US Ski Mountaineering Championships- Full Race Report

I finally have found a few moments to put together this race report. After this past weekend of racing things have been crazy. Its been a busy week at work, I had a ski patrol training, a couple of meetings for Idaho Condor, and I have been trying to get things ready for a trip to Italy in a few weeks.

Some of you reading this may be not really have any idea what Ski Mountaineering Racing is. In a nutshell you climb up mountains with your skis on your feet (with the help of climbing skins) and when you get up there a ways you take the skins of, lock your boots and ski down. Then, repeat. Below is the course map to the US Championships race which took place on Saturday. It turned out to have around 7800' of vertical ascent and pretty much the same descent.
Going into the race I was feeling pretty good. I was well rested, injury free and had put together a pretty solid block of training. Although I felt good I was very nervous, I wanted to qualify to go to Italy very badly, but I knew that the competition would be very fierce. From past experience in the few races that I have done I was certain that to finish any where near the top would require a prefect day.

After an uneventful trip to Jackson from Driggs, I got checked in and went outside to warm-up for the dance. Normally I can get a really good idea of how things are going to go during a race within the first few minutes of a warm-up, Saturday was different. My body felt good but didn't seem really peppy, I was able to easily knock out a few short hard sprints, though I felt a bit off. Nerves were quite high as a tremendous amount of lycra lined up at the line drawn in the snow, I did my best to keep my mind clear and calm.

The countdown...3.2.1..and we all charged off of the line, immediately I caught myself and forced myself to pull back. There is always a mad dash at the beginning but getting caught up in it can lead to blowing up far too early in the race. I settled in the middle to back of the lead pack. The pace at this point felt strangely easy, something I could surely maintain. Without increasing pace too much I found myself in about 5th as we hit the 1st transition. I made a quick transition to DH mode and hopped out of the transition in to the Alta Chute in 1st. Within a couple of turns I realized that I had left my ski legs back in Pocatello as I floundered my way down the steep chute, I crashed, lost several places to skiers having a better descent, then collected myself and charged on to the next transition.

Again I had a quick transition and pulled out right behind Brandon and Reiner, the second climb went by quite quickly and once again I found myself struggling to ski well as we descended the Tower 3 chute. Again we transitioned, this time I found myself in 4th, right behind Pete Swenson (past national champion), and I figured I was in a good place tuck in and follow his pace for a bit. The large lead pack had kind of broken up, but nearly all pack was strung out within a few seconds of the racer ahead an behind. Again the climb seemed short as we hit the top of the Gondola, and transitioned to the 1st of 2 bootpacks. I held onto my 4th place, this time right behind Reiner.

The pace up the bootpack seemed very easy, "too easy" I thought to myself several times and I began to plot some strategy for the next booter. At the top of the booter I tucked in behind Brandon, Reiner and Pete for a short traverse and speedy descent down the Coombs Chute. As we transitioned to uphill I made my move and pulled out first into Tensleep bowl on the way to the infamous Corbet's Couloir.

You see my plan at this point was to skin hard to the base of the booter up Corbet's hammer the climb and hopefully buy myself a bit of a lead for the big descent. I felt I needed a lead at this point to stay in the top 5 due to my poor skiing skills of the day. Things worked out just as I planned and as I started hammering up the booter I began to distance myself from the lead pack. I had probably gained 20 seconds or so until just before the bottom of the aluminum ladder that climbs the final 6o feet of Corbet's.

I struggled for a few seconds to get onto the ladder, then rallied up as fast as I could, I tried my best not to squander the small lead as I skinned the last bit to Corbet's Cabin at the top of Teton Village and I managed to tranisition and head out as Pete, Brandon and Reiner were pulling in.

The DH went pretty well, all things considered. My legs felt pretty trashed so I tried to conserve energy as much as possible while skiing just beyond the edge of control. Pete and Reiner past me on a straight line groomer and Brandon (I think that was the order at least) past me in the icy bumps nearer the bottom. Everyone was still in the transition as I rolled in and after a quick change I managed to leave in 3rd behind Brandon and Reiner with Pete hot on my heels. After a few minutes of ascent I had a skin start to fail, my heart sunk this could blow the whole race, but I kept my composure, scraped the snow off and put my head down to catch back up. About 3/4 of the way up the final climb I past Pete and held him off to the transition. Just as I pulled into the transition, Reiner left in the lead. Brandon left right on his tail and I left a few seconds back. I pulled out all the stops on the final descent to make up ground and hold onto 3rd place. I wasn't able to catch anyone, but I didn't get caught either.

The three of us posed for a picture by the Race Organizer, and threw a round of high fives as the rest of the competitors started rolling in. It took a few minutes but it started to set in that I had managed to not only qualify for Italy but was able to finish second US racer only 32 seconds behind the new national champion Brandon French. Reiner had finished first a few seconds ahead of Brandon, but since he is Canadian he can't be the US champ or be on the US team.

I continue to be blown away with how well things went during the race and even as I write this am still totally out of my mind with excitement. After the awards we headed back to our friends house over in Driggs to rest and get ready for the Grand Targhee Ski Mountaineering Classic the very next day....

In the next couple of days I will post a race report about Targhee, and a post about the equipment I am racing on. If you are reading this and are at all interested in helping me get to Italy and represent the US at the World Championships please leave a comment below and I will get back to you.

Also here are some interesting links, videos and articles about the US Championships:

The race website has links to Powder Magazine's coverage, Outside Magazine, and a couple of YouTube videos.

The Idaho State Journal Wrote this about me. This article was picked up by the Associated Press and has appeared in at least 6 papers/websites in the last couple of days.

And Montana Snowsports wrote this.

There are also upcoming interviews from RestWise, First Endurance, and La Sportiva which I will link to this report when they are published.

Gear I raced on this weekend that I feel contributed heavily to my success:

Boots: La Sportiva Stratos

Skis: Ski Trab Duo Race World Cup, with Trab race binding

Nutrition: First Endurance EFS (fruit punch) and EFS liquid Shot

February Flying By

Family Backcountry Tour

Another month has pretty much flown by, I am not updating as much as regularly as I had hoped for this year. Something to work on for sure. This post is going to be somewhat of a hodge-podge because there are a lot of things that have happened in the last couple of weeks that I need to report on.

First something that is coming up this weekend. One of my favorite events of the year is coming up this Sunday, the Matt Barrett Memorial Telemark Festival and Randonee Race. I am not much of a Teleskier but I thoroughly enjoy a good ski mountaineering race beat down. The race this year will have a long course option that hasn't existed in the past. The course will roughly have 3000' of climbing and 3000' of descent. It will travel over groomed, untracked, off-piste and will have a brutal boot pack to really make your lungs scream. Please tell anyone you think that might be interested, we need good attendance so we can continue to have this event in the future. For those a little less adventurous there will be a short course option about 1200' less climbing/descent on mostly groomed runs. Cost is $25 and race starts promptly at 8:00.

Red Hot 50k

A couple of weeks ago I made the trek down to Moab, Utah for my first race of the year. As I rode down with my good frien Ryan Mcdermott, I realized with each passing mile that it wasn't going to be the race that I had hoped for. I wanted to go down south to get a nice warm run on dirt. Well there was snow all the way to Moab, and the thermometer in the car never topped higher than 35 and that was in Salt Lake when we left. We has dinner that night at Eddie Mcstiffs with Karl and Cheryl Meltzer, Matt Hart, Jared Campbell and Mindy Knoles. We got to enjoy each others company for quite a while because our waiter forgot to put our order in the system and he didn't even offer a discount even though we waited over 2 hours for our food.

The race itself started cold 16 degrees. There was some confusion when the gun (yell) went off because we weren't sure if it was the real one or not. The pace from the start was brisk but manageable on the snow covered road. There were areas of the trail that had snow a little over knee deep which slowed the pace and increased the difficulty. When the 50k course joined up the the 33k course things dried out and the pace again picked up. At this point I had fallen off the lead pack was getting caught by some of the racers that were smarter from the start, including Ty Draney. We finally started climbing again which permitted me to start pulling away again as I am a much stronger climber than flat runner. When I hit the top of Golden Spike I was starting to slip into the cave, so I stopped filled my one hand bottle and then took off again. Shortly there after I got caught by Anita Ortiz, I tried my best to hang on to here but my legs couldn't do it and the extra effort put me deep in the cave. Ty Draney caught me again and proded me to go with him but I just didn't have it and watched him go. I hit two gels in a row and finished my water figuring the aid station should be pretty close. I then got some bad news, the aid station was two miles further away than planned because the jeeps couldn't get in as far as they thought, luckily there was still lots of snow in the vicinity so I started eating as much as I could. After about 15 minutes I started to come around and set my sites on hammering to the finish. I finished in 4:53:00 in 9th which is a 50k PR for me. I was glad I hadn't gone with Ty because he got off course and ended up finishing 11th about 7 minutes behind me. I convinced Matt Hart after the finish to go soak legs in the Colorado river (which had snow on the banks and ice floating down it. He manned up and soaked for about 5 minutes I could only manage about 2 minutes. Ryan had a rough race, finishing a couple of hours after me. Shortly after he finished we hopped in the car and drove to SLC, I then got in my car and drove to Pocatello. I got home around 1:00 am, the next morning I had to go to Pebble to ski patrol, which was pretty rough since I was probably undertrained for the race. It took a couple of days for my legs to come around but all in all I was pretty happy with where I was fitness wise, it also jumped started my training helping to spur motivation to train harder.

I am going to finish off this post with a bit of sad news. Last Sunday a good friend and amazing athlete Wray Landon was killed in an avalanche while skiing the South Teton. Big Wray was an outstanding guy that always managed to to work me over whenever we met up for a run or a race. He never boasted about his accomplishments even though he was phenomenol at nearly everything her did. Wray I'll miss you man! Steve Romeo did a great write up and report on Big Wray over at Tetonat.com (Click Here for the link)

Wray and I on the Podium after Menan Butte Challenge

Wray and I enjoying the beat-down together

The rando race season is on

The last two weekends I have been able to compete in 2 ski mountaineering races; last weekend the Pebble Creek Rando Rally and yesterday the Wasatch Powderkeg. If you aren't sure what randonee (ski mountaineering) races are, they are the purest form of endurance suffering there is. They involve using you skis with climbing skins on them to climb up a mountain then skiing back down said mountain, and then repeat. Depending on the race you may repeat multiple times and maybe even strap your skis to a pack and bootpack up... awesome.

The Pebble Creek race is always a big one for me because it is on my home turf and I am somewhat protective of it, so when a bunch of guys (all of whom looked very fit and had the gear to prove that they were serious) showed up I was a little disheartened. I was glad to see some familiar faces like Zahan Billimoria, but at the same time I was certain that it was going to be a much faster race than I had anticipated. The

course at pebble is very steep, involves two climbs and is relatively short compared to other races. Most of the serious racers aren't really accustomed to the steep climbs so I knew I had that advantage. Right from the beginning we went out very fast and I was able to hold onto the lead until we hit the cat track were Zahan and Scott pulled ahead of me, the rest of the first climb I was redlined trying to make up the ground I had lost. The first transition went very well and the ski was quick. At the bottom once again I had problems getting one of my boot s into hike mode and Troy Barry from Driggs caught up to me as I struggled. The first half of the second climb is very steep, and I knew I had the advantage here because I regularly do interval workouts on the slope, I gained ground on Z and Scott Coldiron steadily and caught Scott right at the top. I could tell he was struggling and pushed as hard as I could to get the leg up, shortly after I passed him I couldn't hear anymore but didn't dare look back. Nearer the top of the second climb I sneaked a peak and saw Troy about 100 yards back but no Scott. I regained focus pushed hard to the top, quick transitioned and pulled into the finish just over a minute behind Z, Troy finished just 3 minutes later. Race stats 2200' of climbing and descent my time 39:56.

Yesterday was the Powderkeg... more on that later today