SPEED
- Anna Rix: 37 min, 27 seconds; 6.4 miles (narrative below)
- Mark Ross: 38min, 32sec (Apr 17)
- Mark Ross: 43 min, 38.58 sec (April 15)
- Mark Ross: 49 min, 9.5 sec (Apr 11)
- Kieran and Max Kaufman: 1 hour, 9 min, 4 sec; 10.18 kilometers
- Mark Simon: 1 hour, 32 min*
- Eric Troyer: 1 hour, 32 min, 24 sec
DISTANCE
- Tracie Curry and Clinton Brown: 22.8 miles; 4 hours, 20 min, 20 sec
- Andy Blossy: 13.6 miles; 3 hours
Tracie and Clinton’s route
Anna Rix’s report (April 14):
I got out this morning and skied the course when it was still icy. Mostly double pole, since the snowmachines left berms from their skis making it easier to double pole than skate. Fell once, took one completely wrong turn, found one shortcut on my return, and yielded to one dog team right at Musher’s Hall.
The important stats: 37:27, 6.40 miles, both my wrong turn and short cut on the way back are pretty obvious on my map.
Now that I have found the East gate at Creamer’s Field, I definitely think faster and shorter is possible, but I am probably too lazy to drive back over there since I can hop on the UAF or other ADMA trails or the golf course without having to drive anywhere.
Anna also sent in a nice screenshot of her GPS tracking map, but you guys don’t get to see that since this is a find-your-own-way race!
And here is a video of Anna near the Musher’s Hall, with her pass of a musher and a fall! Thanks to Tom McGrane!
Mark Ross report (April 17)
Crashed once, forgot race pants again. Victory is within reach.
“of all the pants you take in life, make sure a few of them are race pants”
Mark Ross’s report from his original attempt (April 11)
I skied in a whiteout at 11:30am Friday,
fell 3 times and made a wrong turn. 49:09.5
Max Kaufman’s report (April 17)
April 17th Max and Kieran Kaufman (age 12)
My son and I skate skied to Mushers’ Hall and back this afternoon. I was having a good time, but he had a lot less fun than I hoped he would. The snow was wet, dirty and slow. Despite the LF10, he didn’t have enough texture in his old pair of rock skis to mitigate the suction.
We skied over all sorts of good stuff: moose nuggets, copious dog poop, sticks, grease and grime, spruce cones and needles…you name it. Only skirted one brown slush puddle.
We nearly had the shortest course, finding the obscure cut-throughs between trails and totally disregarding direction of travel. Our route came in at 10.18 km, and that was with a minor wrong turn.
In the same way that it feels terrible to leave your favorite vacation spot on a nice day, one could also argue not to end the ski season on a high note. Today’s ski “dash” certainly made my son want to hang up the skis for the summer
Andy Blossy’s report (April 13):
I sat down and configured the route I took Saturday. There were some convolutions around the Creamers area. I missed the 12.2 mile cut off on the way in, turned back on the skijor trail where it intersects the 13.6, returned to the 12.2 cutoff, skied up to the farmhouse, missed the dancing girls, stopped in the entrance of the farmhouse (which was closed ) changed my clothes, made the circuit around outer skijor trail, dropped back to the 12.2 junction once I was certain of the direction I wanted to go and proceeded from there back to my place adjacent to the Mushers Hall.
I’d taken off at 2:20…change of clothes and fooling around took 20 minutes…and returned home at 5:40 So I would say I did 3 hours of ski time for the 13.6 miles. Sounds about right, considering it was wet and kinda slow . The trail hours were non-stop.
I’d forgotten my map. The stuff at the junctions of the Creamers ski-jor trails and ADMA are confusing without it, which is why I floundered around there for a while.
Basically a nice to ski and fun to be out social distancing.
I printed all of Andy’s description of his outing because anyone who takes Andy’s route won’t break any records!
Mark Simon*’s selfie
Eric Troyer’s report (April 16)
I hate skiing on ice. That’s why I bought a fatbike. So, when I did the Spring SKI-dash on Wednesday I waited until midday, starting at about 1:30pm or so.
It worked out great. The trails were soft, but not too soft. They were Baby Bear right.
I used a pair of fish-scale skis my wife had purchased a few years ago for spring skiing and quickly given up on. I’m glad we kept them. They are slow, but I hate klister. The fish-scales have been gripping great. And I’ve been getting enough glide to keep me happy.
I knew my attempt at the SKI-dash was going to be a one-shot thing. I don’t live or work in town, so I wasn’t going to do a scouting trip. I’ve been on the ADMA trails a few times but not many, so I brought a map. But I knew I might be out there a few hours, if I couldn’t get things figured out.
Well, I got things figured out! I tried to keep the sun at my back and Skyline Ridge (behind the Musher’s Hall) in front of me (when I could see it). If I had doubt at an intersection, I tried to use the map I had printed. I made one wrong turn, but quickly corrected.
As I approached Musher’s Hall, I saw that I had a time of about 40 minutes. Way slower than Anna Rix or Mark Ross, but I figured I could beat Mark Simon for third place. But then I had to decide between snagging third or doing a little more exploring. Tough decision. Then I remembered that Mark “Asterisk” Simon has an asterisk next to his time. I could just pretend like it didn’t count! I did a little exploring on the way back.
I was a little slower than Asterisk Simon, but I had a great ski outing, so I’m a winner!
April 12:
Asterisks:
*Mark Simon didn’t quite make it to the Musher’s Hall because a musher was just preparing to leave from the start area, so he decided to do some preventative social distancing!