More Photos Below!Gallery
We made it! It took 10 hours. Dawn to dusk. A perfect day. We used racing skis. I ate a lot of pizza. 4 liters of beverages, too. About 50 hills, including 20 herringbones/sidesteps, 5 hike-ups. Whew!
Here’s a link to info/maps of the trail: www.waterloopinckneytrail.org/
Our friend Mark LaMoreaux helped pace us for the first half, breaking a lot of trail, and planted a lunchmobile at the halfway point. Refreshing!
What a fun FIRST it was! Now we know that it can be done…
We struck while the iron was hot. Conditions were perfect. We didn’t have colds. Our schedules were open.
GO!
It was 10degF to start, 25 at finish. Moon and stars were out but we didn’t need our lights.
Man, we had so much nice gliding! Our skis worked great.
Here’s more details…
The mission basically involves connecting up 4 areas that are often skied with lonely sections in between.
We had 2 hrs of trailbreaking to get thru the in-between chunks. Lots of good packed trail elsewhere. We got a bit lost once, confused a couple times. An exact topo map with detailed trail overlay would be great to find and use. The existing trail map is a bit lame. But my topo map has no trail on it.
We used racing skis. I carried 10 lbs, Tim 5 lbs. I ate 5 pizza slices, 4 liters. Tim ate 2-3 slices. We had a car spotted at McClure, which we reached at 1pm. Tim changed clothes but I was dry.
Horses made a fair mess of over an hour of trail.
If someone could ever pre-run it all with a snowmobile, it would be heaven. Or if we had a group of 5 skiers we could take turns pulling and the back guy or 2 would have a smooth ride.
An ideal rig would be mid-length light touring skis with Grip Tape (um, there’s only one model made that somewhat meets this need: the Fischer Superlight—kinda narrow but probably fine). Make sure your water won’t freeze! …Use those hand-warmer packs. Have food attached to front of yourself. Ideally, don’t stop to eat/drink or to rewax or to change clothes. I found that my all-wool outfit stayed dry. Well, I wore jeans and crashed a dozen times but brushed off and even they didn’t get hardly damp. My race skis have really soft tails and crash me all the time—rats (so do my tour skis!). Good mid-length skis (or any ski that’s torsionally stiff) would make climbing easier and reduce crashes. If you did all these time saving ideas and had a great map and had a pace that included plenty of glide, then 8 hours would be possible. Stopping, getting lost, crashing, shuffling/marching — these eat up the time. Of course, if you’re out just for fun, do what ya like! : ) But efficiency gives more elbow room for more fun, too.
Tim says he might be game to do it again! He’d be great to have along as he’d know the route now. (Well, we never saw the turnoff we missed near Sackrider Hill, but he’d be on the lookout for it.) Also, he’s done several 16-hour pro canoe marathons, so he’s totally comfy with a big day.
Well…
Yee-haw!
Man, now what do I do with myself? It’s hard to be indoors today. I have to get out and ski again! (I’ll take our kids out…)
Ya know, if you can’t go fast you can still try to go far. And to do that you don’t need fancy stuff or to spend hours buffing and waxing and worrying. You don’t need to have specific fitness. Don’t need no entry fees or trail grooming. Imagination helps. And you’re not out there to *separate* yourself from your friends. Why, you get to ski WITH your pals to help each other reach a goal. What’s not to like? (Of course, racing can be like that, too. It’s up to you—you can make it painful and lonely, all strung out, or you can choose to ski, train, and even race with your crew, and help each other, make new friends. But often that happens before/after the race. It’s often not so comfy/chatty *during*. Racing has its strongpoints, too.)
An adventure can be on whatever scale fits you and your idea of fun. From a picnic to a multi-day. Maybe racing works best, in terms of social theory anyway, as an accent, a culmination of all the other ways of being outside with yer pals.
Anyway, good luck covering yer bases and keeping them tied together! Enjoy!
Ready to start! Sun just rising, teeth-chattering 10degF in light apparel. My daylong outfit worked perfectly…and it’s what I wear around town most winter days! …I do need wool pants, though. Jeans only work if you don’t crash. Still, my insulated jeans were only damp at the finish. Nicht schlecht.
We’ve just changed our clothes and the moon and stars are already out.
My boots froze into my bindings for final 2 hours. I had to scramble up a couple huge unskiable climbs that way.
Whew!
