Anchorage Daily News

At the Super Bowl of women's skiing, trash-talking just doesn't happen.

Women and girls take the annual Alaska Ski for Women seriously. They are adamant the show goes on, whether it's minus-15 like it was for the 1999 event, or whether the trails are bare of snow like they were for the 2005 event, which turned into a walk instead of a ski.

Some of them are so steadfast in their drive to participate, they enter even when their bodies might be better off on a couch watching that other Super Bowl on television.

Kelsey Young, 27, had limited mobility at Sunday's race because she injured her shoulder the day before while telemark skiing on Alyeska's North Face. But the painful injury wasn't about to keep her away from Kincaid Park.

"Heck no," she said. "I have to do this race."

So there's no question the competitors are ardent at this event, the biggest no-men-allowed ski race in North America.

But they aren't so serious they get cutthroat (although they do get fishy at times -- a whole school of salmon showed up on Sunday). Trash-talking is as rare at the Ski for Women as, well, male racers.

At an event where the most competitive aspect is the costume contest, the most mind-blowing getups inspire oohs and aahs, not insults.

With about 1,150 skiers entered in the 13th annual event, any number of costumes drew admiring looks Sunday -- until a bunch of sunflowers showed up and stole the show.

But did the Big Bad Wolf huff and puff at the loss of attention? Did the Pigs in a Blanket squeal in dismay? Did Mount Redoubt blow its top?

Nope. Everyone just gazed in admiration.

"We're not worthy!" a team of bright-red gnomes said as they bowed in respect to the sunflowers.

The sunflowers, aka the Ultimate Women, are a Ski for Women dynasty. A dozen women who play ultimate frisbee together, they are the Kikkan Randall of costumes, the Pittsburgh Steelers of style.

Last year they were "Classical Skiers of Note," dressed as full-sized cellos with iPods in their pockets that played Brandenburg Concerto No. 6. The year before they were a massive dragon, connected together in one long, flowing costume they later donated to a Montessori school.

This time, the crew used sewer pipe painted green for the stems and cardboard and poster board painted bright yellow and orange for the petals. The black circles in the middle were covered with glitter. When the petals caught the sunlight -- something that happened often on a sunny, zero-degree day -- the flowers looked electric.

With the sewer pipes mounted in fanny packs, the flowers towered 10 or 12 feet high, making the women look like Vegas showgirls. On skis.

"I'm just glad we're not skating," team member Shiweng Wang said. "It's a little top-heavy."

Flower power aside, the array of costumes was dazzling.

Kathie Steele and Lydia Wirkus of Chugiak looked like poetry in motion in their racing suits fringed with long red ribbons. Actually, they were "Waxing Poetic." An AP literature teacher at Chugiak High, Steele chose poems by William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost and wrote them down in black, one line per ribbon.

Heather Bleick was a big brown cone gushing white gauze and her friends wore costumes made from a busy, bright orange fabric that had been sitting in Jeanine Schmidt's closet for four years, waiting for Schmidt to turn it into curtains for her son's bedroom.

The son is 17 now, and not eager to look at neon orange day and night, so Schmidt turned the material into lava-inspired costumes. Chunks of Styrofoam, painted grey like volcanic ash, completed the look. The lava ladies trailed behind Bleick, who was Mount Redoubt.

Also on hand was a pair of pink mittens, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, and the Governors of Alaska. Each of the Governors wore a T-shirt printed with a photo of one of Alaska's governors, a parade that began with Gen. Jefferson C. Davis, the first federal official charged with administering the Alaska territory back in 1867, and ended with Sarah Palin.

"There was a little 'I don't want to be that one,' but we won't say which ones those were," said Laurie Ford, who sported Bill Sheffield on the front of her T-shirt.

If it was a history lesson you wanted, you needed to look no farther than 89-year-old Rainie Blanchet, who came from Denver to visit relatives and do the Ski for Women with daughter-in-law Ellen Toll, 53, and granddaughter Lydia Blanchet, 11.

Rainie, 89, is a member of the 1942 graduating class at St. Lawrence University, where she was captain of the ski team. Fifty-seven years later, she's still steady on her skis.

"Everybody reads about Seward's Folly," Blanchet said, "but this is Rainie's Folly."

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

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