Kongsberger Ski Club

 Many thanks to Rob Corkran, our man on the spot, for this race report from the Engadin and the Masters World Cup in Klosters, Switzerland, and for the photos -- I mean, those mountains!  How could you even ski with that backdrop? Somehow the racers did, and here is the report: *** With a rough start to our journey and an immediate flurry of races upon arrival, let alone recent open-heart surgery, this was a challenging year at the Masters World Cup for Suzanne especially, but also me.  See below, Appendix, for a summary of the unexpected drama that we faced this year! After a first day inspecting the MWC course for the “elderly”, women over 70 and men over 75, we headed for the start of the famous Engadin Ski Marathon.  This entailed early rising and an early train with transfer to bus. Start of the Engadin Ski Marathon The last stage of the bus trip was along the lake on which the race starts, in opposite direction to the race. The lead skiers could be se...

  KSC's traditional Ozbaldy 50k and 10k race has been renamed the Per Johnsen Memorial Ozbaldy 50k and 10k to honor KSC legend Per Johnsen, who founded the race some 20 years ago and passed away last year at the age of 80. Per started the race because he thought there might be interest in a local 50k, and he was right. In the early days, he and Sandy stood at the finish line with paper notepads and pencils and stopwatches at the ready, writing down racers' lap times and finish times. The race has been held every year since then, except during Covid, with increasingly sophisticated timing technology, and continues to grow as a bucket-list event. Per was born in Norway and came to America with his family as a young teenager. The family landed in Ballard, and Per went to Ballard High School, where he met his future wife Sandy. From there he headed to the University of Washington, then to Green Bay, Wisconsin, for graduate school. There he fell in with a group of like-minded skiers...