March 3, 2009

It is March already. The daylight is getting longer. Sometimes it is light out when we wake up. It stays light now well into the evening. Winter is still with us. It was five below yesterday morning. But we can sense the coming of the bright season.

Skiing season is still here and has taken some interesting turns. Last weekend included a member’s day at Arctic Valley. We met some friends up there who are also members and had a fantastic sunny day of skiing. The conditions were typical for Arctic Valley, a mixture of windblown crust and deep soft snow. Kris and I started the day out in high gear and quickly realized we were outrunning our friends. We slowed down a bit and it was much more fun for all of us. We skied a full day and enjoyed their company.

After that great weekend, Kris noticed that Alyeska was having an unusual competition called the North Face Vertical Challenge, a competition to see who could make the most runs down the longest double black diamond run in North America in eight hours. It only took us a few minutes to decide that we needed to sign up.

Kris took half a day on Friday and I snuck out of a training class halfway through my day off to head down to Alyeska for a warmup. We normally hate taking the tram because it is crowded, you have to remove your skis, and you have to climb long sets of steps at both the base and the top. We have never really done laps on North Face as we can’t usually tolerate more than a couple rides on the tram. This was the first thing to accept about the competition. We would be forced to ride the tram.

So we tried things out on Friday and made 6 quick trips over a couple hours. We worked on skiing continuously on the steepest part. We worked on speed on the lower groomed run outs. We tried a couple different routes. We raced the tram to see if we could beat it back to the base. Reality set in as a couple of young men were doing the same thing. They were skiing much faster than I could. We left North Face for the last run of the day, a nonstop run from the top to the bottom on groomed snow to work on speed. I made it down in less than four minutes. I used my GPS to gather data from the day and then analyzed timings back at home.

Even though it was a snowy day, we took Saturday off. We haven’t skipped a day of skiing in awhile, but we knew we wanted to be well rested for Sunday. We hung around and got prepared for the competition. I waxed some skis. We packed food into our coat pockets. We figured out our clothing strategies. We got to bed early as we needed to get to the resort by 8:00 AM on Sunday.

Sunday morning was exciting. The sun was brightening the clear sky from its position behind the mountains as we drove down to the resort. The anticipation was enjoyable, not overwhelming. I felt confident in my abilities and was looking forward to challenging myself. We unloaded the car, staged a spare set of skis at the base, and made our final preparations. The temperatures were cooler than we wanted and the half a foot of new snow was making the conditions a likely change from our practice runs on Friday.

As the start time approached, we received our numbers. Kris got a lot of comments as she was assigned number one. I was fourteen. The maximum field of 50 was not filled out, but it was close. All forty some contestants crammed into the tram for the opening run. Upon arrival at the top, the doors opened and we all began charging up the stairs, carrying our skis out to the snow where we attempted a quick entry into our bindings. We had to ski a flat stretch to a special race entry to the North Face. At this entry, they logged our laps (they also got us with the electronic lift pass system at the bottom). The entry was steep. The herd charged down the mountain, spreading out as we progressed. The new snow turned out to be a disappointment with light fluffy snow covering crusty chunky stuff.

For the first hour and a half, the mountain was ours. The tram was supposed to run on a ten minute cycle during this time period. I charged hard on the first run and made the next tram. Kris was unable to ski that fast so we separated. I charged hard again on the second run and arrived at the tram base as they were closing the doors. The timing clearly changed and it cost me a lap. Before the next tram left, the speedsters who caught the tram were arriving for another lap. I was literally seconds too slow and was lapped as a result. Then it happened again. By the time I made three laps, the leaders had made five. I wasn’t far off, but I just couldn’t hit the tram cycle in spite of cruising the lower part of the mountain at speeds reaching 53 mph. It was a little depressing, but I decided to accept it and take my time on the next run. It turned out that taking it easy got me down in about the same amount of time, somewhere around 5 minutes for downhill portion of the lap. That leaves about five minutes for getting in and out of my skis, climbing stairs, and negotiating the flat stretch at the top.

By the time the resort opened at 10:30, a long line had formed at the tram base. The tram operation changed from a fixed ten minute cycle to an approximately 7 minute cycle that was determined by how quickly people loaded. The tram entrance is set up with pass scanning gates. When the tram departs, the gates are activated and the next car load of people is allowed into the waiting area. When the gates count the max number of people, they are deactivated and no more people can get through until the next tram departs. We were provided our own gate, but the people filled the waiting area pretty quickly. In order to make a tram, you needed to arrive before the previous tram left.

Under the seven minute cycle, it is impossible for anyone to make the next tram. Four minutes of the seven are chewed up by the ride up. It was possible to make the second one, but it required a very fast pace. I was relegated to every third tram. I soon fell into a comfortable pattern. A core group formed on my cycle. I was usually the second or third one to arrive in line, too late to catch the second tram, but guaranteed a spot on the third. We had fun comparing runs. Another older man would arrive a few seconds behind me on every pass. I kept asking him if he was following me. We hung out together all day long.

I made essentially the same run every pass. The entry was quickly bumped up so I traversed left a couple of bumps and gently descended. The next stretch was less steep, allowing the bumps to form in a wider pattern that allowed gentle turns as I worked my way down to the best part. I had to pick my way through some trees to get to a steep face that no one else was skiing. The first part was firm snow that required a long skidding turn. About the second turn, the surface turned into a creamy smooth surface that was easy on my legs. I descended long distances in only a few gentle fast turns. No matter how many times I cut through this, the surface remained smooth. The steepness was flowing the snow into the troughs cut by my skis.

The next stretch was a little dicey, with a narrow icy chute through some brush, but after a couple laps, the long side slip was easy and smooth. This chute dropped me out near the top of the groomed part where turns only served to keep the skis on edge to prevent ruts from grabbing a ski at such high speeds. I had one scare in this stretch when I caught an unexpected roll that threw me back on my skis with my tips starting to ride up into the air at close to 40 mph. My recovery was a simple left turn, but it was a reminder to pay attention at these speeds. Near the bottom, the last pitch was a frighteningly steep straightline into the flat runout to the tram base. This is where I routinely broke 50 mph, although the wax on my skis appeared to be suffering as the day wore on and I could only reach about 46. I contemplated switching to my spare skis, but I didn’t really need to get my speed back up.

As the day wore on, it was obvious what was going on. A group of about 6 was catching every other tram. They would ride with us every third ride. They were eventually reduced to a group of three. Everyone else was pretty much locked in by the tram cycle. A few dropped out. One crashed and broke his arm. His wife dropped out to take him to the hospital. I noticed that there were no women in my group and none in the lead group. I began wondering about Kris. I hadn’t seen her since the first tram ride of the day. I knew that meant one of two things. Either she was keeping pace with me, just a tram or two behind, or she had completely dropped out.

Late in the day, a woman ended up in my group. She moved into second position in our group, beating me to the tram line by a few seconds each lap. I watched her ski and she was very good. Then something happened in the tram cycle. Probably one tram took a few minutes longer to load. The top few from our group moved up a tram. Now I started seeing Kris waiting for her tram. I was one tram away from lapping her. I asked the woman in my group how many laps she had. She wasn’t sure. I told her I thought she was the leader. I knew at this point Kris didn’t have a good shot at winning, but that she was still in the hunt.

In the last hour, the tram cycle changed again. My close competitors all moved up one more tram, finding ourselves with Kris. I rode up with her one ride and we chatted. There were a few other women in her group. I told Kris that I thought it was going to come down to a race on the last lap for second and third place. The tie breaker for competitors with the same lap count was who completed it first. If you were tied with someone and you both rode up on the same last tram ride, it was going to be a downhill race to determine the winner. Kris acknowledged that she couldn’t beat a couple of the woman in her group. Placing was looking unlikely.

I zipped down and moved ahead one more tram. Kris missed the cutoff by seconds. She was the first in line for the next tram. The guy behind her in line was the guy who had been following me all day long. At least I finally moved ahead of him, but I contemplated dropping out of that tram so that they could let Kris through. I decided not to put the pressure on her since we didn’t think she could win a race for a position.

My last lap was relaxing. I was on the earliest last tram so I had nothing to prove. I couldn’t get down to get in another run before the deadline. I wasn’t racing for position. I stopped at the top of the steepest stretch and enjoyed the sun. I was thrilled by those last turns in that creamy smooth stretch. I kept a safe pace through the groomed run, still hitting 45 on the steep section. I had to climb the steps one last time to scan my pass for the last lap. A crowd was in the tram waiting area, cheering as competitors climbed the stairs. It was kind of fun finishing with a crowd. I was disappointed to see Kris in the group. Not only had she barely missed the tram when I passed her, she had barely missed the last tram. The tram operators joked with her about being the first to finish. She was now two laps behind me.

We changed our clothes, packed up the car, and headed to the bar for dinner before the awards ceremony. We talked it through. We were pretty sure that Kris was in the pack until she missed the last lap. We knew that one of the women had skied with her all day and that one had caught up to me. We knew there were a couple of fast female competitors in her group, a snowboarder and a telemark skier, but the tele skier had an equipment problem during the day that cost her some laps and Kris wasn’t sure if the snowboarder was there all day. We began to think it was possible that Kris took third place. Sure enough, the first name called was Kristine Knapp, third place. Kris won a $100 gift certificate to the local ski shop which allowed us to break even on the entry fees. Kris completed 26 laps, over 52,000 vertical feet of skiing, in eight hours. I was two laps ahead of her, but well out of the lead group of men who finished with 39 laps, pretty close to my predicted 36 lap theoretical maximum. I am thrilled to have beaten my target of 24 laps, thrilled to have broken 50,000 vertical feet in a single day of skiing. I can’t believe that we really started this sport in our thirties and we can participate in an extreme skiing event at a world class resort and not embarrass ourselves. I think we both beat people half our age.

The recovery wasn’t too bad. Neither of us felt excessive stiffness. If anything, I was just generally tired. We went to bed really early on Sunday night and returned to our working lives. The real world is a bit of a letdown after a weekend like that.