Northeastern U.S. Rando Action: Final Two Weekends of March

This report was submitted by our SkinTrack corespondent Jonathan Shefftz who is also the driving force behind the East Coast skimo series.
After kicking off the Northeastern U.S. skimo season at Berkshire East MA on January 24:
http://www.skintrack.com/skimo-racing/reports-results/report-berkshire-east-rando-race-2015/
… followed by five more races in February and March throughout Western Massachusetts and Vermont:
Stano’s note: somehow forgot to post but will get back to it. My apologies.
… the season wrapped up with three races in Vermont during the last two weekends of March.

Bromley, VT skimo race

On Saturday March 21, the NE Rando Race Series returned to its traditional venue of Bromley VT, expecting the traditional big soft moguls on the south-facing terrain.  Unfortunately, during all the usual hectic pre-race planning and coordination, we forgot to notify Mother Nature that spring traditionally starts by that weekend.
The early-morning flagging of the descent route down the horribly refrozen moguls made for some doubtful moments, and the first race descent was rather jarring, both physically and psychologically.  But fortunately the sun started to peek through for the next two descents, rendering the skiing conditions still challenging yet asymptotically approaching enjoyable.  (A fourth full descent was curtailed because of possible rain showers later in the morning, a possibility that did not come true . . .but which of course would have had we not cut short the course layout!)
Competitively, a group of four charged out ahead on the first lap in a 2×2 formation so perfectly arrayed that it looked like a deliberate attempt at some new sport of syncro skinning.  I was close enough on the second lap to see the formation still perfectly arrayed, and eventually all four finished within 52 seconds of each other:  a Team Hagan potential podium sweep of Jerimy Arnold, Josh Flanagan, and Brian MacIlvain broken up only by U.K. national team member Daniel Gay snagging the last podium spot.

Back from the 2×2 syncro skinners, I was passed on the first ascent by James Kovacs, a veteran of the COSMIC series while working on his PhD, but after relocating to the Boston area a victim of being too busy with work on a vaccine for HIV.  I passed James on the first descent, then he caught up with me on the second ascent, and we repeated this exciting back-and-forth pattern throughout the race.  I eventually held onto the lead to give Team Hagan four out of the top five spots.
Further back, we had record participation for the Bromley venue, almost 75 percent more than last year, which in turn had been a near-record year.
After the race, Team Hagan rented a house for the night, joined by U.K. Dan and Denali Ed (i.e., the FKT before Kilian’s new record last year).  Activities including eating, sleeping, gear preparation, trying to avoid mixing up all our nearly identical gear, and trying to figure out car shuttle logistics for complicated course layout the following day.

Mad River Valley skimo race

March 22, Sunday, was the tenth running of the rando race between three separate ski areas:  Mad River Glen, Sugarbush’s Mount Ellen, and Sugarbush’s Lincoln Peak.  Originally laid out by Andrew McLean as part of the national series organized by Life-Link (then the Dynafit distributor), the race in many years since then has unfortunately suffered from a lack of challenging skiing and a lack of coordination among the two ski resorts, neither of which has any assistance from any actual rando racers.  (And ironically so this year, with two race organizers competing in the race, i.e., myself and the Quebec Dynafit rep Jeff Rivest.)
Fortunately, Mad River Glen has started to listen to our input, and hence that part of the course was set up well, including a start line with by far the fastest racers ever in an East Coast race as the Massachusetts and Quebec contingents met up in nearly full force:  easily over two dozen with full-on or nearly so race gear, and even two pairs of full-carbon Dynafit RC1 boots.
Unfortunately, after the ascent up Mad River Glen and then past the section of the ridgeline Long Trail traverse where Mad River had partially pruned back the tree branches, we entered a section where Sugarbush’s lack of any trail maintenance was a slap in the face, both literally and figuratively.  At least though that eventually added to the post-race banter, i.e., comparing torn packs, clothing, faces, eyeballs, etc.

The weather conditions up on the ridgeline were also brutal, with the rescheduled date adding insult to injury:  the originally scheduled date of February 1 had been deemed too cold, and now the March 22 rescheduled date must have been setting all sorts of records.  The forecasted “high” at elevation was about 0F, and the sparse tree cover was just enough to block the sun while doing little or nothing to block the high winds.
After emerging at Sugarbush’s Mount Ellen, this year we were allowed to bootpack up Upper FIS for a short stretch of a few hundred vertical feet of interesting skiing.  But that was it for the entire race:  afterwards we cruised down a low-angle groomer to enter a low-angle ungroomed trail, which led us onto even flatter work roads.
And then worse, as we were subjected to a new loop in the Slidebrook backcountry area between Sugarbush’s separate Mount Ellen and Lincoln Peak areas.  When the pre-race briefing on this loop was presented by a woman in telemark boots, I immediately knew that something had to be wrong with this change to the course layout.  Fortunately I was far enough back that I could follow the many skintracks without getting lost at the vaguely marked intersections.  Then at what seemed like the height of land I deskinned to point ‘em straight down what looked like some pitch … only to immediately throw them sideways for a sharp turn to the left onto the correct (and unmarked) descent.  That initial turn was my final for this loop, which was all tucking, often at slow speed.  (The previous weekend our five-year-old daughter had skied steeper hills:  on edgeless nordic skis.)
Emerging from the Slidebrook backcountry, we were not allowed to skin up to the summit of Sugarbush’s Lincoln Peak, or even to one of its subpeaks as in most prior years.  Instead, we had a long skate up a nearly flat beginner trail, and then a long traverse to the finish.
Competitively, Team Hagan was shut out of the podium, although still took three out of the top eight.  Equipe Quebec was prevented from yet another Vermont podium sweep – after Burke and Jay – only by former alpine racer and current nordic racer Jan Wellford of the Adirondacks of Northern NY.  On the women’s side, former Canadian Olympic cyclist Lyne Bessette probably would have cracked the top ten overall but DNF’ed after a sudden deceleration from her ski tip slamming into some tricky wind slab on Upper FIS triggered a recurrence of her previously dislocated shoulder.

Overall, the top 25 finishers for this tenth running of the race presented a stark contrast to its inaugural running in 2006.  Back then, the top 25 were – well, actually only 18 racers did the full race that year, all American and nearly half from Vermont.  This year, only two-fifths were American and none were from Vermont.  Instead, 84 percent of the racers were from Quebec or Massachusetts, reflecting the focus of the two race circuits.

The latter of these two circuits then wrapped up the season with the second Magic Mountain VT make-up race the following weekend on Saturday March 28.  Once again Spring had not yet sprung, as refrozen conditions delayed opening the most challenging terrain in time for the race, which also took out the bootpack.  Nevertheless, morning-of-race reflagging was able to incorporate just enough ungroomed skiing with just enough pitch to make most of us grateful we weren’t subjecting ourselves to any more of that.
Competitively, Team Hagan members Josh Flanagan and Jerimy Arnold were out with housing-related issues (Colorado hut trip and new home closing, respectively).  Brian MacIlvain still took the win for Team Hagan, with Ed Warren closed behind.  Team Hagan was denied another podium spot by James Kovacs, who kept lengthening his lead on me with each ascent, while the skiing wasn’t quite tricky enough for me to make it up on the descents as I had done with our first race against each other the prior weekend at Bromley.
Fifth place was an exciting back-and-forth between newcomer Whitney Withington and master’s mountain bike racer Pete Crisci, with Whitney ultimately aided by a wrong turn on the first descent and then an Achilles tear by Pete on the final descent (which left him hobbling in the lodge afterwards).

Also of note was newcomer Tim Mather rounding out a record seven full-on race setups for such a traditionally small venue.  Tim was prompted to gear up for this season by the Mount Washington Son of Inferno Pentathlon, which concludes with a skin and climb up into the mountain’s Tuckerman Ravine, followed by a ski descent.  This will complete Tim’s quest to race up Mount Washington every possible way, including the auto road races via nordic skiing (to treeline), running, bike, and even driving (with a PR of 7:26 for what usually takes a summer tourist about half an hour of white knuckle driving).
For the last-minute prep award, Ed was the runner-up by stopping at my house the prior night to remount his bindings for new race boots.  But Whitney crushed him for the definitive win by texting me on the drive to the race asking if I had an extra set of race skis and skins for her to use with her new boots (tags even still attached in the lodge), which amazingly enough I did.
Looking back on the season as a whole, the growth at the top was unprecedented, especially when both the Massachusetts and Quebec contingents met up with each other:  at the Mad River Valley race this year, I was 14^th despite *winning* the race in both 2011 and 2012.  For the venues in the NE Rando Race Series that I’ve been organizing since 2009, I had never before been shut out of the podium, yet this year that happened in half of the races.
Overall participation in the NE Rando Race Series was also up to 176 starts from last year’s 58, generating almost $8,300 in entry fee revenue for our hosts at the four different venues, i.e., three ski resorts plus a local trail maintenance non-profit.  Even netting out the big impact from the Greylock 100-percent backcountry race this season, our starts for the series were still up by over 50 percent from the prior three-year average.
The NE Rando Race Series is very grateful for the support not only of our venue hosts but also the especially generous prize donations from many of our sponsors, most notably Skimo Co, Dynafit, Backcountry Access (continuously since the start of the series in 2009), Off Piste Mag (also since 2009), Toko (ditto), Hammer Nutrition, and Cripple Creek Backcountry, plus Hagan USA for many racer sponsorships.
Looking ahead to next season, we should have the same line-up of venues, plus possibly Bolton Valley in Northern VT for yet another meeting of the full Massachusetts and Quebec contingents.