The other side of midnight

Tales from the back of the G.T. pack

Every year there are numerous teams that compete in the Elk Mountains Grand Traverse with one simple goal: to finish the race, period.

 This year was no different. While temperatures were mild, conditions on the course were thin, making for some mixed media skiing, running and even some groveling. There was a broken bone, a mashed-up bloody face and other tales of recovery and narrowly averted mayhem from throughout the night. But one stood out above all as a story of perseverance, backcountry repair and, in the end, success on a couple of different levels.
Crested Butte residents Chris Garren and his coed partner Alex Pogue jumped into the Grand Traverse fray for the first time this year. They picked up some information from friends who had done the race and put in the time on their skis over the winter to prepare.
“We got a lot of good tips on nutrition and heard all of the horror stories,” says Garren. “We had skied up to the Friends Hut but had not skied past it and we had never skied that far before.”
Nevertheless, the two were ready for the challenge and had a game plan in place, hoping to finish in around 13 hours.
“We wanted to take it casually and not get too caught up in how well we did,” says Garren.
In the end, the two skiers got more than they bargained for as a series of mechanicals hit them hard—so many mechanicals that almost anyone else would have dropped out of the race.
It all started off so well for Garren and Pogue.
“We were feeling good and strong when we cruised over Star Pass and were around the middle of the pack,” says Garren.
It was the descent off of Star Pass when things started to unravel. As the two were skiing down the mix of firm, wind crust and sastrugi snow on their Nordic gear, one of Pogue’s Nordic ski boots nearly imploded.
“Halfway down from Star Pass the entire front of Alex’s toe piece came off her boot,” explains Garren.
Under the glow of their headlamps in the middle of the basin, in the middle of the night, the two busted out the trusty old duct tape for the repair. Unfortunately, one turn after the repair the duct tape failed and Pogue’s ski shot off into the night.
Fortunately, a group of racers below heard Garren shouting and grabbed the ski and stuck it in the snow for them to retrieve.
Once they were reunited with the ski, they rifled through all their gear to try to fashion some way to attach her boot to her ski, yet still be able to slide.
“We tried everything in our kit just to keep her boot on the ski,” says Garren.
The thought of dropping out of the race was then discussed.
“Our main priority at that point was to just get out of there,” says Garren. “We talked about it and we were okay with leaving the race.”
In the end, they went with a hose clamp. Garren and Pogue cut a slit on each side of Pogue’s boot and slipped a hose clamp through the boot and under the plastic track of the Nordic binding, and forged on into the night bound for Taylor Pass. Things were going as well as expected and both Pogue and Garren were still feeling physically strong.
“Once the hose clamp started working we were feeling good and passing people,” says Garren.
But five miles later, they were hit with another mechanical. About a mile from Taylor Pass Pogue was descending a slight downhill section when she hit a whup-de-doo. The compression sent her into the back seat and reefed on the hose clamp/binding connection, snapping the plastic track of her binding and rendering the set-up useless.
Again, in the middle of the night, with a race going on around them, Garren and Pogue came up with another plan. They took the ski with the broken track but functional toe piece and put it on the functional boot and the ski with intact track and put that with the broken boot and hose clamp and ran the hose clamp under the track again. But this time, they would be more careful on descents, running them instead of skiing them.
Which brought up one more problem. Because there was so much dry land on the course, Garren packed his running shoes to use. Pogue, on the other hand, decided she would just run in her Nordic boots. Since one ski was attached to the boot as a complete unit, Pogue was forced to use one of Garren’s shoes on the dry sections even though it was several sizes too big. Meaning, when she was running the downhills, she had her Nordic boot on one foot and Garren’s running shoe on the other.
“Otherwise, she would have been running in her sock,” says Garren.
So, off they went skiing the uphills and running the downhills from Taylor Pass to Barnard Hut.
“We probably did the switch-off six or seven times,” says Garren.
Once at the Barnard Hut, they had eight miles of skiing up and running down left to go to get to the top of Aspen Mountain, the final checkpoint, and they set their sights on making it there before the final cutoff time of 4 p.m.
“We just wanted to make it there in time,” says Garren. “After that we would have slid down Aspen Mountain on our bivy sacs if we had to just to finish.”
In the end, they made it in time and ran down Aspen Mountain to cross the finish line 16 hours and 30 minutes after they started the race. Amazingly, they did not finish in last place. Ironically, they won their age class in the coed division.
“That was nice, to not finish dead last, though the last-place team won skis,” says Garren. “It was such a relief to hit that final checkpoint at the top of Aspen Mountain. We were suffering for sure but it was really fun being out there. It was absolutely beautiful out there. Overall, it was a really cool experience. We’ll be back for another race in the future but probably on AT gear.”