The Spirit Mountain ski hill in Duluth, Minnesota, has hosted high-end snowmobile races virtually every year since 1992 – mostly on Thanksgiving weekend to kick off the annual national snocross scene but the resort also hosted several spring Hillcross races back in the day.
The last couple of years, however, the relationship between the ski hill ownership/management (i.e., the city of Duluth) and the national snocross circuit has soured, leading to consecutive seasons without races in Duluth… but it’s coming back!
Today the Wisconsin-based Cor Powersports organization that runs the top cross-country races in the Upper Midwest announced it will hold a new, season-finale event at Spirit Mountain on April 2-3, 2022.
Running events at ski hills is not new to Cor: In fact, before it absorbed the USXC race circuit is was arguably as well known for its ski-hill-based Midwest Extreme Snowmobile Challenge spring events as it was for its cross-country races.
That said, the event at Spirit this coming spring will be a cross-country event, not a hillclimb or hillcross. A five-mile course has been planned, making use of a lot of the Spirit Mountain property.
Here’s the formal announcement (below) sent via email from Cor this morning.
New venue for April 2-3, 2022
As we enter the 11th season of the Cor PowerSports Race series we constantly have been working on growing and expanding the series. In 2015 we started running spring ski hill races and over the past six seasons have held numerous ski hill events which continued to grow in popularity and bring our sport into the light of new fans and sponsors.
This fall at Hay Days, one of the events that most everyone is looking forward to is Whitecap Mountain; the opportunity for a spring cross country race on a ski hill is still one that many racers get excited about, just as we had been excited 7 years ago when we started processing this type of event.
When in those planning stages we made a list of what ski resorts were our “bucket list” venues and over the past 6 years we had run events at all of them except one… 4 weeks ago we received an email from the ONE asking if we’d be interested in bringing the cross country national series to their venue and with that we started finalizing our bucket list venue and from discussions with our sponsors and manufacturers it is something that is going to bring a lot of excitement and exposure for the series, our racers, and sponsors as it puts cross country right in the center of a large populated area…
With that we are ecstatic to announce that Spirit Mountain will now host the Cor PowerSports Cross Country series April 2-3, 2022, which is also our season final event and banquet location.
Spirit Mountain is located in Duluth, MN and has a very long history in snowmobile racing, when we were contacted by Ann Glumac we were very cautious because of the legacy.
“Spirit Mountain is excited to welcome Cor PowerSports Cross-Country in April as part of our mission to offer multiple outdoor recreation opportunities and to attract visitors to our community,” said Ann Glumac, interim executive director at Spirit Mountain. “In addition to the professional racers, we’re pleased that local racers are welcome to compete, as well. We look forward to hosting the racers and their teams and the spectators to this family-friendly event.”
The event will feature a 5-mile course routed over the ski hill and what is special about Cor PowerSports is we have classes for just about everyone, from kids as young as 10 years old to classes for the diehard racers in their 60s. The majority of the snowmobiles competitors will be racing on are the same exact sled that you can buy off the showroom floor which goes back to the old saying, “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday.” Cor PowerSports is a family based cross country series based out of Somerset, WI. The 2021/22 race season is our 11th season of running the race series and will be our 2nd season as the pro national series; for more information on Cor PowerSports and our series please visit us online at www.corpowersports.com
