Brian Smith defends home hills against rando swarm

CS Irwin treats racers to incredible event

Which is worse, DFL or DNF?
For those of you who don’t know, DFL is Dead F****** Last. DNF is Did Not Finish.

Never been DNF’d. Even when a partner’s back seized at the Friend’s Hut and a belly full of Grand Marnier and Vicodin slowed us down to a crawl during the Grand Traverse years ago, we still finished without getting the “complimentary” ride in the gondola down the front of Aspen Mountain.
Never been DFL either. That is, until Saturday, December 11 at the inaugural CS Irwin Rando Race, the first stop of the 2010-2011 Colorado Ski Mountaineering Cup (COSMIC) race series.
What made matters worse is while I was “racing” to finish DFL, there was anywhere from one to two feet of fresh just sitting there waiting to be skied.
My first hint that it was a bad idea, for me, was at the Irwin Y. A look to the left unveiled the Anthracites absolutely pasted with powder. Rather than head there, I decided to go right and head up to the race.
In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, “I must’ve taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque.”
My next hint that it was a bad idea, for me, was when I arrived at the start/finish area at the CS Irwin Movie Cabin only to find throngs of speed-suit-clad rando racers putting the finishing touches on their gear. And by gear I mean 160cm ultra-light skis that are 68mm underfoot.
“I heard the second uphill is steeper than the first and third uphills, so I’m gonna use these skins for lap one and three, and these skins for lap two,” said one competitor.
Really? Two sets of skins?
A who’s who of the U.S. rando racing world as well as a recent transplant from the Czech Republic were on hand for the prolific race.
“We had amazing athletes out there,” says race organizer Bryan Wickenhauser. “Stellar field. Anytime a race is held in the Gunnison Valley it’s a stellar field.”
And the competitors were treated to unparalleled conditions for the inaugural event, with fresh snow and three incredible up tracks—the second one included a boot pack—and three unbelievable downhills.
“That was probably some of the best downhill skiing I’ve ever done in a rando race,” says race winner and Gunnison resident Brian Smith.
Getting to the race was the first hurdle of the day. Some opted for a CS Irwin cat ride to the race; others made it there on snowmobile, milking the fresh on the way.
Thank God for Pete Curvin, who put his participation into perspective by saying, “10 a.m. start, sledneckin’ to the race, I’m in.”
As for myself, while I was also milling about the start area, not one, not two, but I would say four or five people came up to me asking, “You racing?”
Once it was established that, yes, in fact I was racing, then the next hint that it was a bad idea came when the next question was, “Rec class, huh?”
Now, the rec class consisted of two laps for a total of 3,050 vertical feet of climbing and descending, while the race class was three laps for a total of 4,640 feet of climbing and descending.
Fact is, had I done the rec class, I would have finished DFL there too, so I might as well claim some modicum of self-respect and finish DFL in the race class.
Fortunately, amidst the energy of a rando race, organizers Wickenhauser and Jake Jones and the CS Irwin crew kept the scene fully relaxed with the Dead pumping out of the cabin speakers. In addition, despite the fact that the course had received 18 to 24 inches of snow in the past 24 hours, the CS Irwin crew worked diligently to make sure the course was safe, and Wickenhauser himself opted to set the first up-track in place prior to the start rather than race.
“It’s kind of like when you’re hosting a party, you shouldn’t get drunk at your own party—I wanted to make sure this race went off well,” says Wickenhauser.
A full field of 48 racers headed out at 10:30 a.m. and after the first 100 yards it was apparent that DFL was where I was destined. Meanwhile, the front of the pack was off the start line at Al Johnson uphill race pace, practically running up the first section of groomed road before turning off onto the single track section through the woods and to the top of Scarp Ridge.
Smith played it conservative from the start line, cognizant of the fact that the race started at an altitude of 10,400 feet and topped out around 12,000 feet.
“If you start going into the red at that altitude, you need a lot of time to recover,” says Smith.
Smith had major equipment malfunctions on the first downhill, falling, literally, from top five back to 12th place.
“I couldn’t get my boot shell to pop in, and over and over and over I would just crash, crash, crash,” explains Smith.
Throw in a lost water bottle and a broken binding piece and Smith was forced to throttle back for the second ascent.
“I just basically settled in,” says Smith.
The second uphill turned directly up through a cliff, forcing racers to toss their skis on their backpacks and boot-pack straight up.
Smith managed to reel people in on the second downhill, moving into fifth place before turning up for the final climb.
From there, he politely let people ahead of him know he was coming through and they stepped aside, allowing Smith a direct shot at then-race leader and COSMIC series organizer Pete Swenson.
Smith took the lead by the top of the final climb and punched it on the downhill, covering the course in a time of two hours, 12 minutes and 18 seconds.
“I sat in the backseat and just wheelied,” says Smith.
To put that time in laymen’s terms, that would be the equivalent of climbing and skiing Red Lady Bowl one and a half times in two hours, 12 minutes and 18 seconds.
Carbondale resident Sari Anderson took the women’s title with a time of 2:22:36.
That was also the time I just finished my second lap and was heading out for the third and final lap, just 15 minutes inside of the cutoff time, narrowly averting my first DNF and keeping the torch lit for my first DFL.