Ski to Sea celebrates the environment. Does the race also put more pollutants into the air?

The annual Ski to Sea race is one of the more popular events in Bellingham, with over 470 teams competing. However, some are asking whether an event that celebrates what the environment has to offer can also be damaging it.

With thousands of people driving or even flying in for the race, hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide emissions are released, in addition to the amount of driving needed to set up the race beforehand.

This is a problem, not just for Ski to Sea, but for any major event that brings in outside competitors and spectators.

This year, nearly 3,900 people participated in the race, most of whom lived within 100 miles of the event, according to Ted Tarricone, a graduate student at Western Washington University who did research into the emissions released into the air by events like this. Thousands more people came out to watch.

Emissions from people traveling to and from Bellingham for the race are the main cause of emissions, according to Tarricone.

Tarricone found that about 275 tons of CO2 were emitted in connection with the 2023 Ski to Sea race, which was held on May 28, and transportation to and from Bellingham accounted for about 78% of that.

Working with the race director, Tarricone was able to get the registration sheet for all 3,894 race participants, and used geocoding, a process using the ZIP codes of each participant, to calculate the distances people traveled for the race and determine how much emissions were being put into the atmosphere.

Carpooling alone could save literally tons of emissions, he said.

“Many people are coming from the greater Seattle area. Is there a way that we can really maximize carpooling from there? If we are able to, on average, increase our carpool rates by one single person per car, we are [reducing] close to 30 tons [of Co2e].

“When you have thousands of people all traveling to a place, that is gonna be pretty carbon intensive,” Tarricone told The Herald in an interview.

Organizers of Ski to Sea declined to comment on the irony of an event that showcases the outdoors increasing the amount of pollutants put into the air and may contribute to climate change.

Could Ski to Sea have zero emissions?

One way to reduce emissions is the car-free division. Seven teams in the race joined the Car-Free Division, meaning all their setup the day before had to be done with manpower alone, such as walking, bicycling, etc. Remy Mann was one of the participants whose team, “My Dog,” went car-free.

“The main reason we did was, for me at least, it was a cool sustainability challenge,” Mann said. “It was really cool to do this race, a few hundred miles, without any cars.”

While the race itself is just about the same for a car-free team, the setup is done without any aid from a motorized vehicle. Some of the team camped out before the race because they couldn’t use a car to drive up the morning of the race like the other teams.

The canoe and kayaks for the fifth and sixth leg of the race were left in the location the day before the race along with the other teams, but they were carried to the drop-off point in a trailer pulled by a bike.

“It extended the race kinda by a whole day,” Mann said. “It felt like we were doing this event for two days instead of just the one.”

Even with making the effort to reduce emissions without using a car, even a team like “My Dog” could not be completely emission-free. Two members of the team were from Colorado, and they had to travel to Bellingham for the race, according to Mann.

One of the members drove while the other took a plane.