The Wooden Ski Classic is not so much a race as it is a history lesson.
Bob Butera showed up at Russian Jack Park for Sunday's annual winter celebration of all things old and moldy on a pair of decades-old skis that once belonged to Sven Johanson, who is generally acknowledged as the father of Anchorage cross-country skiing.
Pinned to his wool sweater was a track pin from 1983, which he's pretty sure was the first year the Nordic Ski Club sold pins to help finance track-setting on city trails.
Karen Ruud wore a red-and-blue patterned sweater that she knitted when she was 15. "So it's 40 years old," she said.
Peter Johnson arrived with skis that were brand new when he bought them in New England back in 1970.
"I got the whole set -- skis, poles, bindings, boots, wax -- for $75," he said. These days, he could easily spend the same amount on three boxes of wax.
But among the hundred or so skiers who greeted a new ski season by embracing old-school traditions, Robae Robinson didn't settle for merely turning back the clock. She turned back the sun dial.
Dressed in a wool sweater older than she is, Robinson, 44, strapped her boots into two slats that looked like they'd been swiped from a fading, decaying fence.
Others rode hickory skis with long-defunct brand names and "Made in Norway" labels. Robinson tried her best to stride around a five-kilometer course on boards so old they might have once been painted by Tom Sawyer.
One had a single buckle for a binding. The other had no binding at all, so on Saturday night Robinson fashioned a stirrup out of wire.
A single groove scored the bottom of the boards, and Robinson did without wax -- a big mistake, she realized about 25 meters into the race.
Snow balled up on the boards, reducing her stride to a shuffle. She didn't come close to completing the race, but when everyone else was finished, many admired the relics a sister found at a garage sale.
"Those are historical artifacts," said an admiring man whose skis dated back only to the 1980s.
Lycra and fiberglass are eschewed at the Wooden Ski Classic. Hickory skis, bamboo poles, three-pin bindings and wool sweaters and knickers are extolled.
A fundraiser for the Sons of Norway scholarship fund and the UAA ski team, the event gives skiers an excuse to ski the way Johanson did. Johnason was originally from Sweden, but became a U.S. citizen in time to compete for America in the 1960 Winter Olympics.
In the 1950s, Johnason helped popularize cross-country skiing in Anchorage, a city now known throughout the nation -- if not the world -- for its trails and its zeal for skinny skis.
When it was first held back in 1997, the Classic slapped skiers with penalties if they showed up with fiberglass skis or wore Lycra. Such penalties have since been eliminated -- as has the clock in a race that is more of a festival than a competition.
Winners are nonetheless still acknowledged, and are greeted at the finish line with a wreath made of spruce and medals made out of birch.
The men who arrived neck-and-neck at the finish line embodied all that the event honors. The winner, Frode Lillefjell, is an honest-to-god Norwegian. The guy he nipped at the finish line, 23-year-old Dylan Watts, was younger than the skis he raced on.
Watts used his dad's skis, which he lovingly uses a couple of times each winter.
"I actually spent four days in the backcountry on these skis last year," he said.
Watts embraced the spirit of the Wooden Ski Classic from head to toe. He wore knee-length wool socks, knickers, suspenders, a wool sweater his parents bought during their honeymoon in Norway years ago, bamboo poles and hickory skis.
The night before the race, he used a torch to apply sticky pine tar to the bottom of the boards -- another sign of times gone by.
"I'm probably the only guy in my age group who can pine tar wood skis," Watts said.
Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.
