Statement from the Board of Directors

The winter of 2019-2020 was a challenging one for the Denali Nordic Ski Club. The extended weeks of temperatures in the minus 20’s to minus 30’s early on forced us to cancel a number of Junior Nordic sessions and several Clinics and Workshops for beginning and intermediate adults. Finally – when it did warm up – we got dump after dump of snowfall. While it was great to see our watersheds receive such valuable winter precipitation after years of drought conditions, so much white stuff at once proved time-consuming for our small team of trail groomers to keep up with the situation. Nevertheless, after hundreds of hours of work, our team put in a beautiful wilderness trail through lots of new terrain in anticipation of the 2020 Oosik Classic.

Alas, three days before the event, we received 30” of snowfall. It took no small amount of tireless work to reclaim our course. By (Friday the 13th) the eve of the Oosik itself – while three members of the Board of Directors were out working on the course – they received a text of the quickly evolving situation regarding the Corona-virus epidemic. A last-minute Board Meeting was conducted (via text) between the Trail Crew out in the woods and the rest of the Board in town regarding whether or not to cancel the 2020 Oosik. The decision to cancel was very disheartening to the crew out on the trail who decided then-and-there to spend several more hours completing the final phase of track-setting the 50 kilometers of Oosik Trail.

That decision to cancel was a hard one. Our Club had already invested so much time and equipment not only putting in the trail, but organizational time and funds on permits, vendors, snowplowing, porta-potties and the numerous other non-reversible details it takes for a small club with limited resources to put together. The nominal profit that our club makes from the Oosik goes towards maintaining our modest fleet of snow-machines and groomers, funding our Junior Nordic and Adult Ski Programs, keeping trail work projects ongoing and the past-time of nordic skiing robust in our little town.

All of that said, it is atypical in Nordic ski races nation-wide to administer refunds to participants in the event of cancellations. According to the guidelines laid out in the Oosik Participant Waiver: “There are no refunds allowed for any reason including race cancellation.”

The Denali Nordic Ski Club recognizes that there may be some unhappy customers among Oosik 2020 registrants. For that, we apologize. We did our utmost to put on a good, healthful event. We were a bit gratified that several hundred skiers did come up to Talkeetna and skied the course independently while maintaining their social distance in the outdoor air of the Upper Susitna Valley.

The DNSC Board hopes that you are all healthy, getting outside to ski and enjoying this beautiful spring weather. (Pray for crust!) May the upcoming year bode well for you all. We hope to see you at the 2021 Oosik Classic.

Sincerely,
Denali Nordic Ski Club Board of Directors

Arthur Mannix (President)
Bill Barstow (Vice President)
Ross Benischek
Laura Caillet (Treasurer)
Sam Christman
Aubrey Smith (Junior Nordic Director)
Chad Smith