Wickenhauser and Smith take 2012 Grand Traverse title

Thin conditions bring new aspect to race: running

Race co-director and eventual winner of the 2012 Gore-Tex Elk Mountains Grand Traverse Bryan Wickenhauser opened the pre-race meeting on Friday, March 30 addressing a packed room of competitors.
“There are a couple things I know,” he said. “We are going to Aspen, we’re going to start on snow and we’re going to finish on snow.”
As the racer’s meeting continued, Wickenhauser confirmed what pretty much everyone already knew: It was thin out on the course and there would be some running involved. Estimates ranged between seven and 10 miles of running, depending on the team’s strategy.
Wickenhauser also updated the teams about what the running section would be like.
“It’s not terribly runable but it’s not like banging your head against a plank,” said Wickenhauser. “It’s somewhere in between.”
Course director on Crested Butte Mountain Resort Eric Baumm called the running section along the East River valley the Rage in the Sage.
The 130 teams let all the information wash over them and were then off to put the final tweaks on their equipment for the race that night. First and foremost in the racers’ minds was what to do about the running sections. While some teams opted to grin and bear it in their ski boots, others packed running shoes or lightweight hiking boots to run in and then carry with them once they got on skis.
In classic Grand Traverse fashion, the Reverend Tim Clark, in full regalia, was at the start at the base of Crested Butte Mountain Resort to offer up his annual blessing of the skiers.
In not so classic Grand Traverse fashion, KBUT’s Soul Train Night was going on right at the start as well in Butte 66 and hundreds of decked-out Soul Trainers were on the deck to send the racers off into the night. In fact, at times the line between Soul Train and Grand Traverse participants was somewhat blurred as several of the racers were outfitted in lime-green boots and skin-tight suits that definitely would have made Don Cornelius proud.
One thing was for sure, when the teams headed off that night at 11 p.m., they would be spared the pain and agony of frostbite this year as temperatures hovered in the 20s, with no wind anywhere along the high altitude course. In fact, it was so mild that several racers managed to ski/run/ski all the way to the Friends Hut at 11,300 feet without gloves.
Furthermore, due to conditions, Grand Traverse organizers put together a new route, dubbed the Tube, to approach the boot pack to Star Pass. The Tube consisted of a natural halfpipe lined by rock walls with strobe lights put in there to guide teams through the night. It was all the talk at the finish line in Aspen.
Seven and a half hours, 35 miles and over 8,000 vertical feet of climbing later, the Gunnison Valley team of Brian Smith and Wickenhauser were skiing down Aspen Mountain and across the finish line—which was quite the feat, given that Smith was hobbling around town the week before with a rib/back injury.
“Any pressure on my back was just horrible,” says Smith.
Nothing a shot of Lidocaine the day of the race couldn’t solve, though.
Seventeen hours and six minutes after the race start, the final team of Andrew and Dan Gall crossed the finish line, putting a close to the 15th Annual Elk Mountains Grand Traverse. Out of the 126 teams that started, 114 made it the entire way from Crested Butte to Aspen.
Teams had a variety of strategies to deal with the thin conditions and firm snow. After skiing up and over the section on Crested Butte Mountain and then skiing across a 12-inch wide, 40-foot long temporary bridge over the East River, everyone took their skis off and started running. The question was, when to get back on skis. While most teams got back on their skis around the second creek crossing, several ran as far as Christmas Rock, just three or four miles shy of the Friends Hut checkpoint.
Running in their ski boots, Wickenhauser and Smith dropped back to fourth place to teams in their running shoes but caught them all once the race was on skis for good and were in the lead at the Friends Hut.
Wickenhauser and Smith were neck-and-neck with the Crested Butte team of Pat O’Neill and Marshall Thomson at Star Pass but then took the lead for good as they skied off the top and down into the valley below.
“We took the lead dropping off of Star Pass and never saw anyone again,” says Wickenhauser. “That’s where our gap opened and then our gap just grew.”
Upon reaching the top of Taylor Pass, they looked back to see the glow of the next team’s headlamps but saw nothing and no one behind them.
“When we got up on Taylor Pass and turned around it was just black,” says Smith. “It wasn’t until then that I felt like we were going to win this race.”