Celebrating Alice Knapp & her book On Track!
If you’ve been following the Lumi Experiences blog recently, you probably saw the popular Watercolors of Winter post about Lumi guest Chris Zafren who paints a scene from each day of her travels. Lumi’s Director of Marketing, Lauren Honican, talked with Chris right before her sister Alice Knapp’s induction to the Middlebury College Sports Hall of Fame for nordic skiing. As a fellow Midd alum, Lauren was excited to hear about Alice’s experience returning to Middlebury for the induction ceremony and her inspiration for writing the book she recently published, On Track!
As the youngest in the family, Alice Tower (now Knapp) had no choice but to ski. Her parents, Drs. John and Elizabeth Tower were founding members of the Nordic Ski Club of Anchorage. When the club started in 1964, Alaska was still a very new state and Anchorage was a young place too. Wanting to take full advantage of its northerly climate and create more winter recreation opportunities for the local community, one of the town politicians, Sewell “Stumpy” Faulkner, decided to host a Nordic ski race downtown. They got permission from the Alaska railroad for the race to cross the railroad trestle onto the adjacent golf course and Olympic Biathlete Dick Mize who was a new teacher at the local high school, set the 5 km course. It was a big Norwegian-style event with Glühwein and trophies from local businesses. The race was a great success: the railroad held the trains and the club had its first organizational meeting three days later.
Nearly 60 years later, Alice has written a book, On Track! about her hometown club now called the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage (NSAA).
Alice grew up racing in Anchorage and represented Alaska on four Junior National teams. She then raced for the Middlebury College Ski Team in Vermont. Middlebury was a top women’s cross country ski team in the nation winning the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW, precursor of NCAA) Nationals two of Alice’s four years there. Her successful collegiate career included being named a three-time All American and she was also a top Eastern Collegiate racer throughout her college years. She attributes her success to Coach Terry Aldrich and her teammate Liz Carey who came up to Alaska after her freshman year to help her train. Alice’s recent induction to the Middlebury College Sports Hall of Fame celebrates her collegiate racing achievements and her continuing involvement in Nordic skiing.
After graduating from Middlebury, Alice was named to the U.S. National Development Team, but chose not to continue racing competitively. Instead, Alice wanted to settle in Anchorage and begin her teaching career. Alice remained active in NSAA, as a coach, official, Ski 4 Kids event organizer, and co-president while teaching and raising an active family.
The Covid-19 pandemic was the perfect opportunity for Alice, who had retired from teaching, to start researching the history of the long-standing ski club. She went to the ski club’s office to search for everything she could find about NSAA’s history and then spent a couple months at her cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska digging in. Initially she envisioned only writing an article, but the more she learned from her research and in talking with many of the “movers and shakers” of the club the more the project grew.
She realized she couldn’t write the history of the club without mentioning the many people who were instrumental in making the club what it is today. With over 3500 active members, NSAA is arguably the largest Nordic ski club in North America. Anchorage has over 160 km of groomed ski and bike trails, most of which would not be there if it wasn’t for NSAA, therefore a description of the trail systems and how they came about became a big part of the project. It was also important to document all the current club divisions: Biathlon, Ski Jumping, Junior Nordic, Backcountry Skiing, Racing, and Backcountry Cabins. Finally, NSAA hosts many annual events including the Great Alaska Ski Train, Ski 4 Women, and Tour of Anchorage. Kincaid Park, Anchorage’s premier nordic venue has been host to many National and International competitions all organized by the NSAA community. Her book On Track! covers a lot of ground.
Today the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage typically has over 400 skiers sign up for high school races, around 300 at the middle school-level, and over 750 kids for Junior Nordic League (ages 6-12). NSAA’s groomed trails are the training grounds for many successful club programs: Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center (APUNSC) and Alaska Winter Stars (AWS). In the last two Olympics, 50% of the cross country skiers on the US Team (12 skiers total) were affiliated with NSAA via APUNSC and AWS.
To learn more about NSAA and its history, you can purchase a copy of Alice’s book On Track! from their online store or via Amazon.
For the past several years, in addition to supporting many NSAA ski races during the wintertime, Alice has enjoyed traveling with Lumi Experiences to cross country ski in Europe! She and her husband Gunnar are halfway through achieving a Worldloppet Ski Marathon medal having skied 5 of 10 Worldloppet Ski Marathons. This winter, Alice, Gunnar, and a group of friends from Alaska are getting ready to ski the Birken in Lillehammer, Norway!
Would you like to ski in Europe next winter? Our winter 2024 trips just launched at lumiexperiences.com. Book your trip before March 31, 2023 and receive savings of $300 per person!
Have questions or are curious to learn more about planning a custom group or self-guided trip for a group of friends? Reach out to info@lumiexperiences.com. We always love hearing from you!