Training Log Archive: biggins

Jonathan and a friend came up from SF to do some tele skiing up around Donner Summit, so I tagged along for the uphill part on the snowshoes. Once we got up to the ridgeline almost up top of Castle Pk, they skiied back down into the bowl, and I traversed across the ridge to Basin Pk. Fairly windy on the ridge, and super windy on the summit. But I dropped down another ridge into the bowl and got out of the wind almost right away, then down across the flat and back to the trail we came up. Hard crusty snow on the ridges, many feet of powder down in the bowl. 4.5 hours rt.

Went past a ski cabin on the way out, which was pretty cool because it had two floors but no stairs, just ladders. But it also had two doors to get in, one on each floor. So in early season you enter on the first floor and climb up to the second, but in late season when there's lots of snow the first floor is buried, so you just go in on the second floor and then climb down.

wet and snowing all day, another foot already? so instead I added dragons to cfi. they're totally relevant to orienteering games.

C • excellent 3

full tour up to the left ridge of TD, then down the backside into the valley. sunny and warm.

a foot of greasy new snow last night, but it packed down quite nice by the end of the day.

long slow ski around the valley

snowing but sunny all day, except when I drove over and got out of the car, then it just turned into a whiteout. pretty miserable, so I bailed after a little bit.

The Great Ski Race
Yea greatest race ever. They even had the foresight to just name it that. Starts in Tahoe XC (right next to the lodge - at the bottom of that hill), then climbs 1600' nonstop over 11km up to the top of the rim, then descends almost nonstop 2000' into Truckee over 19km. Conditions were sweet, skis were wicked fast. Check out the splits on the downhill part. I was either in a tuck skating the whole time, or in a tuck fearing for my life. The last couple hundred meters goes straight down an insane old downhill slope, then you cross the finish line, they hand you a beer, and then you turn around to watch the 50% of people who cross the line sliding on their backs.

Started in the back of wave 3 (of 6) since I hadn't done it before, but quickly realized that 140 / 150 people in my wave couldn't double pole uphill. So I was in front by the time we did the 1/2 km through the golf course, and had a gap for a few km before I started picking up wave 2. It was busy until almost to the top of the hill, then it thinned out and I was flying downhill. Silly skinny people. Donatas didn't give any seeding times, so he started in wave 5 (three mins back / wave), and I thought I had held him off until a few km from the end when he went flying by. Kept him in sight until the finish, but couldn't hang with him on the last little bump before the end dropoff. He finished 24th, I was 63rd, and we ran into Smokey who was 18th from wave 1. Maybe 1100 people total. Also I beat the guy in the clown suit. I think the three foot ruffle may have been a disadvantage on the downhills.

C • great race! 4