The Elk Mountain Grand Traverse

The medal that all racers receive upon finishing in Aspen

The Grand Traverse is a 40-mile (ish) backcountry ski race from Crested Butte to Aspen. Depending on snow conditions, it can start in town at the nordic center or up at the ski mountain about 3 miles uphill. The route takes racers up and over the Crested Butte ski mountain, down to East River, up East Brush Creek to and past the Friends Hut, then up and over to Star Pass, over to Taylor Pass, and then rolling up and down Richmond Ridge to the top of Aspen ski mountain where you descend to the bottom to the finish line.

People use all different types of equipment in this race, from full-on lightweight AT gear to full-on classic or skate gear, and everything inbetween. The last couple of years have been different in that there is a noticeable trend towards more and more people entering the race (140 teams signed up in less than a day) and more of those people sporting AT gear. Scarpa F1's and superlight and skinny Trab or Goode or Atomic skis with of course Dynafit (titanium) Race bindings. They are not close to as light as a classic setup, but they sure ain't heavy either...and for the downhills, for which there are a few short ones, you can gain a lot of time and security in the descent.

The Redneck has asked me 2 or 3 years in a row if i wanted to do this event. I've always said "No" until this year. I'm not sure why this year was different but it has something do to with coming off a strong cross season as well as having all our kids (dogs) in healthy shape. That's important because I know this event requires a shit-ton of skiing (aka. training). Long days in the backcountry are my forte', but this takes it to a new level. I can surely say I've never skied 40 miles in one day; most my BC days are less than 10 miles in 8 hours. Some of the previous winners of the Traverse are old bike racing compatriots and finish the race in less than 9 hours most years. Four times the difference in about the same time? Yeah, it'll take some training to even just finish this event.

Back in November we went to Neptune Mountaineering and talked to Stevie. He convinced us of the preferred setup for the GT and we bought some Asnes Holemkollen nordic skis with 3/4 edges, their sporty carbon fiber poles, and some NNN BC bindings and Alpina boots. We both skied on this setup a bunch at the nordic center going skating and classic skiing all winter long. March kinda ended winter here and training became much harder to DO let alone motivate for, but we persisted knowing what was before us. It's hard to prepare for just ONE event...because if something goes wrong during that event, all that work and money seems a bit less worth it. (That's why cross is so cool - there's always NEXT weekend! Not so with the Traverse - but there is always next YEAR!)

We headed up to CB on Thursday for the Friday night event. It was dumping snow when we left. I knew March had to produce at least one huge upslope storm before it ended. Indeed it did. Roads were closing everywhere as road crews didn't know what hit them. We drove in blizzard conditions all the way to Monarch Pass where we were turned around for avalanche control. We hit up dinner in Salida at Amica's and waited for the pass to open. We made it over to the Butte finally - over 6 hours after leaving Ned. The Butte got over two feet of snow in a 48 hour period and there was almost 3 feet up at the Friends Hut.

Finally in the Butte, we stayed in the house seen below. Friday awoke to a cold and bluebird day - we were wishing we had our tele's for all the powder on the mountain - but that wasn't our goal for this trip. Up at 7am to get to registration and the gear check up by 8:30am. It was going to be a long day - the race started at midnight on Friday. (The reason they start at midnight is to avoid - for the most part - avalanche danger and also to make sure people get to Aspen in daylight instead of at night time.)

The scene was nervous and happy; 280 racers and all their gear in the dining/conference room of the Elevations hotel. This was where we saw the huge diversity in gear for the same event. It is pretty unique in that you'll never see such different gear for the same race ever again. Riding a rigid singlespeed in a downhill mountain bike race comes close, but only if 1/3rd the category did it, and another 1/3rd used only a front shock, and the last 1/3rd used motorcycles w/out motors (downhill bikes). Anyway, being my first GT, it was a trip.

After registration, we headed out for breakfast at Camp4 coffee, and then back to get our gear checked. This is a funny thing. There is a required list of gear for this event that every racer must bring. It's to insure that nobody dies out there without proper backcountry gear such as beacon/shovel/probe, bivy sack, first aid kit, stove, sleeping bag or a proper "warmth strategy", lighter/matches, etc, etc. The list goes on. You see the fast guys with their 1000 cubic inch packs and wonder how in the hell they fit all the required stuff in that little pack?!? Well they skimp on things - think of cutting down your toothbrush for weight savings on a hut trip...? They define anal to say the least. What you see is things being called "stoves" that you would never before consider a stove. It's hilarious! But it makes a ton of sense (until things go bad). You want to bring all the necessary gear, but don't want to race with it on your back for 40 miles...so there's a balance point for you and the judges to choose. Things get denied, but mostly things pass. For previous winners and the fast ones, even more things pass than for 1st year racers I would wager.

Mr. Bill checking off our gear

In the hotel, there was a large room with masking tape outlining each team's area to spread out their gear. We didn't bring sleeping bags but instead opted for our Patagucci Das Parka's and puff pants. Mr. Bill had to check on that strategy since it says you need a sleeping bag. But in the end, most people do NOT bring sleeping bags and instead bring down jackets and pants and a lightweight emergency bivy. We had a "stove" and 6 fuel blocks that he didn't even look twice at which was amazing to me because boiling water with that thing seems like it'd take forever. We brought three headlamps and one set of extra batteries between us, one first aid kit, and lots of other things I won't get into here but here's the list if you're interested. Eventually, Mr. Bill declared that we "passed" and we were on our way to eat more. That was the theme of the day - EAT and DRINK (water). They put together a pasta feed in the hotel, but after that we were on our own. We went back to the house to go through our gear (yet again) and pack it the way we wanted it to be packed during the event. Put things you need readily available on top, other stuff down low. We talked about wax and what the weather was going to be. We had been checking the weather for days since it had changed from a spring ice and corn race to a full winter powder race within the matter of a day. The temperature looked like it was going to drop after the storm leaving us with clear skies and a high of 4 degrees for the start. The lack of wind sounded good, but 4 degrees made for slow snow and potential difficulty keeping warm. We prepared by getting all the hand warmer heat packs we could find ready and getting our mitts ready to deploy at any time. Then we headed to town and ate some more food - a big burrito for dinner. At about 7PM we were able to try and get a nap. We set the alarm for 10pm and when we got up we made some coffee to actually wake up. That was surreal - "morning" at 10pm getting ready for a midnight race.

We had to be at the school downtown at 10:30pm for the beacon check and to get our laminated medical tags (think dog tags like in the army). Getting these tags were weird. One guy asked if he could put the dog tags in his pack. The lady responded "No, you need them on your body in case something happens and your pack isn't next to your body." Basically she was saying that if we find your dead body, we want the tags to be in the same place for every person - around your neck.

After all the checks, we all went into the school hallway to get ready to go. I taped a bunch of heat packs onto my camelbak tube - which was already "insulated" - and hoped that would stop the water from freezing at the nozzle. The Redneck also put heat packs everywhere - in his mitts, pockets, on his powerbars, everywhere we thought it'd help stuff from freezing. It was around 10 degrees outside with light wind and we knew we were only headed UP into colder and more exposed areas.

Midnight came, and we rushed out to the nordic center trail - right outside the school doors (lucky kids) - and put on our skis and start the race with a bang. Upon reaching down to put on his skis, the Redneck saw that one of his bindings was loose!

"Where's the posi-driver!?"

I quickly found it somehow in my immense 3000 cubic inch pack and that's about when the gun went off to start the race. We were dead last.

After quickly tightening the binding, we were gone. We caught up to everyone without trying to hard as the promoters were trying something new this year - a 'rolling start' - where nobody could pass the lead snowmobile until the trail narrowed. People were itching to pass though. We started with our kicker skins on since we knew the terrain would shortly turn upwards to Mt. Crested Butte. Even though it was slow on the groomed nordic center trails, we didn't have to stop and put on skins like many of the other racers we passed on the first uphill. The long line of racers in front of us, each with a headlamp, was cool to see but made us realize how far back we were. We reached the base area of the mountain around 1 am, passing where we just tried to take a nap a few hours previous. The course took us up and over the west side of the mountain where we deskinned and flew down the groomed runs to East River. This was quite sketchy on our narrow little skis. Snowplowing more than turning because it's the fastest and safest way, we ducked under a road underpass tunnel that neither of us knew was coming, then down further and out the back gate of the mountain onto East River. I heard a crash behind me and saw that the Redneck tumbled where the groomer turned suddenly to powder. That must've sucked as he was cold coming down the mountain and then he crashed into a couple of feet of new snow. His hands instantly froze. A couple minutes to regroup, we were on our way and the secret cold kick wax Natron recommended was working superbly. We skied with a group of others until it turned up again at the next checkpoint at the intersection with Brush Creek. I had to stop and turn on my beacon since they said they weren't getting a reading from me...ooops...no biggie...we were back with the group within the group that left us within a few minutes.

The Brush Creek climb is a very long climb. We kept warm for the most part until we stopped for food. My fingers froze almost immediately and we both put on the overmitts and waved our hands quickly by our sides to get the blood flowing to the fingers. This worked for me but Redneck's hands were in worse shape than mine so he was hurting for longer. I realized that this race is very pleasant when you're warm, but when you get cold and know you're going to be out there for several more hours...it's a rough realization and scary. YOU have to make yourself warm up...and keeping moving is really the only way to do that when it's less than 10 degrees and starting to get windier.

I started "seeing" false summits or saddles but it was dark so how could i see anything? There was no moon, only stars and our headlamp throwing a circular beam at most up to 10 feet in front of us. I knew I was getting tired. Sliding ski past ski, hour after hour, there were no sounds but the light breeze through the trees and the faint sound of kicker skins sliding on snow. The only bad ski-related choice we made was putting our full skins on too early before the hut. Other than that our skin and wax choices were flawless.

We made it to the Friends Hut by 5:20am. The cutoff was at 7am so we were in pretty good shape. (About 32 teams were turned around at the Friends Hut and forced to return to CB, not making the cutoff time of 7am.) But that climb had taken its toll on us. I definitely was feeling it and the Redneck had a mini-bonk from not eating much on the way up. It's very hard to eat at this time of night when it's so cold and at the start of the race...nothing seems appetizing. That goes for drinking water too. I had to keep sipping my tube or else it'd ice up and I'd have to chew on the nozzle to break up enough of the ice so water would pass through. I had a bottle insulated in my pack but I would have to stop and take the pack off to get that so I didn't do that often.

(You'll notice I took no pictures of the first 7 hours of the race. That's cause it was dark - duh! I would really like to come back and ski this first part again during daylight as I'm sure it's amazingly beautiful.)

At Friends Hut, we had a quick stop to get food and drink and we pulled out our face masks so they were ready to deploy. We were headed up above treeline towards Star Pass. We looked up at the route and saw the confused line of headlamps on the barren windswept hill the Hut on their way to the pass and realized that the climb wasn't even close to being over.

The next half hour was the most miserable part of the race for me. The winds picked up to over 40mph, with gusts higher than 50 as we were periodically getting knocked sideways. The 700ft vertical or so led us to a ridgeline that led over to Star Pass. The winds here were insane, kicking up dirt, snow and whatever was in their way into our exposed faces. Even with face masks on, I was sure that the tiny amount of skin showing would have frost bite in the morning.

Then, the following half hour was the most spectacular part of the race for me. Off the ridge now, we continued onto a steep side-hill traverse over to Star Pass where a slip would've resulted in a significant tumble to the drainage below. We were a bit more protected from the winds here thankfully. Nobody appeared to slip down the hill like I heard many a racer's teammate did in a previous races. Once at the Pass I looked up to see the alpenglow on the peaks to the north; it was around 6:20am. For me, this was the first realization of what we were doing and where we were. In the dark, it was almost like a dream, but now I could see that we were in the middle of the Elk Mountains....and we were OUT THERE! We were 20 miles from anything close to resembling civilization in any direction. It was surreal. The scenery - finally visible to us - was jaw dropping and totally inspiring. My fingers were too cold to grab the camera, but a picture wouldn't have captured the moment anyways.

The three volunteers at the pass that checked our numbers looked like Kenny from South Park. I cannot imagine standing up here all night day waiting for racers to pass by. We were told that we should be ready for a "ground blizzard" on Taylor Pass and that we should stay together with other teams and prepare to bivy. I looked northwest over towards Taylor and saw what they meant. Clouds shrouded the pass and were moving quickly as they rolled to the east. As we stood there, the leaders were being worked over by that ground blizzard on Taylor, already 10 miles ahead of us. One of the Kenny's told us to stay right on the descent from Star. This was the "Low route" which we were being forced to take because of high avy danger on the "High route" which is the normal route for the Traverse.

Dropping off the saddle of Star was pretty epic on skinny skis. It was more of a traverse, turn around, traverse, fall, repeat. The skier in front of me hit a 35 degree icy patch and slid a few hundred feet down the slope. I almost did the same once i hit this patch but made it across and warned the Redneck of its danger. This would've been a fun descent on AT skis! But it was survival "turns" on these skis. I let it go once I thought it was safe to do so only to do a full front flip in the new snow. Once down to the drainage bottom, we double-poled and glided to another checkpoint before the uphill traverse to Taylor Lake. They had a fire built in a clump of trees near their tent. A previous GT winner manned this station and was giving out tips on how to dry out your skins by the fire. (Most everyone's skins were barely sticking to their skis from the cold temperatures rendering the glue useless.)

We needed a break. It was still freaking cold, but we were out of the wind and we needed to eat and drink before heading up the next uphill. My hands and toes were gone from the long descent to the checkpoint so I didn't want to stay long. After 1o-ish minutes, we started up the climb. It was a traverse up to Taylor Lake in the big southeast-facing trees. As we got higher, the sun rose higher in the sky and it looked like we were going to "miss" the ground blizzard that the ones that came before us had to deal with.

Redneck in red on the traverse up to Taylor.

Having eaten, we felt better and went faster on the uphill traverse out of Taylor gulch and passed a few teams.

A line of people headed for Taylor Pass.
For most of the time we were skiing alone, but occasionally we'd run into groups.

Looking back south. Where we came from is out of view to the right.

We cruised up the climb to Taylor Lake passing several teams along the way. In the trees I saw a covered-up offshoot where the leaders went astray. To their credit, they were breaking trail in a blizzard. They knew the course well enough though so didn't get too far off course but ended up boot packing up a small cornice about a 1/4 mile south of the actual route up to Taylor Pass. I thought about how heinous it'd be to break trail with classic skis...but I wondered how the two top teams - one on AT gear, one on classic gear - played each other and where the winning move was executed.

Barnard Hut checkpoint.
(The dome is just downhill from the actual hut)

We arrived at the Barnard checkpoint at about 11am. They handed out hot cups of Ramen noodles-- we never thought Ramen could taste so good! The last 15 miles or so are along Richmond Hill - a blog post from a couple of weeks ago recounts it. There was much more and better snow on the ridge this time around making the snowmobile WHOOPS much less steep and deep, a welcomed benefit to the recent snow. Thankfully there were no snowmobile tracks until Taylor Pass!

Right before the downhill where I broke my pole.

I was dreading a certain steep singletrack downhill on these skis. I fell a few times the last time we did this route and I fell again this time but at least it was softer snow. As I fell back one time to the left i heard a SNAP! My nice new Asnes carbon fiber pole snapped in half about a 1/3rd the way down from the grip with about 5 miles still to go. At the bottom of the hill, on our way to the next long climb, we figured how to splint it with a stick and a ton of duct tape.

The McGuyver'd pole

The splint actually worked pretty well! It was strong and provided extra "spring" on each pole stroke...but we wasted at least 20 minutes fixing it. At this time, we were just happy that we were 5 miles away and were GOING to finish this race!

It was getting warmer and sunnier and the kick wax we had on was not doing anything except in the shade. We resorted to walking a lot of each uphill, part because we were sick of the snowmobile whoops and partly because we didn't want to put our skins on. This part of the course is a lot of short ups and downs where IF you can master the wax for the conditions, then you can cruise this section. Otherwise, it's frustratingly slow - a mix of herring-bone, kick wax, and just plain walking carrying the skis.

It took almost 2 hours to go from the Barnard Hut to the top of Aspen mountain. Then, the fun part. Mixing up tele with alpine turns we burned our quads down the mountain, having to stop every 20 turns or so to rest. The AT team we passed a few miles back caught us 2/3rds down the 3,000ft vertical - flying down with not a care in the world.


And so it was, we crossed the finish line seen above in 13 hours, 50 minutes and 30 seconds - 51st place overall - strangely the same number as our bib. We were greeted by a beer "vessel", a medal, and a congradulatory hug. We were gunning for 10-12 hours but with our food and water issues, we were fine finishing in 51st. The winners - Mike Kloser and Jay Henry - finished in 9 hours, 17 minutes with 2nd place about 15 minutes behind them.

Reflecting back on this event, it rises to the top with the Montezuma's Revenge 24 hour bike race (RIP). I haven't done a ton of these types of endurance events, but I've done my share of endurance and 24 hour MTB races and this surpasses all of them but Montezumas. No laps, it's a point to point. It takes you to places you'd likely never go without doing the race and finishing. It has a core group of volunteers - previous winners and finishers alike - all so passionate about backcountry skiing and the event itself that people can come to tears just talking about it. It puts you through the ringer no matter how well prepared you are because it takes you out into the rawest of elements that nature can provide. There are times where you hate the race, and other times where you can't imagine your life without this experience. Like the historic yet unknown skiers traversing mountains to deliver mail over a century ago, this brings racers back to what it was like to live and travel long distances without motorized assistance. I'm not sure I would've recommend Montezuma's to anyone, but I wholeheartedly recommend this event to anyone that loves skiing in the backcountry. You'll not regret it.