Me and Jason after staying up all night
Yesterday, my partner Jason Stubbe and I finished our sixth Elk Mountain Grand Traverse. Most people call it the Grand Traverse. We call it The Traverse or simply the GT. Whichever, it’s the nuttiest event I do and if someone told me I could only do one event each year this would be it.
The GT is a 40+ mile backcountry ski race from Crested Butte to Aspen. It happens in late March, starts at midnight and this year the winning time was just over 9 hours. You race in pairs, can’t leave your partner and have to carry a certain amount of mandatory gear (usually a 10-20lb pack depending on how carefully you choose your stuff) including, among other things, a small stove for melting snow for drinking water and a bivy to keep warm in case you get pinned down by whiteout conditions or get hurt. The sketchiest portion of the course lies in the middle between Star Pass (12,000ft +) and Taylor Pass (the same). In this zone, quitting is not an option as there is nowhere to quit to. You have to keep going. Typically done on cross-country (Nordic) skis, the latest trend has been to use lightweight Alpine Touring (AT) gear. We used AT for the first time this year and I’ll never go back to Nordic. Put it this way, yesterday I crashed twice; on Nordic gear my encounters with the ground usually number in the high teens or low twenties. Weather often plays a significant role and this event is not for the faint of heart or ill prepared.
This year it was pretty cold with a biting wind up high (I have the numb fingertips and frostbite on my face to prove it) and recent snowfall made it tough for teams to get away at the front as there wasn’t always a trail set in. We hovered around 10th place through the darkness and then I started running out of gas about three hours before we were going to be running out of course. Luckily, Jason is a bull and with the help of a third partner, Bun G. Cord, we finished in 5th. I was ready to just tour it in but Jason said, “No way Woodrow. We’re going to pass three teams on Richmond Ridge,” which we did, the sweetest being the pimping of our buddies, Todd and Alan, right at the line. We were on AT gear and they were using Nordic so our gear dictated the advantage we had on particular sections of the ridge. This had us playing back and forth with them for a while, but they gapped us toward the end and were ahead and out of site by a few minutes.
The Richmond Ridge finally ends at the Sundeck, which is the gondola station and restaurant at the top of the Aspen Mountain ski area. From there, it’s a 3’000+ vert descent on groomed trails to the finish line, slope side right in downtown Aspen. We knew we might catch them so we bombed down the fresh corduroy, me following, and just as we rounded Kleenex Corner with the finish line in site, we saw the tell tale physique of two guys descending the groomers on skinny skis. They were half-way between us and the finish. Now Jason’s GS turns became Super G turns as we tried to close. Then, as it seemed doable but certain to be close, those became a full-on tuck. We swooped in skier’s right, below the first gondola tower with Jason crossing the line first and Todd second. I knew I had the advantage for the third and deciding spot and was able to throw them sideways at the line and shut ‘er down in the tiny finishing area. That finish alone made it worthwhile. We’d never gotten the opportunity to race another team at the end and certainly not in that fashion.
So that was the Traverse. But in addition to being a badass event, the GT is also one of two major transitions that occur each year in my little sporting world up here in Gunnison. The GT being over signals the end of mandatory ski missions directed at training for the GT and the beginning of bike riding season. Skiing isn’t over yet, some of the raddest skiing anywhere is at CB and they’re still open for another week and have great snow. And, we’ll still get out and bag the odd peak for some morning corn, too. But for the most part, I’ll start trying to ride my bike regularly. Incidentally, while the spring transition is always the GT, the other transition is not a date on the calendar. It takes place in the fall whenever the trails become unrideable under snow (these past two years it’s been into December, which has been sweet) and bikes get put away for the winter and we dig out the skis. But today, that seems a world away. The trails are still snowy and wet so for now it’ll just be riding the road. But it won’t be long and we can get out and put the rubber to some dirt.
2009 Elk Mountain Grand Traverse
1st Place - Mike Kloser/Jay Henry - Vail, Colorado
2nd Place – Travis Scheefer/Ethan Passant – Gunnison and Crested Butte, Colorado
3rd Place – Jake Jones/Pat O’Neil – Crested Butte, Colorado
4th Place – Eric Sullivan/Bryan Wickenhauser – Gunnison, Colorado
5th Place – Jason Stubbe/Dave Wiens – Almont and Gunnison, Colorado
