Taken separately, the facts and descriptions fall somewhere between intriguing and absurd.
There’s a weeklong outdoors event that increases the size of a small Wisconsin Northwoods town tenfold with participants from all 50 states and 26 countries.
It’s named for a similar race in Norway that honors the winter rescue of a child prince some 800 years ago. Tribute is paid by the skiers in Wisconsin dressing as if this were still 1206.
World-class competitors take part. But so do weekend athletes of all ages from all over looking for fresh air and a supreme challenge.
And you may see a handful of people toasting the racers with shots of liquor – and offering them some – or sharing a pair while dressed as gorillas.
Now put all of that together and try to explain it to someone …
“Most people are like, what the hell are you talking about?” said Ben Popp, executive director for the foundation in Hayward that puts on the annual American Birkebeiner cross country ski marathon.
“But the flip side of that is I’ve been everywhere from Kuai, Hawaii, to Switzerland to Iceland to France with Birkie stuff on and people undoubtably will come up to me and say, ‘Ohhhhh, I’ve done the Birkie.’”
A mecca to some and a mystery to many, the American Birkebeiner will celebrate its 50th running next weekend, albeit on a modified course and at a reduced distance for most skiers due to the mild winter.
The Birkie’s founder played a big part in local history
The race was the brainchild of Tony Wise, a Hayward-raised, Harvard-educated visionary who mapped out a 50-kilometer course of logging roads and railroad grade from the site of the Lumberjack World Championships – another of his creations – north from Hayward to the Telemark Lodge, his ski resort in Cable.
Wise patterned the event after the Birkebeinerrennet, a point-to-point marathon in Norway that began in 1932.
Thirty-five people skied in the first Birkie in 1973. Years later, the course was reversed. Before Wise died in 1995, Telemark had fallen on hard times and his since been demolished, but his little cross country ski race had grown to 300 times its original size.
So, who was Tony Wise?
“Like so many of the things my dad did, we were just like, oh, he’s doing this now,” said Janie Wise, the middle child of his seven, who was a logroller because of the lumberjack championships.
She recalled her father saving historical buildings in downtown Hayward and being awoken at 4 in the morning to watch them be moved.
“It wasn’t like he was doing something astonishing to us because he always did things that were at least on par with the scope of what the original Birkie was,” Janie continued.
“Compared to Lumberjack World Championships, it didn’t look like a big deal at all.”
A cross country ski race of 35 people grew to 10,000-plus
It certainly looks like one now.
In addition to 10,000 racers in the main event on Saturday, thousands participate in shorter competitions geared to children, teens or less-accomplished skiers throughout the week. There’s even a “Barkie” for dogs and a giant ski event for teams of six people on one over-sized set, some of them shushing along in wild costumes.
The nonprofit American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation employs about 30 people, but some 4,000 volunteers make the event work. In a normal year, spectator attendance is in the tens of thousands. The population of Hayward is 2,500.
First-time finishers get a medal, then subsequently a pin. The winners in the men’s and women’s freestyle (skating-style) races earn $7,500 and the classic technique winners pocket $1,000.
Although the Wise children drifted away from direct involvement in the Birkie after Tony lost it, Telemark and the lumberjack championships in bankruptcy, their interest in the event remains.
“It is definitely something that our family is tremendously proud of, and we know what this ‘Tony’s latest idea’ thing turned out to be,” Janie Wise said. “And that it’s lived beyond and above anything he’s ever done, obviously.
“So because my dad was so extraordinary in so many ways, we want the one thing that he’s known for to be as successful as possible, because that’s what he would want.”
The Birkebeiner name and traditions date to the Middle Ages
Wise was of Norwegian heritage, as were many of his friends to who urged him to add Nordic skiing to the alpine offerings of Telemark. Having a race would then help draw attention to the program.
For inspiration, he leaned on the Birkebeinerrennet, a point-to-point marathon started in 1932 in Norway. That race commemorated the 13th century rescue of a baby prince during that country’s civil war by soldiers who skied through snow-covered forests using birch bark to protect their legs.
A day before main race in the Wisconsin Northwoods, some 6,000 miles away, skiers can take part in the Prince Haakon 15k, named for the future king. Then, the Birkie itself includes a woman in a period costume skiing the course with a doll representing the prince in a pouch slung over her shoulder.
“It definitely is quite an entertaining story and would probably catch someone’s attention who doesn’t know much about it,” defending women’s freestyle winner Alayna Sonnesyn said.
“It’s very interesting that there’s so much history behind what it means, but I think sometimes people can get lost in the shuffle of this is an epic marathon ski race that anyone can do as long as they put their mind to it.”
Everyone who’s been to the Birkie has at least one story to tell
Take for example Ernie St. Germaine, who for most of 1973 regretted racing in the first Birkebeiner but then participated in every one since.
Or Bob Levin. He also competed in the first race but then drifted away and didn’t ski it again until 50 years and a day later.
“The idea of the 50k caught my imagination,” said Levin, who was skiing with a club when he learned of the first Birkie. “All I’d done was ski a 12k. So you figure, OK, 12 times four is 48. … Well, I could do that, so I could ski 50. And 50 is the traditional Olympic distance.
“So it caught my imagination. And I will say what’s probably in common to people’s take afterward about that first race and how they got there, everybody has a story like this of some sort.”
Levin didn’t purposely avoid the Birkebeiner for five decades. Life happened. A Midwesterner then and a Coloradan now, he continued to ski and even participated in some longer-distance races. Just not the one that had become the country’s biggest.
“It was in the back of my mind to do one again and I actually did try to come and do the 25th,” Levin said. “I had a big work deadline – and that just shows I had my priorities wrong – and as a result I was not prepared.”
He set his sights on 2015 but came to realize skiing a marathon on a hilly course would be tougher in his 60s than it was in his teens. Levin was intent on taking part in another Birkie but wasn’t interested in hurting himself, and it took eight years of training with the help of an experienced friend to be ready to do it again the right way. Rather than setting a time goal, he focused on skiing the course well, pacing himself in a way that would give him the best chance of finishing and making sure he had enough energy to make the final climb safely.
On race morning, he awoke to an email from the friend who had helped him prepare.
Slowly, Levin read it:
“Bob, I would guess by now you’re second-guessing your waxing decision. Don’t. Good luck, and enjoy, in that strange way one enjoys a marathon, the race. You put in all of the hard work. It’s time to collect on it. There is nothing quite like lining up at the start of a 50k and those few minutes before the start. Firing on all cylinders, about to dive into the familiar and yet not sure of what will come. I try to savor every one.”
The Birkebeiner brings together elite athletes and average Joes
Sonnesyn’s history with the Birkie is different.
She grew up in a skiing family in Plymouth, Minnesota, just west of the Twin Cities, went to the University of Vermont to ski and then stayed out east to train.
Before she was a 27-year-old World Cup competitor with four Birkebeiner titles, she and her brother and sister were in the “Birkie pipeline,” as she calls it: the children’s Barnebirkie, the junior Birkie, the Prince Haakon and the half-distance Kortelopet.
“Some of my youngest memories are around the Birkie event, of either me out skiing the Barnebirkie when I was, like, 3 or 4 years old, or being with my dad after the race and just seeing orange peels on the trails. To me that was hilarious,” Sonnesyn said. “I do feel like it’s been a part of me since I was born.”
So she has seen the event from more sides than most, as a fan cheering the racers to the finish line on Hayward’s snow-covered Main Street and then as a “citizen skier” and finally as an elite, sprinting to victory.
While getting into cross country skiing can be difficult – it’s expensive, and only a fraction of the United States has snow – the community is welcoming and eager to help newcomers, Sonnesyn said. The blend of ambitious newcomers, longtime skiiers such as St. Germaine and Levin, and elites such as U.S. Olympic gold medalist Jessie Diggins – the biggest name in this year’s competition – is part of what makes the Birkie special.
“I think it’s a very symbiotic relationship,” Sonnesyn said.
“I’d like to think the elite athletes are inspiring the citizen skiers to get out there and challenge themselves and try new things and really go for it and give it your whole heart, just create a goal or an inspiration for the citizen skiers.
“And I think the same can be said in reverse, too. The citizen skiers are inspiring the elite skiers in that they are doing it because they just love it. There’s not necessarily a paycheck at the end of the day. They’re doing it because they love the sport, they want to be outside, they want to challenge themselves and they want to support the growth of the sport just as much.”
The impact of the Birkebeiner on the Hayward-Cable area is nearly immeasurable
While many people may associate Hayward with muskie fishing – it is home to the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame with the four-story fish out front – the Birkie and affiliated events make the area just as much an attraction in wintertime, Popp said.
Through fundraising and grants, the Birkie foundation has built and maintained more than 100 kilometers of trail used year-round for hiking, biking and other silent outdoor pursuits beyond skiing. But central to its being is the ski race with 50 years of history that is part of a worldwide circuit and keeps participants coming back year after year.
The Birkie boasts all-time participation at more than 300,000 with more than 2,000 skiers having competed 20 times or more.
“We have an organization that holds 42 events, that’s over 17 weekends, that has an operating budget that is over sometimes $7 million … (and) is really the driver of our economy,” said Popp, the executive director.
“(In explaining the Birkebeiner) I’ll use an example of something like, hey, do you know the organization that runs the Boston Marathon has upwards of 15 or 20 employees? … It’s the same thing except when you run the Boston Marathon you just jump on the existing roads and off you go. We also have to essentially build the roads that we’re going to run the race on. Then run the race.”
More:More than a cross country ski race, the American Birkebeiner has made Cable, Hayward a silent sports mecca
It takes a community to put on an event like the Birkebeiner
Shellie Milford first became aware of the Birkie in 1981, when poor conditions allowed only the elites would compete on the intended date – and then six laps on a short course at Telemark – and the citizen skiers came back weeks later after significant snowfall. She and her then-husband operated a shop in Cable that sold wood stoves that was bustling with people who’d rather have been skiing.
“They had nothing else to do,” Milford said. “That was my first real inclination of how significant the Birkie was, and it was because of how devastated everybody was. And I got it. It was just amazing to me, and I knew enough about it that I knew it was a big commitment for people. That was my first taste of Birkie Fever.”
That “Birkie Fever” description comes from the title of a book on the first 10 years of the race, and Milford caught a serious case. She joined the organization in the late ‘80s, registering and seeding skiers before those processes became computerized, worked in the office as an administrative assistant and ultimately became the race operations director before retiring in 2015.
“I did all the logistics and did everything from ordering the pins, getting the pin designed, doing the poster work with people who did that and the bib orders and registration and everything,” Milford said. “Snowplowing. Ordering the tents.
“And years back, until not too long ago, we had great big, 500-gallon milk tanks that we had at each food station. We had one or two at each food station that we filled up with water, and then we’d have heaters under them. All of that. All of those logistical things. Finish lines and start lines. Worked with 50-plus chiefs in all of these areas and oversaw of that, and over two or three thousand volunteers.”
She handled media relations and oversaw the Birch Scroll, the organization’s publication.
Milford continued to volunteer but backed off during the COVID-19 pandemic due to health concerns. Now she’s back answering phones and pitching in as she can.
“It’s such a passion for people, and the community rises up to support it,” Milford said. “Between the businesses, the restaurants, the bars, of course, and the community folks who know what the Birkie means to the community, they really support it. … Everyone respects that the Birkie happens and that week is pretty much devoted to making sure it goes as well as it can.”
More than just skiing has made the Birkie the Birkie
The 50th American Birkebeiner will be far from typical, much like ’81 or the shortened race in 2007.
With a mild winter, organizers were forced to cut the length of all but the elite races, move the competition from its 50-kilometer point-to-point courses to a 10k loop of manmade snow, and split the skate-style and classic races over two days.
Consequently, some of the touches that have made the Birkebeiner unique will be missing.
Perhaps most disheartening, skiers won’t finish on Main Street in Hayward, where church bells and cowbells and cheering fans push exhausted competitors over the bridge that crosses Hwy. 63 and the final 800 meters to the finish line.
“Three of the four races I’ve done have come down to a sprint finish, so you have to be very dialed to know exactly how to execute that last turn and going up and over that bridge and really be paying attention to your surroundings and yourself as well,” Sonnesyn said.
“But also it is such an inspiring and breathtaking experience to come up and over that bridge and just get hit by a wall of sound, of people cheering and screaming.”
There are also smaller touches affected.
Fans who attend will see more action as skiers come by them four times on this year’s loop, but there’s something to be said for the camaraderie and energy brought to the race by different people spread in groups over 30 miles of tree-lined trail.
“Quite a few years ago, I joined a group of friends who were out on the trail,” said Wise, the daughter of the founder. “It’s called the 39k club. … We would go out there and we’d have a sound system going, just so people who came up that hill would be like, oh, thank God there was a reward. They do a shot-ski, a ski that has a bunch of shot glasses, and six people do a shot all at once. Then they go on and keep skiing.
“There are so many things about the race that are like that that happen every year. People are excited about these things because they are traditions that are longstanding on both sides of the race.”
Traditions with roots going back 49 races over 51 years that make the Birkie the Birkie.
