The Mora Vasoloppet: Stark Traditions

This past weekend was the Mora Vasaloppet. For those of you not familiar with what this might be, it's Minnesota's finest ski race, fashioned after the famous Mora Vasaloppet in Sweden. Mora is where Josh grew up and where his grandparents still live. This ski race happens to be one of the largest Stark family traditions and one of Josh's favorite memories from growing up. Josh has actually skiied this race a handful of times, but even more has helped out with the soup stops handing out blueberry soup to the skiiers. Usually there is a 58 km skate ski race, a 42 km classical ski race and a 35 km skate ski race. Because of the temperature they were all reduced to the 35 km race today...here are some pictures to document the event....

The temperature!

Grandpa Stark getting the soup stop set up.

Josh getting directions from one of the dressed up ladies.

The skiiers getting ready to start. If you enlarge this picture and look closely you'll see that most of the racers have some stick on skin covering to protect their faces. There's also a guy, on the right hand side of the picture that has duct tape covering most of his face. It was comical to look at, but much needed.
And they're off!

Can you even tell who they are? L to R: Jesse, Josh, Steve and Karen.

This wasn't even the best one, but this was at the first soup stop and anyone that had a beard had some special icicle action going on.
Soup stop action.

The 1st and 2nd place, dead even, with about 10 meters to go, riding through downtown Mora.

The very bundled up happy couple! We had fun, but were glad to get out of the cold!