skimo

This is my race report from the 2015 Jackson Hole skimo race, the second of two ski mountaineering races I completed this weekend. (Here’s my report from yesterday’s race at Grand Targhee.) Jackson was going to be bigger and badder than Targhee, no question. I knew that I’d be hucking double black diamond chutes on Wade’s skinny race skis, but with no concept of how hard or dangerous that would be, I chose to shut down the usual mental preparation. I’d deal with the steeps soon enough. ...

Wow, I haven’t gotten crushed that hard in a race in a long time. Just fully WHIPPED! Jenna and I drove out to Jackson yesterday for the "Wyoming Rando Roundup", my first real weekend of racing since I signed up for all of these races a few weeks ago. I don’t have my own race setup yet, so Wade lent me his crazy carbon Alien 1.0 boots and SkiTrab skis, and some extremely short kicker skins (for flat stretches) that had showed up in the mail the day before I grabbed them. ...

(Jason Antin cranking up A Basin in our second Skimo race of the year. Photo by Camera Photography.) My running season ended in September with the Wasatch Front 100, and I resigned myself to a winter of weight lifting and sporadic winter trail running. It takes a LOT of motivation to run around in the cold in deep snow, so I tend to hibernate athletically until March. After a week implementing this, our herding dog Pretzel’s bottled up energy was red-lining - watching him yip, vibrate, whimper and drag his leash around in that sad and hopeful way, Jenna and I gave in and committed to a winter outdoors. ...