Anchorage Daily News

Once upon a time, organizers for the Ski for Women decided more people might enter their ski race if they added a costume contest.

Quicker than you can say tutu, the event turned into a giant costume party where cross-country skiing is almost an afterthought, something you do once you design, make and model your costume.

Skis and poles, essentials for the racing crowd, evolved into mere props. Lycra, also essential for the racing crowd, gave way to feathers, fairy wings and funny hats.

Now, if you want to stand out at the Ski for Women, you dress like a skier. Not a nun or a nurse. A skier.

"I feel a little naked," said costume-less Carol Souza, a first-time participant who wore ski pants and a nylon jacket to Sunday's race and whose face didn't show a trace of glitter or paint. "Next year I'm raising it up a few notches. I've got a good idea, but I'm not telling anyone about it."

Good ideas were everywhere you looked at Kincaid Park.

Women came dressed like Rangers (the NHL team) and Vikings (the conquerors). They came in sets, like condiments (ketchup, mustard and relish) and kitchen tools (spatulas and whisks). They came in bunches, like sled dogs and snowflakes.

Mostly, they came to take part of one of Anchorage's biggest winter events.

Billed as the biggest women's-only cross-country ski race in North America, the 12th edition of the Ski for Women attracted 1,548 entrants, just off the 2004 record of 1,650.

No one grabbed more attention than the team named "Classical Skiers of Note."

Inspired by a friend who plays viola for the Anchorage Symphony, seven women dressed as full-sized cellos and Heather Wilson dressed as their conductor. Wilson had an amazing get-up that involved a backpack frame to which a cardboard cutout of a man's body, dressed in a long black jacket, hung high over her head. At the very top was a life-size photo of Anchorage Symphony conductor Randall Craig Fleischer.

About half of the team members had iPods tucked into their jackets, and as they skied, the third movement of Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 played.

The cello costumes were big and looked unwieldy, but Karen Konopacki said it could have been worse.

"It was easier than the Chinese dragon we skied as last year," she said.

People were still talking about the Chinese dragon this year. And an informal poll put the cellos at the top of many people's list of Sunday's favorites -- all of which makes Konopacki and her friends the Kikkan Randall of the Ski for Women. When it comes to costumes, these are the skiers to beat.

"Hopefully we inspire others," Konopacki said.

The temperature never hit double figures Sunday, and skier after skier finished the 2.4-mile race with white frost on her eyelashes.

For Lyn Montague's team, frosty faces were the perfect touch. The 18-member team came dressed as a snowstorm, with 16 white balloons attached to each skier.

The team spent Friday night blowing up the balloons and Sunday morning trying not to fall on them. When Montague took a spill anyway, the balloons padded her fall.

"It's the new learn-to-ski method," she said.

Holly Brooks, a ski coach for Alaska Pacific University, spent the day being chased by others.

In the classical race, she was the lead dog on a 16-member sled dog team. They dressed in furry dog costumes, painted whiskers on their faces and wore harnesses that allowed them to be hitched up to a gangline, just like a real dog team.

They did great on uphills, where they found it easy to space themselves out along the gangline, but not so great on downhills, where they tended to bunch up and get their lines tangled.

"We do lots of interval training," Brooks explained, "but usually we're not tied together."

Brooks escaped from the team long enough to ski solo in the skate race, which she won in 10 minutes, 51.6 seconds. Kasandra Rice won the classical race in 12:35.7.

The Ski for Women isn't really about who wins, though. It's a day to dress up, to celebrate sisterhood, to laugh at couch potatoes glued to the Super Bowl -- and to raise money for nonprofit groups that aid abused women.

There is no entry fee for the race, but many skiers make a donation. Between skiers and sponsors, about $60,000 was raised this year, bringing the 12-year total to nearly $700,000. Though AWAIC (Abused Women's Aid In Crisis) has been the primary beneficiary over the years, race organizers last year began awarding money to other groups as well.

Not bad for an event that once thought it needed a costume contest to get women and girls to show up for a ski race on Super Bowl Sunday.

Sally Burkholder, a co-founder of the race along with Ann Mize, said the costume contest was abandoned years ago, because judging became too difficult as the race got bigger and bigger.

But the idea of dressing up for the Ski for Women didn't go away, just like the idea of the race itself isn't going away. Even in 2004, when there was no snow in town and ski races were being canceled almost daily, more than 500 girls and women showed up in ice grippers to walk the Mize Loop at Kincaid Park.

"It's got a life of its own," Burkholder said. "Ann and I are both 60 now, and we both will be here skiing this when we're 80."

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.

WINNERS: Results of Sunday's Ski for Women will be available online early this week at

www.alaskaskiforwomen.org

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