Dressed in a parrot costume, Andrew Bailey stuck the landing off a ski jump and the crowd went wild with cheers.

"I did the course a couple times just for fun warming up. A lot of talk has been whether to take the jump and go for air or just take it easy and I decided to do both," said Bailey, a College of St. Scholastica freshman and a member of its Nordic ski team.

No snow and temperatures in the 50s in Duluth on Saturday didn't stop the fifth annual Bjorn Bakken Ski Championships of America from taking place this year. The St. Scholastica Nordic ski team hosts the annual ski celebration, named after the first CSS skier to reach the NCAA skiing championships, in the backyard of the house where ski team members live on the edge of campus.

The event brings together the skiing community - college Nordic teams traveled from Michigan, Wisconsin and the Twin Cities for Saturday's bash - and the St. Scholastica community, with a steady stream of students walking from campus to the house on Saturday afternoon. The Duluth community also has been supportive of the event by donating food, beverages and items to give away to the crowd, said St. Scholastica senior Chris Hecker.

Paul Schommer, a 2015 St. Scholastica graduate who organized the inaugural Bakken, noted, "Every year it becomes an annual reunion for the team. It's really awesome to see everyone working super-hard to put on the event."

Current and former St. Scholastica Nordic ski team members spent the past week finding snow, starting with the large snow piles still left in the college's parking lots, and trucking it into the backyard. They left the snow piled up in the backyard, covered by tarps, until volunteers spread it into a course on Saturday morning. They were concerned that even the parking lot snow piles would be gone and as of last Monday, Hecker said, they weren't sure they'd be able to pull it off.

"We were like, 'Man, this is going to be tough. We have no way of getting snow at this point.' Then we talked to Paul (Schommer) and some of the community members in Duluth and got a trailer and a truck. That's when everybody banded together and we had about 30 people out helping the last two days. It's awesome to see our entire school come together like this," Hecker said.

The ski team put in countless hours shoveling snow this week, he said. They brought in 24 carloads, eight trailer loads and six truckloads of snow, Hecker said.

Harris Dirnberger, a St. Scholastica senior, said the course ended up being a third larger than they thought it would be.

"We were harvesting all the parking lots in sight. You can go anywhere within a mile of here and there's nothing. It's all in this backyard. There's more snow in this backyard than the rest of Duluth," Dirnberger said

Bailey said it was great to see ski team alumni help make the Bakken happen this year.

"It's great because it's brought our team a lot closer together and it's been awesome just being out here. It's a great time," he said.

The race's namesake was in attendance at this year's race - his second time attending the event since it was created. Bakken, a 2008 graduate who now lives in the Twin Cities, took his turn skiing the course on Saturday wearing suspenders and lederhosen, slipping off the course as he reached the finish line. As he finished, the announcer yelled, "Bjorn" and the crowd responded, "Bakken!"

Bakken had heard rumors that a ski team event had been named after him and at first it was a little awkward, he said, but then he thought it was a cool event after seeing photos of its first year. The course was tough this year, he said, joking that the race is the one day a year that he is still "very competitive" about skiing. The event's fun atmosphere represents his time on St. Scholastica's ski team - it's hard work, but a fun time to be together with like-minded people, he said.

He was impressed with the coordinated effort it took this year and gave credit to the students for the work to move all the snow into the backyard.

"There isn't any snow left in the Midwest because it's all right here," he said.