Mike and I headed for snowy Wisconsin Thursday night for a layover at my folks before heading to Cable and the Birkie trails, the Mecca of skiing in the midwest.  Jim's replacement came down with a bug, so he was at home with the kids and fixie Paul had undisclosed "stuff" to do.  So the intrepid duo loaded up on tater tot hotdish and made it an early night to prepare for the day ahead.  Saturday morning started with sub-zero temps and the crew decided to check out the Cardinal family sledding hill before getting back on the road.  The snow started kind of slow, but was fast enough that Mike managed to make it "over the top" of the opposing slope, the goal of all sliders at this hill when conditions allow.  The pair then set off for the Birkie trails and started skiing about noon.  Temps were now about 5 above and still rising, so no Vasaline or balaclava were necessary.  We started out on the Tony Wise trail, a short run on the Birkebeiner trail, then on to the Birkie classic trail to bring us to powerline.  We backtracked enough so we could see a majority of the powerline section and Mike got his photo of the day before his batteries gave out.  We took the Birkie trail through powelines, past the first food stop, and into the woods.  There was about 3/4" of new snow on top of perfect grooming, so while it looked like we were breaking trail, there was very little extra work because of it.  Mike got his first big surprise at about 7k, the first real hill of the day.  It is steep, but not long compared to a couple of the climbs that were yet to come.  I got a bit ahead so I made the climb a couple times, just for the speed rush of going back down the hill.  The top of this climb is the high point of the Kortelopet course, so the Korte course is downhill from there.  On this day however, we decided to keep climbing.  There is about 1 decent climb per km until the Korte turnoff, but from there the Birkie trail starts to rise again, and we decided to go up with it.  We made the climb to the high point and took in the views from it's 1730 foot elevation.  We then coasted down to the firetower water stop and cut back onto the new Birkie classic trail.  We joined that trail in the middle of the climb to it's high point, and were then rewarded with a nice downhill about 3/4 of a km long, and a trail going down a majoritiy of the way back to where we rejoined the Korte trail.  We hopped around a bit after that, trying to see as much of the Korte course as we could with limited energy and daylight, and avoid the collegiate races going on in the area.  Temps were beginning to cool from their 15 degree high, and the sunlight had lost much of it's radiant warming strength, so we decided it must be time to find some food.  We stopped at Coops in Hayward for taco pizza and breadsticks and Mike had a couple beers, one for him and one for Jim who couldn't make it.  Then it was back to my folks for me, and back to the cities for Mike so he could get ready for the winter carnival the next day.