Grand Traverse title stays in Gunnison Valley

“It was like Night of the Living Dead with zombies climbing
up this wall”

Despite snapping a pole in half at the start of the race, local skier Marshall Thomson and his teammate from Salt Lake City, Tom Goth, pushed through to take the title at 16th Annual Gore-Tex Elk Mountains Grand Traverse with a time of seven hours, 40 minutes and 54 seconds.
Local women’s team of Brynn O’Connell and Casey Wilson won the women’s title in a time of 11:13:56 and Christy and Ted Mahon of Aspen took the coed title, posting a time of 9:55:45 beating Crested Butte couple Sarah and Jason Stubbe by just seven minutes.
The biggest field in the history of the event lined up for the start, with 169 teams on the start line at midnight on Friday, March 30. Of those who started, 145 finished by the 4 p.m. cutoff and 150 made it all the way to Aspen.
Everything appeared in place for a possible record-breaking time at the race this year. The field was stacked with talent, the weather looked to cooperate and it was a near-full moon. It was all in the cards.
“Three of the top four teams had at least one member of the U.S. Ski Mountaineering team,” says former champion and co-race director Bryan Wickenhauser.
But the house of cards came tumbling down as the teams exited the groomed slopes of Crested Butte Mountain Resort and headed into the East River Valley bound for Aspen, 35 miles away.
Mild temperatures all day and night prohibited the snowpack from forming a solid crust before the racers headed into the night at midnight and when the course turned off-piste by the pump house behind Crested Butte Mountain, the racers got yet another reminder that Mother Nature reigns supreme. The leaders stacked into the breakable crust conditions, causing a massive pile up of speedsuits and ski gear in the middle of the night.
Thomson was off the front and was the first one to hit the nasty snow.
“I was going down the groomed run at top speed,” explains Thomson. “It just ended and I exploded. When it broke, you went down two feet, it was heinous. Somewhere in the mess I ended up breaking a pole in half with 35 miles to go.”
As more and more teams turned off-piste, more and more bodies started piling up.
“They had the cat track pretty well groomed and when that ended, it was a mosh pit,” explains Allen Hadley, who is the only one to start and finish all 16 races.
After picking themselves up out of the “pit,” the teams of two then headed into the East River Valley traffic jam. Breakable crust conditions and rotten snow prevented teams from passing each other. What looked like a passing lane would soon disintegrate into another suck hole, forcing teams to merge back into one lane and wait for another passing lane to open up.
“People were just trap-dooring everywhere,” says Hadley. “I heard more comments about New Jersey traffic. That was the ongoing analogy.”
With a broken pole in one had, Thomson and his partner decided to relax through the horrid conditions, knowing full well that everyone was suffering the same and no one was able to make a break for it.
“We were stuck in the slow-moving mass,” says Thomson. “There were times when there were probably 50 people in front of me but it wasn’t worth trying to get in front of them.”
After crossing the valley floor, the course headed up the other side and across a hillside, complete with ravines and the occasional small cornice drop.
“The epic moment of the entire night came at the ravine wall,” says Hadley. “It was a minimum of two stories tall.”
Teams dropped into the ravine and then proceeded to climb out the other side anyway they could.
“People were just scrambling up the side of the ravine,” says Hadley. “There was post-holing, mud, pricker bushes. It was like Night of the Living Dead with zombies climbing up this wall. It was as sick a scene as I had ever seen.”
According to Thomson, the race for him and Goth started once they were well past Death Pass and heading into the trees, bound for the Friends Hut.
“I asked Tom if he was feeling good and he said ‘Yeah,’” explains Thomson. “It was time to find out if anything was possible.”
Thomson and Goth managed to pull up into second place and after a few sections back and forth with Ben Koons and Linden Mallory on Nordic skis, they took the lead by the Friends Hut.
Thomson and Goth continued to push, well aware of the list of heavy hitters behind them and the tricks teams can pull to hide themselves in the night.
“We couldn’t see anyone behind us until we got to Gold Hill area and we saw some lights quite a ways away,” says Thomson. “If we can see them that’s closer than we wanted though, and I had a feeling that someone may have turned their lights off.”
By the time they reached the Barnard Hut, they found out one team was five minutes behind them. With one pole and only a slight gap, the race was still on for the leaders.
The stronger teams typically skate the final stretch along Richmond Ridge battling short steep climbs and snowmobile whup-dees but skating was limited for Thomson with one pole.
“We skated everything that was flat and downhill and as soon as we started to climb, we took our skis off and would run,” says Thomson. “It ended up working out pretty well.”
It was Thomson’s first title in three tries after finishing in second place the last two years. He credits his partner last year, Pat O’Neill, for his win this year.
“I think this year I was a little more ready,” says Thomson. “If it wasn’t for all that Pat taught me last year, I would have freaked out when I broke my pole. Pure strength only does so much—it’s a mental race as well. Pat taught me those mental tricks.”
Wickenhauser, who finished in fourth place this year with Brian Smith, summed up this year’s traverse.
“Every year is memorable for one reason or another,” says Wickenhauser. “Last year was an hour and a half of running. This year was an hour and a half of breaker crust.”