Four locals crowned U.S. skimo champions

Team gO and Team Alpineer defend home hill

When the Gore-Tex U.S. Ski Mountaineering Nationals Championships three-day speed fest wrapped up on Sunday, March 15, Team Griggs Orthopedics (Team gO) skiers Stevie Kremer took the vertical national title, Kremer and Marshall Thomson won the coed team title, Team Alpineer skier Bob Woerne won the men’s individual masters title and then joined Team Alpineer athlete Pat O’Neill to win the men’s masters team national title.

Truth be told, the story of the weekend and possibly the skimo race season has been the Aspen domination, led by John Gaston and Max Taam. The two have had themselves quite a successful season of racing and wrapped it up with Gaston winning the men’s vertical title, Taam winning the individual title (with Gaston in second place), and the two joining forces to win the team national title.
The weekend kicked off with the vertical race on Friday evening, March 13 as racers were asked to turn themselves inside out for 2,400 vertical feet of climbing from the base area to the midway point of the High Lift. Gaston took off for the national title, covering the course in a blistering 28 minutes and 35 seconds. Kremer won her first of two titles over the weekend taking the women’s race in 31 minutes and 39 seconds.
The main event, though, was Saturday with the individual race to determine the kings and queens of the national skimo racing world. With the Spellbound/Phoenix area unavailable for the course, organizers came up with a Plan B that proved just as challenging. While the infamous Guides Ridge was still in play, a plan hatched by skimo racer and Crested Butte professional ski patroller Marshall Thomson added a little extra to the pain factor as he proposed sending racers on a jumar-assisted bootpack straight up Rambo’s.
The racers took off from the base area at 8 a.m. with several thousand vertical feet of climbing and descending on firm and fast snow standing between them and the finish line.
Team gO athlete Brian Smith crested the first climb at the top of the High Lift in the front of the pack with Gaston hot on his tail and Taam just 10 seconds back.
On the women’s side of things, Jessie Young was in the lead with Kremer holding the top spot among local women, reaching the top of the first climb in fourth place.
But the fun was just around the corner as racers were treated to a firm descent down the Headwall, a climb up Schofield Park Road and then another “firm descent” down the Glades, including some of that goodness on Pinball. At which point they took a right turn through the trees to the bottom of Rambo’s to see two ropes hanging from the ends of a snowcat blade at the top of the run and electronica music blasting from the speakers, with Tucker Roberts directing vibe.

Racers clipped in to the ropes with their jumars and started booting. That’s when disaster struck for Smith. Once at the top, he discovered he had dropped a pole and had to climb back down and do it all over again.
That mishap opened the door for Taam and Gaston to take an even bigger lead with Jon Brown left to try to reel them in.
A tour up through Teo 2 and a quick descent from the top of the High Lift led the racers to the final push to the summit of Crested Butte Mountain via a roped section up the Guides Ridge.
Gaston popped out in front at the top but missed the initial turn off of the summit for the final descent, leaving a window for Taam to take over the lead with the only thing between him and the national title an icy descent down the entirety of the Banana to the bottom of the Westwall Lift.
Taam held on for the win, completing the tour in a time of 2 hours, 19 minutes and 9 seconds, with Gaston just six seconds back. Team gO athlete Jon Brown crossed the line in third with a time of 2 hours, 28 minutes and 29 seconds.
Young held the lead for the entire race to take the women’s individual title in a time of 2 hours, 47 minutes and 26 seconds, while Kremer spent the race battling her way from fourth place all the way up to second place by the time she reached the finish line, with Lindsay Plant in third place.
While denied a title in the men’s and women’s races, the local contingent made up for it in the master’s race division with a sweep of the podium as Woerne won with Mike Preston in second place and O’Neill taking third.
The weekend finished with the teams’ race on Sunday morning and once again it was the Taam and Gaston show as they cruised to the men’s team title. Plant and Young teamed up for the women’s team title and Thomson and Kremer skied away with the coed title, while Woerne and O’Neill finished off a solid weekend taking the master’s team title.
All the skimo racing attention now turns to the Gore-Tex Grand Traverse, set to take off from Crested Butte on Friday, March 27 at midnight, bound for Aspen.