Mild Infliction

Bolton Valley, Vermont, GMARA Frigid Infliction, 10 hrs of snowshoeing and skiing with a little bit of traversing and postholing to keep it interesting.  Well, we decided we could make it a little more interesting, and essentially take ourselves out of any podium contention by giving the field about a 90min advantage.  That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.

So, after a 4am briefing, we were herded half way up the ski hill to the start line for 5am.  The first section was a quick snowshoe rogaine, where after CP1 you could collect the CP’s in any order, that was the first line in the directions, and to our demise the only line we read, as the second line stated that CP6 would be the same as CP1 and that you had to return to get CP6 AFTER getting 2 through 5, then continue to 7.  Well, we foolishly blasted through the rogaine to find ourselves at the tyrolean traverse with a couple race officials querying as to why we didn’t go to CP6...”isn’t CP6 just the same as 1 and therefore taken care of already?” “No not exactly” was the reply, “you’ll have to go back”.  Back meaning up the ENTIRE ski hill, then back a few more km’s into the bush.  Enter a round of drink box!

We made good time up the hill passing many teams now headed down to the traverse, finally made it back to CP1/6, and then continued our onslaught back to the ropes, focused on minimizing our losses without concern for the pace, knowing that our only hope in salvaging this thing was going to mean burying ourselves right to the end.

Losing a few more minutes in a small clusterf*^ at the ropes, we made it across and to the start of the first ski section a full 90min back of first, and in the back third of the leaderboard.  Ripping away on our skis, we began the steady crawl back towards the front of the race, and by the time we reached the posthole were in 7th with a couple teams just minutes ahead.  Thanking those 7 teams for the fine trailbreaking, we caught two teams over the short walk through the bush, and then another team on the following ski leg, bringing us to the final rogaine in 4th place, and 80min back of first.

This last section required us to take both snowshoes and skis, and decide along the way which mode of travel was going to be best.  For the most part we snowshoed, and then finally hit some good skiable trails (including the ski hill itself) to hammer home in, getting ourselves into 3rd, under an hour behind first.

Although it wasn’t exactly the result we were going for, our determination and inability to quit got us back to a respectable finish.  Not only did we give everyone a 90min advantage, but that was 90 extra min of us hammering our lungs into oblivion, and then finishing 55min back of first, and only 22min back of second, you can do the math yourself, but our answer keeps coming up a dominating 3rd.

-HAMMER OUT