By Charlie Cobb Months ago, I drove seven hours to Boston’s Logan Airport, boarded a plane to Minneapolis, drove 3.5 hours to Wisconsin to ski 1 hour and 19 minutes: my first American Birkebeiner. I have done a lot of ski races in my life, but the Birkie was truly unique. Like many in the American nordic ski community, I was still riding the high of seeing (through my laptop screen) both a male and...
The message from the event organizer was devastating . . . we’d been waiting years to cheer on World Cup skiers in person. Jessie Diggins had worked her magic to get the Sprint Finals onto American soil—and here in Minneapolis no less! But COVID was spreading misery across the globe and our race was cancelled: the Sprint World Cup Finals would not occur. $300 in tickets gone in an email. No swag or alternative compensation...
On April 27th, Gus Schumacher and Jessie Diggins headed to Washington, D.C. with six other winter Olympians and Paralympians as members of the Protect Our Winters (POW) athlete alliance to advocate for progressive changes in climate policy. While Diggins has been partnered with POW for several years, Schumacher only recently came on board, making the trip his first experience lobbying for climate activism; it was also his first trip to the nation’s capital. While in...
The sport’s governing body joins a UN campaign to fight climate change, and save Biathlon too. *** Östersund, Sweden markets itself as Vinterstaden (The Winter City), a reputation it earned a century ago when the Nordic Games – the precursor to our modern Winter Olympics – were moved there from snowless Stockholm in 1905 and 1913. The International Biathlon Union (IBU) routinely puts Östersund at the very beginning of its world cup calendar, as...
Spinning past the autumnal equinox into fall, the West looks back on a summer marred by wildfire smoke. Here in Colorado, the Aspens have dropped their golden leaves, snow encrusts the high peaks, and I’m struck by the beauty of my backyard, which spent the majority of June, July, and August muted by smoke that — thankfully — blew in from elsewhere. Over the last six weeks, checking AirNow before training has been phased out...
The Craftsbury Outdoor Center (COC) in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont has emerged as a premier year-round cross country ski training venue. The COC has also been a leader in embracing and promoting sustainability and environmental stewardships through their own day to day operations and educating their customers. They have invested in energy efficient buildings, a wood-burning central heating system, solar energy, and an abundant garden which allows them to grow much of their produce...
With an incredibly elaborate hoax from the Chinese now in full swing, winter athletes from all over the world continue to struggle with our planet’s changing climate. Snow sports have been particularly hard hit, as rising temperatures and increasingly erratic weather patterns have resulted in less predictable snowfall, mid-winter rain storms, rapidly abating trail conditions, and thusly greatly shortened training and racing seasons. This fallout from these changing climactic conditions is far-reaching and appears to...
A few weeks ago we released our interview with climate-justice activist and Vermont resident Bill McKibben. After the interview, we received a few comments that spoke to the perceived large carbon footprint of World Cup skiing and possible changes that might be implemented to curb that environmental impact. With that in mind, we called up Andy Newell, who himself is a climate activist to address some of the questions. We spoke to Newell on Jan....
“I think if you’re a nordic skier in New England, you should definitely be alarmed.” “That’s one of the main take-homes: skiing is not going to disappear completely, but it will generally be higher [in elevation].” So says Cameron Wobus, a Bowdoin ski team alumnus and a researcher at Abt Associates, a global research firm. Wobus and colleagues based in Boulder, Colo., and Washington, D.C., recently published a study in Global Environmental Change assessing the...
Top skiers' message to world leaders: we want to keep having winter, so make a legally-binding climate agreement. And the message to ski fans? Andy Newell says: "We need to get on the backs of the guys and women in the U.S. who make these decisions, and put some pressure on them.”
400,000 demonstrators gathered on the streets of New York City for the People's Climate March on Sunday, Sept. 21. Amongst the crowd was USST member Andy Newell who has been working to raise awareness surrounding climate change with his organization, Athletes for Action.
This winter, three teams of researchers investigated attitudes towards climate change within the ski industry. They found huge cultural differences between how Austrians, Finns, and New Zealanders perceived the threat - with the Austrian industry having no adaptation strategy, while New Zealand is ramping up snowmaking - as well as between CEO's and the skiers themselves.
Most studies of how climate change will impact the ski industry focus on downhill skiing, and on losses like tourism dollars and jobs at ski resorts. But what about welfare and happiness? In Oslo, a team of researchers explored how much skiers were willing to pay, in time and money, to reach trails under different weather conditions - and determined that skiing has a very high value, indeed.
A recent report published by Protect Our Winters and the Natural Resources placed an economic value on climate change: for the winter sports and tourism industry, a billion dollars of revenue have been lost in bad snow years in the last decade, and a bad season means a six percent drop in employment compared to a good one. Yet the industry hasn't taken action.
Snow-wise, the 2011-2012 season hasn’t gotten off to the best start. Just four weeks into the World Cup, low snow has caused nearly every European host to scramble to put together a man-made course, shorten (at least initially) its distance races, or give up and move to another venue entirely. Domestically, competitors for the approaching U.S. Nationals are looking at a week of racing on a man-made loop in Rumford, ME for the second year...
Reunion of sorts - Coach Beckwith (WJC '99) meeting Peter Schlickenrieder (WJC '89) - Moving Planet Day 2011The past few mornings I have been waking up early enough that I might be rivaling past Middlebury College Coach, Terry Aldrich in his zeal for t...
Reunion of sorts - Coach Beckwith (WJC '99) meeting Peter Schlickenrieder (WJC '89) - Moving Planet Day 2011The past few mornings I have been waking up early enough that I might be rivaling past Middlebury College Coach, Terry Aldrich in his zeal for t...
Reunion of sorts - Coach Beckwith (WJC '99) meeting Peter Schlickenrieder (WJC '89) - Moving Planet Day 2011The past few mornings I have been waking up early enough that I might be rivaling past Middlebury College Coach, Terry Aldrich in his zeal for t...
Editor’s Note: Toblach is claiming to produce a “carbon-neutral” stage for the Tour de Ski. It is important to recognize that this is obtained in large part by purchasing carbon offsets, not through reductions in carbon usage. Whether or not this is good, bad, or neutral, is up for debate. Dobbiaco (Toblach) have engaged strongly in the area of climate protection and thus offers its guests since July 2009 a compensation to the CO2-emissions, which...
The International Climate Day of Action was held just over a week ago. CNN called it “The most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.” According to 350.org, “people in 181 countries came together for the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history. At over 5200 events around the world, people gathered to call for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis. Over 19,000 photos have been submitted...