STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTOS COURTESY OF PETER WOLTER

It’s safe to say the Nordic skiing around Sun Valley got off to a slow start this year, thanks to should-have-been snow that came down as rain and temperatures that have been warm enough to make a cup of tea on occasion.

Even now in early January, the Lake Creek and Quigley trails have yet to open, and Sun Valley Nordic has only half of its trails open.

Peter Wolter found skiing in the Torsby tunnel a little surreal.

Europeans can ski year-round, no matter how warm it is outside, thanks to ski tunnels.

Peter Wolter, a Nordic racer with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s elite eight-member Gold Team, got his first opportunity to try one in Sweden in the summer of 2023 when he went to the folksy town of Torsby, Sweden, for a two-day camp.

“It’s a pretty cool experience, and it gives you a good opportunity to maintain that snow feeling,” he said. “I do a lot of roller skiing, but roller skiing doesn’t perfectly simulate snow skiing and it is nice to get on real snow.”

The tunnel in Torsby—Sweden’s first ski tunnel—opened in 2006 to hedge against global warming in a land where people are passionate about their skiing. It’s a two-hour drive from the Oslo airport, so it’s fairly accessible, as far as ski tunnels go, Wolter said.

Classic tracks allow skiers to practice their double poling.

On the outside it resembles a tunnel burrowed by ground squirrels that leaves an indentation above the ground.

“It’s a half dome in the shape of the track covered in grass. Inside, it has concrete walls that are about three feet thick, if not thicker,” said Wolter. “They move snow from the previous winter into the tunnel and keep it at about 25 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s used most heavily during summer and fall months.”

Inside, Wolter said, the 1.3-kilometer horseshoe track with its two parallel tracks loops around with some small hills. It can be skied clockwise and counterclockwise. It’s well lit with all sorts of LED lighting on the ceiling. And a radio blasts pop hits—not ABBA?????-- from 10 years ago throughout the tunnel.

“It’s definitely funky, almost a little bit dystopian in there as you’re surrounded by gray concrete and not much else going on,” said Wolter. “I’d say: Bring headphones and a good audio book or podcast, as it can get a little bit boring after awhile.”

Skiing in the tunnel is sort of liked skiing in an underground parking garage

Wolter accompanied members of the Gold Team there last fall. They encountered athletes from all over the world, including Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Norway.

“All walks of ski life make the pilgrimage to ski tunnels,” Wolter said. “It’s a very bizarre concept, the fact that you’re kind of pseudo underground, going in circles in a concrete tunnel. It’s very cool but also totally insane. I kind of feel like a little bit of a lab rat in there. But it’s a pretty effective use of time, as long as you don’t get sick.”

That’s what happened to Wolter and one of his teammates as they accompanied the Gold Team for a 12-day camp last fall. Wolter believes that intensive training in the cold was a shock to his system after being used to the summer heat.

“We would ski two hours in the morning and an hour in afternoon. And we’d do an interval session two or three times a week. That’s what the tunnel is most valuable for—doing intensity work on snow.”

Wolter and his teammates competed in their first four races of the season in Alaska before Christmas.

“We did okay, but it was not our strongest showing,” he said. “My personal results were okay—not great, not terrible.”

Gold Team athletes are in Lake Placid this week competing at the Lake Placid National Championships. From there they will disperse to World Cup races.

Wolter will travel with three-time Paralympian Jake Adicoff to Germany and Poland for Para World Cup racing. They hope to return to Sun Valley with other members of Sun Valley’s Gold Team for the Boulder Mountain Tour on Feb. 7.

Then, they’ll do some racing in the Midwest, including the American Birkebeiner in Wisconsin, ahead of the 2026 Olympics in mid-February in the northern Italian town of Dobbiaco Toblach.

“Jake and I will be at the Paralympics in mic-March. I’m excited for Jake because the last three Paralympics—Sochi, Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Beijing--were in non-traditional winter sites, and this year it will be in a site with a long history of skiing,” said Wolter, who serves as the guide for Adicoff, who is sight-impaired. “The season closes with the World Cup Finals in Lake Placid and we close out in Vermont.”

Wolter said the Gold Team is strong this year.

“We hope we have a lot of Olympic and paralympic opportunities ahead,” he said. “And we’re so fortunate. We wouldn’t be skiing at this level if not for the support of the community.”

In fact, John Steel Hagenbuch took fifth place in Sunday’s Individual Men’s Classic with a time of 25 minutes and 35.6 seconds. Will Koch took eighth place at 25:58.1. Sammy Smith took fifth in the Women's 10K  Classic with a time of 29:47.3.

Norway’s foremost tunnel is Sno, a short drive from Oslo’s city center. It provides steep uphills and downhills with cornering like you might find on an outdoor race course. It’s a loop with one-way traffic.

Oberhof’s 1.7-kilometer horseshoe loop within a three-hour drive of the Frankfurt, Germany, airport offers easy terrain for long aerobic sessions. It’s also used for testing of new products, including Toko.

The Finnfoam Paippi ski tunnel near the highway between Turku and Helsinki, boasts a cafe, ski rental shop, sauna and lockers.

Planica Nordic Centre in Slovenia is split over three levels in a car park layout.

Gallo near Ostersund, Sweden, was formerly a military warehouse situated in the mountains. It can handle 200 people an hour.