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World Ski Mountaineering Championships (Running)
Sunday 07 March 2010 01:04PM
Just back in Chamonix after a five day trip to Andorra for the World Ski Mountaineering Championships. What an awesome and humbling experience!
On Monday I sat out the uphill only race (there were five of us, and only four places available to each country, so we had to choose the races between us) which was cool as it looked like lots of suffering and little fun. Kilian Jornet (Spain) won a sprint finish from Dennis Bruno (Italy) and Florent Perrier (France). I’ve not watched many races before, and never really at this level, so it was impressive and inspiring to see just how hard the top guys were pushing themselves – the first three looked like they were going to die for about five minutes after crossing the line! Note to self: must try harder…
Of the Brits, Ben Bardsley impressed finishing just 7 minutes behind Kilian, followed shortly after by Jon Morgan, then Ivor Ligertwood and Nick Wallis.
Wednesday was the individual up and down race, which turned out to be a thrilling race at the front, with Kilian battling it out with the swiss Florent Troillet, each one occasionally opening a gap only to be reeled back in. Florent won in the end by four seconds. Nearly as closely matched, but substantially further behind, were us Brits. We were all within sight of each other for much of the race, and Ben and I left the final “skins on” transition together, simultaneously chasing Jon and trying to drop each other. Jon stayed slightly ahead of us both, finishing 56th, closely followed by Ben in 59th and me in 61st, with just over 3 minutes separating us.
Also of note was Gaby Lees, our only female representative, in the junior women’s, who got closer to the winner of her race than any of us blokes managed in our races. Awesome.
The highlight for sure was Friday’s team race, for which I teamed up with Ben. We started in proper Scottish conditions, amazed that the organisers seemed to be going ahead with the full course. An hour later the weather cleared and we enjoyed perfect snow and clear blue skies as we endured the 2300m of up and down, split over three climbs. The final climb was particularly exciting, with a steep boot pack (skis on sac) up a couloir, followed by a knife-edge ridge run and then an awesome descent to the finish. Ben and I pushed hard up the couloir and along the ridge, managing to get ahead of a Norwegian team, only to have me lose a ski on the final descent and have them nip back in front of us (I was having problems with my bindings for the whole race). Overall a good result though, “only” 37% behind the best in the world, and ahead of teams from countries with fantastic and reliable skiing, and a ski mountaineering race scene such as Canada, Norway and Slovenia. Pretty chuffed but still loads to learn!
Nick and Ivor did well to finish after Ivor had a pretty major boot problem on the first descent. Even more notable was Gary Devine, former British fell running champion, who teamed up with Jon Morgan for his first ever ski mountaineering race, and his second ever ski tour! Jon found him a pink, flowery cat suit to wear so that he looked the part. Impressively he managed to finish within double the time of the winning team. “It’s not very much like fell running, is it?” was his comment on the finish line.
After all that excitement Ben and I are now properly psyched for Ski-mountaineering’s blue riband event, the four day Pierramenta, which starts on Thursday.
Some photos from Nick Wallis, Gaby Lees and Ben Bardsley compiled here.
Ski racing (Running)
Thursday 18 February 2010 08:46AM
Been out in the alps a week now, and managed to squeeze in a couple of races, the tour du grand veymont, a great up and down race in the Vercors, and an uphill only race in Les Houches. Both felt tough on legs that had done next to no skiing, and after a month of missed training in January (illness and writing up an Msc thesis). Training is going well again now so hopefully will be up to speed in time for the world champs in Andorra in ten days time…
In the absence of snow (General news)
Saturday 21 November 2009 11:09AM
I’m starting to get very psyched for this season’s ski-mountaineering races. The reasons for this are many. Firstly, it’s the most amazingly exciting sport; all the effort and exhilaration of fell running but with more speed (and fun) on the descents, more technique involved and in more spectacular scenary. Secondly, it’s exciting to be in something where I’m still so close to the bottom of my learning curve; the amount I could improve at running is certainly less than 10%, but in skiing it’s loads more than this because I can get both much fitter and much better at the technique, which is still pretty ropey given that I first learnt to ski only a few years ago. Lastly, this year the sport’s governing body have brought in a rule that there should be no modified kit. I bought all my kit second hand, and it’s all been heavily modified, both by those before me and then by me. The only option, if I want to be able to race, is to invest in a whole new set-up. As you might imagine, this is a pretty pricey affair! I find that this in itself motivates me to train – there seems little point spending a fortune on new kit if I don’t make myself as good as I can be in the meantime.
Psyche can be usefully directed into training, and I’ve got about two and a half months to prepare before my first races. However, I’m in Brussels for a few weeks so how do you train for ski-racing in a city with no snow and only small hills?
My plan is crude but feels effective; try and recall where hurt most when I last raced, think about what I can do here that replicates that pain and do it repeatedly. For now that means doing intervals on a turbo trainer (bike mounted on resistance rollers). Anecdotal evidence abounds for the cross-training benefits of cycling for running or skiing uphill – Rob Jebb, one of Britain’s most successful fell runners of recent years, and a real up-hill specialist, is also a top class cyclo-cross rider and Kilian Jornet, the current “wunderkind” of both ski mountaineering and mountain running, claims to split his (35-hour!) training week 50/50 between running and cycling.
In the absence of snow or hills
For me I’ve been doing this for a week and a half now, and already feel fitter, both on the bike and on the runs in between (alternating one day training on the bike with one day running). It also fits what I used to find as a junior, when I both did more cycling and took my running more seriously – if I did less cycling I got worse at running uphill!
I’m hopeful it will work, but that’s just addressing the fitness side of things. Practicing ski technique sans snow will be more problematic, and this is no doubt the weakest part of my current game. I’m looking at getting some rollerskis to help with this, and having a few more technique lessons before the first races of the season. In the meantime, here’s a little video inspiration: Matterhorn world cup round.
A game of two halves (Greater ranges climbing)
Monday 09 November 2009 04:36PM
When you go on expedition to climb new routes in a little-visited area, you do so with an acceptance of a higher than usual risk of getting nothing done. Unpredictable and severe weather, difficult logistics, uncertain climbing difficulties and innumerable other factors combine to make your chances of success much lower than in better known ranges, or when repeating existing routes. This is perhaps more true of Patagonia, with its infamous weather, than most other places. However, one thing I didn’t expect from my recent trip there with Mick Fowler was that we would fail to find something new that we wanted to climb. The wall we were going to was so wide that there would surely be something good-looking on it…
Within ten minutes of seeing the face close up we had decided that our intended route was too dangerous, threatened as it was by active seracs for most of its 2200m of elevation gain, but the subsequent walk south underneath the immense east face showed pretty much the same story for the rest of the face. Lines that weren’t threatened by seracs terminated in the most monstrous cornice I’ve ever seen – we estimated it to be more than 100m of overhanging ice and snow and we had no idea whether we’d be able to climb it if we got that far.
So we committed the cardinal Patagonian sin – squandering good weather, all 5 days of it, searching left and right for a line we wanted to do. Returning to basecamp exhausted from endless trail-breaking in knee deep snow, we set our sights on a repeat of the superb-looking east ridge, first climbed by a South African team in 1986 and repeated a handful of times since. Unfortunately, in our short expedition, we didn’t get another weather window before it was time to leave. Sum total of climbing for me and Mick: 200m of grade 1 gully. Perhaps it was grade 2 at a push, I even swung my axe a few times! Frustrating.
So at the end of all that sitting around I was glad to have Hil coming out to visit me for a few more weeks of adventure. Our sights were set firmly on a circuit round Fitzroy and Cerro Torre, starting by climbing up the Rio Electrico valley to Paso Marconi, then following the Patagonian icecap southwards, and returning to El Chalten via Paso del viento.
During the expedition we had come to trust the weather forecasts provided here (http://www.arl.noaa.gov/ready.php), so we delayed our planned departure on the trek to time with a coming weather window. This worked perfectly, we walked to Paso Marconi in bad weather, but that seemed to add excitement rather than too much gnarl to the situation, as we were sheltered from the strong westerly by the mountains. We dug our second tent platform in a wind scoop at the foot of Cordon Marconi, on the very edge of the vast icecap, slightly concerned by the thick black clouds above us, but woke to clear blue skies the following day.
Throughout the trek I was impressed by the level of adventure involved, I had expected a relatively easy trek, but it often felt more like mountaineering than trekking. Hil is relatively new to all this but takes to it so naturally that I’m continually amazed. She never seems to get cold and finds the prospect of bad weather, big drops, seracs and scrambling with a big rucksack on exciting rather than intimidating. Even the less glamorous sides of mountaineering, like peeing in a bottle and not showering for days on end she took to with characteristic humour. I was already a very proud and happy man when we arrived at Circo des los Altares, beneath the west side of Cerro Torre, in perfect weather. By the time we left the next morning, I was engaged to be married!
The rest of the trek was too dramatic to do justice to it here. The low point being Hil going into respiratory arrest (stopping breathing) through a slight overdose of the Tramadol she was taking to control post-bunion-op feet. Thankfully that resolved itself within a few minutes, and after an anxious and drowsy afternoon we continued. We arrived back in El Chalten to discover that Hil had also just become an aunty (and me an uncle-to-be). The first meal usually back in civilisation usually tastes amazing, but with two big events and Hil’s survival to celebrate it tasted better than ever!
We then spent a few weeks doing more conventional touristy things, heading southwards to Tierra Del Fuego. I got a few “dawn patrol” outings on the skis in the mountains above Ushuaia, which has got me properly psyched for the upcoming ski-alpinism race season.
The return to the UK has been a bit of a culture shock, trying to get straight back into work and writing a Masters thesis. Things were lightened a little bit on Sunday when I won a local race that I hadn’t done before – the “Leg it round Lathkill”. Only the second win of the season, I clearly need to pick my races more carefully!
Photos from both halves of the trip here
Mick’s take on events here