Last year I covered Ski to Sea, a race from a mountaintop down to the ocean and in to a local port that the participants have called “the Olympics for Bellingham.” I had the opportunity to cover part of the weekend event as a photojournalist and some of my work appeared in the Bellingham Herald. Below are a few of my best pictures and related information.

Nina Maas (second from right) is embraced by a friend after completing the last leg of the Ski to Sea race on Sunday. “I feel amazing,” said Maas, 20, a member of team “Awesome.” Maas’s friends and teammates (left, second from left, right, and some not pictured) screamed cheers of support and ran alongside her when she ran up the beach for the last few yards of the race. Maas said her team was mostly fellow rugby players, and when asked how long they’d trained for the race, she replied, “Not at all,” to the laughter of her teammates.

Miguel Herrera, 23, runs with time-tracker in hand as he crosses the distance from the bicycle leg of the Ski to Sea race to the canoe leg on Sunday. Herrera, 23, is captain of “Stallone in the Night”, a Ski to Sea team of WWU industrial design students. “The only reason we’re in this race is to kick the alumni’s ass,” Herrera said at the Ski to Sea Block Party on Friday in reference to Ski to Sea team “VanDammage” which consisted of WWU alumni who were also industrial design students. According to unofficial results of the Ski to Sea race, team “Stallone in the Night” with a time of 7 hours, 56 minutes, while team “VanDammage” finished with a time of 6 hours, 37 minutes.

Thousands of people from in and around Bellingham showed up on Saturday for the Ski to Sea Grand Parade. The parade featured ballerinas, firetrucks, school marching bands, a robotic moving dinosaur, clowns, synchronized umbrella dancing teams and political rallies in the form of  dozens of floats, vehicles and performers, all stretched down the length of Cornwall Avenue in sunny weather.

Geeb Johnston, far right, plays base during a performance at the Ski to Sea Block Party at the Boundary Bay Brewery on Friday. Johnston, who describes his age as “over 50”, is a member of the Atlantics band, and performed for much of the evening at the afternoon block party, which featured dancing, a costume contest and hundreds of people including Ski to Sea racers.