that he was parting ways with the U.S. Ski Team (USST) after 16 years, some people might have assumed that he was leaving the sport. They would be wrong. Newell, a 34-year-old Shaftsbury, Vermont, native and USST A-team member for the last 12 seasons, was quick to clarify that he’s not retiring from racing. After four Olympics and 16...

Dunklee Surprises Herself in 4th, Doherty Nabs Season-Best 14th in Oslo

Susan Dunklee had been looking for something all season, a sort of spark. And while the U.S. biathlete hadn’t necessarily found it on Thursday, she had still pulled off fourth place in the women’s 7.5-kilometer pursuit at the International Biathlon Union (IBU) World Cup in Oslo, Norway. “I feel like right now I’m relying on good habits to carry me through the rest of the season,” Dunklee, 32, of US Biathlon, said in a phone...

Opening Doors: Biathlon Canada’s All-Female Coaching Staff at Youth/Junior Worlds

Think about all of the exceptional female biathletes out there. Too many to count, right? Now, if you watch biathlon at the World Cup level, think about how many women you’ve seen coaching there. None? One? There are at least a couple, according to Biathlon Canada’s High Performance Director Roddy Ward, who’s been coaching biathlon internationally since 2011. The Slovakian women’s coach is one and the Austrian team also has a female coach, he wrote...