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