COLORAMA RUN/WALK HUGE SUCCESS
578 entrants, about the same
number as last year's record turnout, participated in this
year's event in hot and steamy conditions. In the
10k, Leslie Olson was the top female with a time of
49:07, while Chris Wichert won the men's event in
39:18. In the 10K run with poles, Susan Miller
was first female and Douglas Boduch first
male. Holly Ochs won the woman's 5K
while Aaron Nodolf was top male.
For complete results click
here.
19th ANNUAL LAPHAM PEAK COLORAMA
RUN/WALK
&
SMOKEY BEAR FUN RUN
Saturday,
October 6, 2007
This
year's event will be held in memory of Bob Sugden, who
was the first president of the Friends of Lapham Peak. Bob
was instrumental in the birth of the first Colorama Run and
played a huge part in bringing lights to Lapham's ski
trails.
Flash!
Gollinger of
Chi-Town Sports
has just donated one set of Trab skis and Casco eye wear
for the Colorama Run free drawing. Note: All entrants in
the 2007 Colorama Run/Walk will be entered in the
drawing.
Experience a beautiful fall run
at Lapham Peak State Forest. Run on wide, well-groomed,
ski/hiking trails or walk on the paved accessible
trail. Strollers or wheelchairs may be used on the
accessible trail with an optional walk up wooden
stairs to the Observation Tower. The 5K run will tour the
middle level of the park. We’ve brought back the
10K run with poles for those of you who cross train for
skiing by running with ski poles. The 10K course,
including those running with poles, follows the outer
perimeter trail. The Smokey Bear Fun Run [10
& under] will encircle Homestead Hollow. Share a treat
with Smokey after the fun run. Click here for
A History of
Colorama.
For
more details and a downloadable entry form click
HERE.
To enter online at active.com, click
HERE.
Summer
Solstice Raises $1237.
The
Lupo Pond is not just for snowmaking.
Snowmaking
Update.
Bob Sugden Memorial: $3367 has been donated to
Lapham Snowmaking in Bob's name.
Bike
Swap: This
year's (2007) Bike Swap raised $3470.90.
Summer
Solstice Fundraiser: On Saturday, June 23, 2007, the
Lapham Peak Friends will sponsor a celebration of
summer. The celebration will include a fun run/walk,
a silent auction, health fair, nature hikes and special
activities for children. (10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. at
Lapham Peak)
Click here for brochure: Solstice
Companies and silent auction
donors click here for 2-page brochure: Summer Solstice 2page
Corporation
Lupos
Give Snowmaking a Huge Boost.
John and Louella Lupo presented
a check for $26,000 on May 5, 2007 to Louise Borzynski,
president of the Friends of Lapham Peak, and Ed Muzik, Jr.,
property manager of the Lapham Peak Unit—Kettle
Moraine State Forest. The donation was earmarked for
snowmaking, particularly the pond. In recognition of their
generous donation, the pond will be named “Lupo
Pond.” John and Louella Lupo are active members of
the Friends and are currently serving on the board of
directors. In addition to holding and cooling water for
snowmaking, the pond will get plenty of summer use. It will
be stocked with fish as part of the urban fishing program
for kids, as well as for canoe and kayak
instruction.
I
would like to add that the Lupos involvement goes far
beyond their generous donation. Both have been very
active since the inception of the snowmaking project.
John can be found grilling brats at all the fundraising
functions. In fact, his whole family is involved; I
even met his father manning the grill at The Colorama Run.
And many of the photos on this website were taken by
John. He has also prepared and
presented several powerpoint presentations to area
businesses and chambers of commerce to enhance the
snowmaking committee's efforts to complete this ambitious
project in 4 years or less. In addition, he is the
overall head of the Snowmaking Committee, for both
fundraising and engineering. Finally, John designed
the snowmaking patch which accompanies thank you receipts
for all donors to the snowmaking project. So, special
thanks to the Lupos. (Lee
Borowski)
Bob
Sugden (January
18, 1941-March 21, 2007)
On March 21st, due to sudden
complications from chemotherapy, The Friends of Lapham Peak
lost a great friend in Bob Sugden. Bob, along with his wife
Sandy was a charter member of the Lapham Peak Friends and
avid cross country skier, competing in 25 Birkie's. I've
known Bob for over two decades. He's been a friend,
competitor (my age group) and we used to rollerski together
once a week. He was a very special person. No one was nicer
or more unassuming, yet he was a tenacious competitor. Bob
always greeted you with a shy smile and I always got the
feeling that he, like Will Rogers, never met a person he
didn't like; and he certainly never met anyone who didn't
like him. Bob will be sorely missed by those who knew
him...Lee
Borowski
Skiing at
Lapham all next winter?
This March, the manmade
loop survived heavy rain with temperatures of 70º and still
held a base of over 12 inches.. It was groomed through
Sunday, March 18th. If we get enough cold nights in early
December, next year we could be skiing all winter.
(Photo by
Ed Muzik: Saturday, March 17,2007)
Click here to make a donation
and help lengthen the manmade
loop.
Manmade Snow Saves XC Skiing in Boston
"In the
winter we have some of the most reliable snow in New
England thanks to the manmade loop at the Weston Ski Track.
Despite our warmest winter ever, we’ve skied since
December 10th and will be able to ski till
mid-March." From an article
on why the Boston area junior ski program is so
successful. Click here for entire article.
Note: December 10th is almost exactly the day we lost our
early snow and had no skiing for a month. Next year we too
will have manmade snow for the entire winter. Just how long
the loop will be depends on how fast the donations keep
coming in.
Click here to
donate.
Bike Swap
March 24th
"The Lapham Peak Friends'
Spring Bike Swap is coming up on
Saturday, March 24th (2007) at Cushing School in
Delafield, Wisconsin. The Bike Swap is a fund raiser
for the snow making project at Lapham Peak. We would
appreciate your help and attendance at the Bike Swap.
Last year was a very successful event for all
concerned. Whether buying or selling bike stuff, we
encourage your support. Everything from new bikes to
bike trailers were sold last year. We actually ran
out of resale bikes last year for the consignment
corral. Do you have bikes in your garage that are
unused? Bring them in!! Another reason to attend is
the bake sale that has been added this year. Many Lapham
Peak Friends are donating delicious home-baked goods.
Another way to help this fund raising event is to let
people know about the bike swap. Click here for the
official flyer for the Bike Swap: BikeSwap07-LETTER Forwarding the flyer to
friends or printing and posting the flyer is the best way
to inform the community about the Bike Swap. Thanks for
your help." John Corbin
Lapham's
own Waukesha West Girls Win a State Championship at
Rhinelander
The Girls' Team won the skating
competition on Sunday, 2/11/07, and finished 3rd in the
pursuit. The boys' team team also did well, finishing 4th
in the overall competition.
Alyssa Beste (foreground) and Laura
Koch (behind Alyssa) on their way to taking 5th and 8th
place respectively in Sunday's pursuit race in
Rhinelander. Erica Claas placed 15th, securing third
place overall for the team.
Click here for team
photos and overall results.
Lapham Loppet raises $1,462.65 net profit for
snowmaking.
$2325.89 was brought in this year but
was offset some by debts incurred during low-snow years.
Wednesday
Night Results
Click here (or on sidebar) for results of
Wednesday Night Races
"A special thanks to Kris Maki who
has been the race director since the first Lapham Loppet,
first Wednesday Night Races and the first Colorama Run. Her
dedication is now approaching two decades. Having organized
races in the past, I well know of the work and frustrations
along the way. And while the rewards are great, it takes
huge perseverance to last that long."... Lee
Borowski
Snowmaking
Saves Lapham Loppet
(Photo by Ed
Muzik)
Men's winner Scott
Oberbreckling with
mother Claire and daughter Madison.
(Photo by
Mike Graham)
The new snowmaking system was used to
stockpile snow and repair bare spots on the course for
today's race. Without that help, rock skis would have been
a must. As it turned out, the entire course was well
covered. So a special thanks go out to Ed Muzik and Sean
Becker, who spent many hours (often after midnight) to get
the bugs out of the new snowmaking setup.
(Click here for photos of
snowmaking and race day.)
Scott Oberbreckling was the men's winner and Katie Stalland
topped the female division in today's Loppet (1/20/07).
Birken Schimpff (male) and Alyssa Beste (female) won their
divisions in the high school race. In addition, a 1
Kilometer kid's race was held.
Scott came in from Colorado and is one of the original
group of junior skiers from our area who honed his racing
skills at the Wednesday night races at Heritage Ridge.
Scott was an All-American in college, has placed as high as
9th in the Birkie and was the winner of the first three
Birkie Elite Sprints. Then he took a long layoff and
returned to racing after his 40th birthday. Note:
Cross-country is certainly a lifetime sport as most of the
racers today were over 40 and quite a few over 60; we even
had one skier over 70. To view the results, click on
Race
Results in the
sidebar.
Wednesday
Night Races are on!
While we have decent skiing as of
Tuesday (January 16, 2007), we don't know if the conditions
will hold till Saturday. A decision will be made this later
this week when we see how the snow cover holds.
For all
race updates, click on Trail Conditions link in
sidebar.
We've Got
Skiing!
While we didn't get a big dump, it
was enough to groom for skiing. Click on Trail Conditions
button in Sidebar to see latest trail reports for, not only
Lapham, but the entire SE Wisconsin region. Our snowmaking
is now in it's shakedown period. Progress will be posted,
either on this site or the Trail Conditions page (link in
sidebar).
New Trail Report Website for SE
Wisconsin
The Lapham Peak Friends'
are introducing a ski trail report website for SE
Wisconsin. The first priority is to enhance the
Lapham groomer's daily report, which is done in the morning
and may not reflect conditions as they change over the
day. The second goal is to help local skiers locate
the best skiing, not just at Lapham, and not just from
yesterday's (or last week's) report. Often there is
good snow cover on some ski trails when other trails in the
area are bare. But up till now, there has been no
central source of information, so skiers have had to rely
on word of mouth and phone calls.
In order for this endeavor to be successful, many skiers
will have to become involved and submit reports. So
we are encouraging everyone to submit a report, especially
for the more obscure trails in SE Wisconsin, where often
there is excellent skiing. This will be
our method of communication and
hopefully it will get much use.
In fact, some of you may be wondering why we started this
website when Skinnyski.com has the same service. The
problem is that Skinnyski.com is based in Minnesota and
serves the entire Midwest. As a result many skiers
find it is remote and quite frankly, many of our local ski
trails never have ski reports.
Ski conditions and Lapham snowmaking progress can be found
at http://www.laphampeakfriends.org/ViewSkireportsExpanded.php.
Click here for latest photos
and information on completion of The
Pond.
Fundraising
Update (1/03/07): Mike Mandli and Bicycle
Doctor's Ski School, which was in session for 5 weeks this
fall, raised $500 for Lapham Peak Snowmaking. In addition,
the skis raffled off at Andy Schwartz's Snowman Triathlon
(a fundraiser which netted $455) were donated by Will
Edwards and the Bike Doctor. (The Bike Doc's contribution
was omitted in the original release.)
December 21, 2006. While we've had a meltdown, and
it's presently raining, area Alpine resorts will survive
this blip because of their artificial snow. In fact,
Sunburst has a Nordic membership and the XC skiing has been
very good - an excellent indicator of the future for our
snowmaking effort.
Now that the pond is in, we're close to making snow on the
entire 1 K loop. So the future looks bright. Final
adaptations are being made and the target date for firing
up the snow guns with water from the pond is January 4,
2007.
Click
HERE
to see photo updates.
"If you build it, they will come."
(Dec. 3rd Photo by Phil Van
Valkenberg,
who recently moved here from Northern Wisconsin.
Phil is the author of many biking books and ski articles.)
Click here for information on his
books.
More Lapham ski
photos.
This, now famous, quote could
easily be applied to Lapham Peak. Record turnout this
weekend (December 2nd and 3rd) had skiers backed up at the
entrance waiting to buy trail passes. Yet there was no
congestion on the trail; the length of the system and wide
trail design easily handled the huge amount of skiers. With
a track on the side, both skaters and striders enjoyed
hassle-free skiing, no matter their speed. Hopefully our
snowmaking project, which kicks into full-gear-snowmaking
on December 11, will keep local skiers on snow all season -
even if we lose much of our early snow
bonanza.
Click here for latest grooming
report.
Or
call the Lapham Peak 24-hour information line, (262)
646-4421
Recent Milwaukee Journal Blogs:
1.
Birkie Training
2.
Snowmaking Progress
Jim Jablonowski
Memorial Fund
Looking for a reason to support Lapham
Snowmaking?
Click here!
Click here for Archive of
Past Year