FARMINGTON — Derek Rowe’s house is a bit more full than anyone there is used to, especially given that it’s the middle of winter, when Rowe is typically away at school.

But it’s not every day a skier gets to crash at his own pad in preparation for one of the bigger races on his schedule.

He just happened to bring along a few of his friends.

“I have five guys at my house right now,” Rowe said. “They didn’t want the younger skiers at houses, so they put them up in a hotel, but the rest of us are at home now.”

Rowe — a former Mt. Blue standout and now a skier out of the Maine Winter Sports Center in Aroostook County — and his teammates, along with more than 300 other skiers converged on Farmington’s Titcomb Mountain ski area Saturday for the first day of the second event of the TD Bank Eastern Cup series.

Originally slated to be a two-day, two-venue event with the first day in Augusta, the lack of natural snow forced organizers to shift the entirety of the event to Titcomb.

“I thought it was great for the mountain,” another former Mt. Blue star, Welley Ramsey, said. “It’s tough to survive, for the area right now, and the Farmington Ski Club, they’ve pulled out all the stops — making snow even — to show they really wanted to host this event.”

Ramsey and Rowe were teammates for the Cougars and are again teammates at MWSC. There, they train with a lot of familiar faces, all of whom have logged considerable time at Titcomb as ski racers.

“We did do a lot of skiing here,” former Leavitt Area High School racer Michael Lessard said. “It’s fun to come back and ski on a course you’re familiar with. A lot of what I’ve been doing the last couple of years has been traveling to places I’d never been before. It’s nice to come back and get a home feel.”

Lessard and the former Mt. Blue racers are joined at MWSC by UMPI skier Justin Fereshetian, also of Leavitt.

“I like coming back here. They have good trails,” Fereshetian said. “This weekend, they’re doing really short loops, too, so it’s hard not to be familiar with it. It was good; I liked it.”

The facility was forced to make snow, and did so almost around the clock in preparation for the event. The first race was a classical sprint, and skiers did two laps on a mostly flat, fast track.

“It’s a little bit of a bummer that the whole trail system isn’t open because we haven’t had any snow, but it’s a great trail system,” Lessard said.

“It’s kind of crappy that we can’t ski the whole course, but no one could control the weather, and what we have here is still pretty sweet,” Rowe said.

Rowe is very familiar with the track, despite a bit of a later start than most of his Nordic skiing brethren.

“My dad took me out skiing when I was really little here, but nothing too serious,” Rowe said. “I wrestled through middle school, and all my friends skied, so I switched. I got my start right here.

“The first time I skied was in jeans, on the airport,” Rowe added. “Jeans and a winter coat.”

From jeans to a state title in two years, Rowe progressed rapidly.

“It was nice to have guys like Welley and Adam Fissette to ski against, and the guys from Leavitt were always great friends and great competition, too.”

Local knowledge also brought with it local support. Many of the dozens of volunteers around the course, as well as area ski enthusiasts, are familiar with the group of local skiers, and offered plenty of vocal support during the day’s races.

“It’s great to have the home crowd, they’re really supportive,” Ramsey said.

“It’s sweet to race, the fans, they all know Welley and I,” Rowe said. “Hearing them cheer, it’s great. Not everyone knows us, but it’s kind of cool that they know we’re from here, so they cheer louder.”

The cheering may have helped a bit, too. Of the 143 men who began the morning time trials, only 30 advanced to the afternoon quarterfinals. Ramsey, Fereshetian, Lessard and Nils Coons (a former Messalonskee racer) all made it into that round. Rowe and Oxford Hills grad Spencer Eusden just missed.

“A lot of the top guys were just double-poling the whole way,” Lessard said. “It’s a relatively flat course, and we didn’t get much, if any, new snow (Friday) night, so that rain that came in the afternoon really helped harden things up. The quicker the better. This was a really fast track.”