The Hanover Collaboration

Link to part 1

Now seems to be a good time to come clean about some stuff. First, I live in Boston and I’m not in very good shape. After the race a few people were like, “How did you train for this in Boston?” Not so much.

I was riding my bike to Lincoln lab but that sort of stopped in the winter. Not because the snow and ice so much as I just didn’t go there very often. (The nice thing about working alone is it doesn’t matter where you are). I also moved closer to MIT which makes getting to class a 10min jog. So since Jan 1, I’ve done a lot of 10min jogs and not much else unless you count 4 trips to the weight room.

I’ve also got to admit that I don’t ski so much anymore. I mostly alpine ski. I think I got in about 12 days this winter. I nordic skied 4 times this year: 2 at ski soccer and twice around the Harvard arboretum. Last winter was about the same.

I classic skied exactly once since Jan 1 2004. Before the race I had to clean the klister[binder?] off my skis from NCAA’s in 2003.

So where were we? In the thick of a lead pack of three coming out into a roughly 5K flat in open fields. The grooming was an out-and-back on by a snowmobile and is mostly too narrow to skate. You can skate pretty well on the crust next to the trail for an average of 10 strides before you punch through at which point, you’d be lucky not to fall.

But before we get to the “groomed” stuff, we have about 100m on the crust. It is slightly downhill so the correct strategy is to double-pole with skis evenly weighted. The guy in front of me confirms this by skating, punching through and almost impaling himself on a fence post. Being skinny and on 205cm skis, I had less trouble than most so by the time we hit the snowmobile track, I was alone off the front.

So I slowed up until Eben caught up along with one of the other teams—the third one was back a bit. Then the four of us skied together double-poling and akwardly marathon skating. I wanted to gauge how hard they were working so I tried to talk to them for a bit. It turned out that they were the pro adventure racers who were rumored to be in the six figures and they were not breathing hard at all. They had heard of Eben’s sisters though not of Eben himself.

I was in the back of the group and Eben in the front when he starts pulling away. Once he gets 20m clear I think “fuck it”, hup the two of them and bridge up to him. To do this, I had to ski legitimately hard so not as to bring them along. At this point we’re trying to skate but it is made hard by ridges and grooves, and my legs start to feel it. It is clear that the number of hours I can go that fast is many, many fewer than the number in front of us, so I ask Eb to slow down.

The other two teams catch us at the same time on a short, steep sugar uphill. It is like running up sand. So some people have a go at it on the crust, I among them. We punch through up to our nuts and get thoroughly stuck. Then the smart ones take their skis off and hike up. I, riled up and being passed, thrashed my way back to the trail and hiked pretty hard to keep us in it.

The second I put my skis back on, in a moment of clarity I realize that I have been buring the candle from both ends. We had been out for less than 2hrs in a race that would take at least 6 more hours to finish, we were about to tackle a 3000’ sustained climb, and I was getting tired. Not Good. Once the climbs got more regular, we put on skins and let them go.

We went back into the woods and started climbing gently. We were traversing along a steep river-bank. In the dark, it was impossible to tell how high we were but everyone was aware that falling to the right would be bad. We followed a narrow hiking track cut into the bank which often had the only snow on the hill, other times, it didn’t have any snow either.

At the beginning of this section, we had some trouble with a skin, I had some shit fall out of my pack and we had to stop for a little while. At this point, two more teams including Andrew Kastning’s passed us. But his partner lost a ski down the bank (and never found it) which put them out of contention. At the end of the stream-traverse there was a sketchy decent which Eben bravely took first which let me take it faster since I knew he survived. At the bottom there was a hard-turn-or-in-the-stream moment that I was pretty surprised I managed to pull on classic skis.

What followed was a pretty monotonous climb. Monotonous from your point of view. I enjoyed it mostly. It was about 90 min of gradual to not-quite steep classic skiing on a pretty trail. We had skins on so the kick was great. We were skiing in day old AT-ski tracks plus those of the skiers in front of us. It started out crusty but as we went higher there got to be a few inches of powder mixed in. On the more open sections we could see lights up ahead, maybe 5-10 min. Likewise, we could see another team about that far behind. But we decided not to look back with our headlights on so that they couldn’t see us. After about an hour, I had remembered how to classic ski and was getting pretty nice glide despite the skins. Then it got steep so we put on our tail skins and walked.

“Near” the top of that climb there was an aid station at a place called Friends Hut, where they told us that we were in third due to one team dropping out for illness. Eben had the great idea of him getting water and then catching back up to me but they wouldn’t allow it. But later we capitalized on this type of strategy: If something needs to be dicked with, give it to Eben and ski slow until he catches up. I say near because Friends hut is at treeline and elevation 11,370’. Star pass is another 1100’ above. Standing there, we could see the other two teams who had something like 15 and 20 minutes and 800’ on us. Holy shit that’s a big hill.

We march up switchbacks for maybe 30 min to get up there. It starts to snow and I catch myself thinking, “Maybe they’ll turn us around at the pass” and I scold myself for wimpiness. At the top, we’re caught by the team of locals one of whom has won several times. I thought maybe we should follow them and watch their technique but keeping them close enough to see what they were doing quickly became a non-option since they pull strongly away on the final less-steep section to the crest of the pass.

At the crest of the pass, the wind is whipping a few snowflakes in front of our headlights like shooting stars as we peer down the dark slope.

TBC