The Grand Traverse is a race that I look forward to every year. I'm not sure why. Who in there right mind would want to start skiing 42 miles through the back country from Crested Butte to Aspen at midnight? Yes, that is right, the race starts at midnight. Why? Because it is easy to ski during the day when the sun is out. Finding your way through a snow covered landscape at night with a headlamp in a ground blizzard is way more fun. Wait, did you say fun? Ok, I take that back, I think challenging is more appropriate. The people that choose to do this race a hardcore whether they admit it or not. Often the leaders of the race are breaking trail and having to navigate in the dark. This is the Grand Traverse!
Waiting around for the midnight start this year was typical. Looking out the window it was dumping snow and gusty. Thoughts race through the head, "Are we going to Aspen?", "Is it going to be a whiteout on Taylor again", "Is it time to head to the start yet". Then before you know it you're rushing to get out the door with all your gear to get to the start(or at least I was). A quick last minute beacon and gear check at the school and we were on the start line heading to Aspen. I'm standing next to my partner Ethan Passant, who I have raced with the past two years, racking up two 2nd place finishes. Despite us both being humble and not really focused on this event(this is our first ski together for the year) our goal is to win.
After drinking a double Americano at 11pm I was ready to go and wanted to get the hole shot off the start line. Three, two, one, go and we were off. I won the hundred yard dash and got the hole shot into the first corner onto the nordic trail before quickly realizing this was mistake. There was 4 inches of new snow on the trail that was required some serious effort to skate through. After breaking trail for a couple minutes I pulled over to let someone else have a turn. This was how much of the race would go.
For the first hour and a half of the race my partner, Ethan and I were up in the front trying to break away from the pack. We discovered this was a futile effort in that every time a gap would open, we would hit another section of breaking trailing and quickly teams would begin to stack up behind whomever was breaking trail. I finally pulled over after breaking trail across death pass and succumbed to the masses. I had to persuade Ethan to do the same because loves to be out front. This was a smart move.
For the next two and half hours going up to the Friends hut we were in the middle of the line of lemmings, all fifty of them. This was because of the fresh 4+" of new snow that the first person of the line was having to break trail through. The pace was pretty slow and I was wishing I had my Ipod because it was fairly boring. Marching along in a slow moving line at 3 am was monotonous and I began to feel like I was just sleep walking along. By the time we got to the Friends hut my legs were aching and I was feeling blown. We opted to stop below the hut in the trees to put on jackets and warmer gloves before heading up Star Pass. The weather was clearing and we could see the stars which was encouraging.
As we started skiing again Ethan said, "I don't like being this far back." We were probably in about 20th place but as we passed the checkpoint at the Friends we passed around 10 teams who were stopped. Ethan was anxious to catch the front and set a fast past climbing the switchbacks up Star Pass. I was feeling blown but thought it would be better to just suffer through and see I could come around. We passed a few more teams by the time we got to the top of Star. We were treated with a clear night sky and no wind on the traverse across Star. This was lucky because the air temperature felt somewhere in the single digits.
Standing on the top of Star, there was a nice third moon illuminating the bowl below. We dropped in and were treated with some awesome powder turns all the way down the bowl. We caught up to the lead teams just as we pulled into the checkpoint at the bottom of Star. After the nice powder turns I felt rejuvenated and awake again. We had a quick transition and left the checkpoint. Quickly we caught up to two other teams and Ethan informed me that we were with the lead group. "Really? I think we can win this." Luckily, the trail had been broken from Star to the check point at Taylor and we were able to open a gap on the teams behind us.
Skiing by the checkpoint at Taylor we were right with Sari Anderson and her partner Peter Gaston. The other team of Brad and Teague had dropped back a little from us. However, it was back to taking turns breaking trail as there was no track to the Barnard hut. Sari was skiing really strong and determined to not let anyone catch us. Ethan, Sari, and I took turns breaking trail while Peter hung in because he wasn't feeling up to it. There was a low cloud hanging over Gold Hill that reduced visibility to a couple hundred feet and caused frosted eyelashes.
I was in the front skiing down Gold Hill as we got close to the Barnard. As I was skinning down through the windblown and crusted drifts I was hitting patches of bare ground that had only a trace of snow on them. About halfway down I had one skin blow off my ski then a hundred yards farther I had the other skin come off. I was forced to stop to put on my other set of skins for one final climb before the decent into the Barnard. The frigid temperature causing the skin glue to become hard and less sticky combined with the humidity in the air creating moisture on the ski base was a recipe for skin disaster. I caught back up to Ethan and the lead group before we descended into Barnard.
As I dealt with rearranging a few things in my pack and putting down some ramen I was more focused on what the snowmobiles were going to do. There were a couple guys getting suited up so I was feeling relieved. However, one volunteer said, "I better go ask." and ran up to the hut to ask the doctor. He came back down and crushed our spirits. "They said no, it is part of the race" and two snowmobiles took off towards Taylor, "Oh, they are going to drop something off."
My thoughts were; "great, they are packing out the section behind us for our competition to catch up to us." The end of our 10 minute mandatory stop came quickly and I slapped my short skins back on my skis that had fallen off going down Gold Hill. Ethan and I skied out of the checkpoint first only to make it five steps before one of my skins fell off. "Damn. Ethan do you have a spare skin?" Ethan got out his spare skin and we put it on my ski, it was long but at least sticky. We caught back up to Sari and Peter pretty quickly and I hobbled along for five minutes with what felt like a limp because of the combination of skins(one much faster than the other). Going down the first of several short decents along Richmond I realized the skin combo was not going to work as everyone else pulled away from me. I stopped and ripped both my skins to finish the decent and catch back up.
At the bottom of the decent I stopped and told Ethan I was going to get my short skins to work even if it mean taping them on. He said, "Ok, but I'm going to keep skiing with Sari at the front." I took one skin out of my suit and applied it to my ski and it did not want to stick. I had some duct tape on my pole and I tried to peel it off and quickly realized tape wasn't going to work when the glue separated from the backing due to the single digit temperature. This could be the race, wait, deep breath, you can get these to stick. I cleaned them off using my ski edge and massaged them onto my skis and they seemed to stick just enough.
I was encouraged that no one else had passed me while I was stopped for probably 3 minutes. I charged to catch back up to Ethan and was getting worried until I finally had a glimpse of the lead pack. Sari and Peter, Brad and Teague, and Ethan were all right together. I was pumped to be back in the mix and determined to no let anything stop me. We hung in for a few minutes as I recovered from my hard effort to catch back up, but I was anxious to get out front. As I took my pull at the front, I though this is it, we need to pull away.
I quickened the pace and Ethan I began to pull away, dropping Brad and Teague first. Sari was the next to drop back, but Peter stayed a couple hundred yards behind us. I was thinking, "Why isn't Peter waiting for Sari and helping here out after all that trail breaking she did?" About a mile from Aspen Mountain there is a steep short hill to climb that has a good view looking back and when we reached the top and could not see Sari I knew we had the race barring something crazy going wrong. We were pumped and enjoyed the rest of the cruise into the ski area and laid down nice carving turns down Aspen Mountain to the bottom of the gondola.
It was interesting race and the coed teams were really impressive. As it turned out Stevie Kramer and Marshall Thompson were motoring at the end because they passed Sari and Pete before the top of Aspen to come in 2nd! Sari Anderson and Peter Gaston came in 3rd followed by Brad LaRochelle and Teague Holmes.
Full results are http://www.elkmountaintraverse.org/html/results-2011.html
Story in the Aspen Times http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20110327/NEWS/110329864/1077&ParentProfile=1058
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