Filling in the Gaps

A lot happened this summer. Obviously there was a lot of ski training being done but I tried to jam as many other things in between as I could. Working carpentry to pay the bills, going to music festivals, building sheds, hiking mountains, canoeing rivers, cutting wood, picking berries, and hunting, lots and lots of hunting.

 building stuff

training on the Eagle Glacier

I caught up on training during the Anchorage camp (which was a sweet camp btw), now it was time to catch up on hunting season. We already missed the first two weeks! I helped Colin get this beauty 39” ram on the 3^rd day of our hunt after hellish hush-whacks/ridge-walks/multiple-steep-ass-mountain climbs. In the final stalk, Colin dressed up as a sheep (turning his white Yukon Elites Squad race suit inside-out) and crawled for 4 hours on his hands and knees up a mountain to get into position.

Colin's sheep

A couple weeks later I was back at it. My girlfriend and I went to an area we had scouted earlier in the summer. We were looking for sheep but a caribou popped out in front of us and spoiled our sheep hunt. Soon after, the sky started puking on us. We packed up and drove home. Successful… at least in regards to bringing back some meat.

before it started raining/snowing

Then I went out to get my own sheep. I left with 2 friends. After winching our quad and dirt bike out of a few waist deep mud holes we finally started hiking. I got my 38” ram on the 2^nd day of our hunt.

My Sheep

My last hunt was for moose and goat. After a really long drive to the opposite edge of the Yukon border, we lined our canoe upriver 20km. It was cloudy and snowy the whole time but I managed to spot some goats up on the mountain. We hiked up a big old gnarly mountain face, stalked up on the goats, only to find it was a nanny and a kid, no billies. We did bag a moose though.

Our tastey little moose

Now with part of 2 sheep, a caribou and half a moose, I’m pretty set for meat. I eat an astounding amount of wild game, which I believe to be extremely good for an athletes diet. I’ll be bringing much of it down to any races/competitions as long as I can confirm there’s a freezer where we’ll be staying.

I love October in the Yukon, but I’ll admit sometimes the training can be marginal: too much snow for roller skiing, not enough for the real thing. And so, my next big adventure began in Arizona to avoid the awkward transition period of the changing seasons, and to get some quality altitude training in.

roller skiing in Arizona

I got an early start on snow, skiing on Frozen Thunder in Canmore, Alberta. The 2km loop made out of last years stockpiled snow under mountains of sawdust did pretty well. The skiing was awesome but really I was just waiting until the snow finally came back home. When it finally did, I was home in a jiffy.

time trial at frozen thunder- photo cred. Julien Locke

The skiing in Whitehorse is top notch now and I’m itching to start the racing season off in Silverstar. 

Yukon Summer

The Yukon is known for its long winters, less is known of our hot, dry, and sunny summers. The Yukon Elite Squad is now only Colin and myself but we've been putting in long hours under the midnight sun. Early in the Summer we'll do tons of hiking, canoeing, road biking and running. Its seems like the only time I'm roller skiing is when I'm pushing out intervals or a double pole workout. Later in the Summer we'll get more specific (roller skiing, and skiing on glaciers).

Here I am on top of a mountain. Many more to conquer.

Colin has been away for the past 2 weeks in Canmore. I almost followed him down there to do a training camp, but am I ever glad i didn't. Not only would I have been stranded in Canmore's flood water state of emergency but I would of also missed some of the best Yukon June weather ever. So far I've been able to drag people along to the gym to replace Colin but I have been doing some long, lonely roller ski workouts.

I dont tend to take pictures on lonely roller ski workouts but heres a picture David Greer took of me on a lonely road bike ride in the Kluane Chilkat International Bike Relay… close enough

Our team came first in the 4 person category and 3rd overall. It was an awesome weekend with temperatures pushing 30 degrees. I cooled off after the race by going for a really long swim in the ocean.

I've been working hard in the gym and on my woodskis but I also been working hard making money. trying to sell myself to sponsors wasn't working out for me so between training I'm working construction about 20 hours a week, building a big timber frame pavilion. Mostly its to pay for food that I can't kill or pick myself. As long as I'm in the Yukon, all my meals have wild meat or fish. recovery drink is a steak and smoked fish and jerky are my gels and bars.

Heres Fabian grilling a typical lunch on the job site, moose roast and fish with a grilled cheese.

 Carpentry tools are great in the kitchen

Other than that I've been getting ready for hunting season by shooting my compound bow quite a bit and can now shoot a 4 shot, 3 inch group at 50yrds. I went white water rafting for the first time with my girlfriend Erin who is a guide for Tatshenshini Expediting. I'm doing some yard work like tending to the garden and hopefully building a new shed soon. It seems like I'm super busy with everything from work to training but I'm feeling great in every workout and have shattered my last years time trial results. I'm trying to not get too exited like I did last year in the fall and still take it easy when I feel the need to. Better to under do it a little than to over do it a little.

Looking to August I'll be joining the APU ski team again this year on the Eagle Glacier. Big thanks to Eric Flora making it happen for the second year in a row!

Heres some random GoPro clips of some Yukon powder, canoeing, fishing, and sliding down mountains.

Nationals, Super Tour Finals, and another Nationals

Finally. Finally I’m racing where I should have been all year long. Though I had only two weeks left to take advantage of my shape I suppose it was better late than never. One race to the next from December onwards I was always on the edge, on the edge of being healthy and on the edge of recovering. I was consistently OK. But I’ve had enough mediocre races to learn that mediocre races don’t get you anywhere. All it took was a couple easy training weeks, 8 hours or less, lollygagging around some easy trails every other day, none of this peaking nonsense. I’m convinced now that there’s too much science involved in skiing and all you have to do is come into races healthy and rested. There are people out there training more hours than I am, they’re glued to their heart rate monitors, they fill their training log everyday; well-rounded athletes no doubt. But you better make sure you’re listening to your body and not your watch, and you’re filling that log for yourself, not your coach. Otherwise your making work for yourself and the moment skiing becomes more work and less fun you’re going in the wrong direction. Disciplined fun is what you want.  Anyways…

At Nationals I started things off right in the team sprint with Dave. We didn’t let being the Yukon’s “B” team get in the way of our performance and cruised through the semi final in first place. In the final Dave tagged me off in second place and I managed to hold that position thanks in part to a fall that took out rival Phil Widmer. Colin and Graham were third and the Yukon filled 2 spots on the podium!

The 10km skate was won by the amazing Brian McKeever who is legally blind but can somehow still weave his way around the course faster than anyone else. I had a good day finishing 22^nd but not as far off the pace as my position may suggest.

Classic 15km: best race of the year so far! Alain gave us killer skis and striding the hills was rhythmical like one of those conductors waving a stick in front of an orchestra in perfect harmony. That’s how I skied. I finished in 8^th place, 6^th Canadian.

My form continued in the sprint the next day where I ended up 6^th, 5^th Canadian. I felt strong as ever from my qualifier to the final but in the end my top speed is just a little less than those other guys.

The 50km skate did not feel like a ski race. I felt as though I was skiing on stilts. From 20km my legs were so crammed up I straight legged it up the stupidly hard course as fast as I could. I managed to get through it to keep my final aggregate position but it didn’t quite match up to the previous days.

I had planned on calling it a year after Canadian Nationals but I was pleased enough with my results I figured I could fight it out for another week down in California at the US Super Tour Finals. I’m glad I did.

In a frantic rush to change plane tickets, sort out who would wax my skis, where I would stay, and a million other things I ended up hopping in with Thomsen D’Hont and Kajsa Heyes. The Honda Fit was packed to capacity as we barreled down the highway towards our final destination: Truckee California. Stopping only briefly to spelunk some lava caves. We made it to Truckee with a day to spare before the first race.

The first race was a 3.3km skate: a prologue. The course was intimidating. The “wall” as they call it is the 3-minute long up-hill in the course, steep as a cow’s face. To make things worse we were racing at an altitude of over 2000m. My legs felt like garbage and breathing was like sucking air through a straw. Starting 40 minutes behind the fastest seeded guys, the course was slowing down. A mixture of snow and rain was falling from the sky but I somehow made way around the miserable course in the second fastest time of the day. This is the best result of my LIFE! All the fastest guys in the US were there and I just placed 2^nd. I am still dumbfounded at how the best result of my life was at a race that I felt like crap in.

The classic race the next day had the same hill in the course, only we did it 3 times! Grown men walking (with skis on) up hill was a sorry sight to see. It’s a weird feeling to be walking, yet breathing at your lung’s maximum output. Hardly a ski race if you ask me. I finished well behind the leaders in this race. After the prologue, was this a slap in the face to put me back where I belong?

The classic sprint was interesting. Snow and rain alternated throughout the morning. Wax techs worked hard as racers were switching between harries (wax-less skis), klister, and skate skis. Nobody could decide what was best. Double poling (skate skis) seemed to be good in the qualifier… but only if you are a strong double-poler. Anyone who used skate skis in the heats suffered big time. I stayed on klister the whole day and finished off in 8^th, a solid result.

Next was the hill climb. I would hardly qualify this as a ski race either. The course is UP a downhill ski mountain. The course favors lightweight guys but anyone who was actually able to ski up it and not walk on their skis would do well. As we neared the top of the mountain we were blown sideways by 80km per hour winds. Course marshals pointed you in the right direction, as it was a complete whiteout. I held it together best I could to finish 18^th.

I had a few days to kill between the hill climb and the 50km. That was good because I was once again scrambling to find out who would wax my skis, where I would stay and how I would get back home after the 50km. APU saved my ass by letting me crash at there big house and they also gave me waxing support for the 50km.

I was seeded near the back half of the mass start so it was hard to weave my way towards the front. Instead I decided to be patient and ski in my position until people started to drop off and I had an opportunity to make a move. Before the end of the first 10km lap there was already a breakaway. I was still stuck behind a wall of skiers but as others started to fade I kept a good pace. I was skiing my own race. I’d catch a group of skiers but then just pull away from them on the up-hills. I was catching people constantly but had no idea what position I was in. Apart from a few mild tricep cramps starting at 40km I knew I was in a good position to make up some time on the last lap. I got into a good rhythm, put my head down, and hammered the last 10km, catching people as they were bonking. I had Tad Elliott in my sights a few hundred meters to the finish and I really pushed to catch him right before the finish. I finished in 4^th place. It doesn’t beat my 2^nd place prologue in terms of position but it was a better race for sure and an awesome way to end the season.

I hitched a ride with Andy Shields and Jimmy Gunka to San Francisco. The next 24 hours where quite shitty and included flying a few hours out of the way to Phoenix and sleeping over night on a bench in the Vancouver airport. But I must say, its good to be home. 

Bison Hunting

As real life speeds up, I've fallen into a bit of a blog slump. Too much going on to want to sit in front of a computer, especially when I'm already writing a bi-weekly article for Whats Up Yukon newspaper. Nevertheless I feel guilty. I’ve also discovered that I get way more hits on my blog when I write about something other than skiing so here’s all about the Bison hunt I just came back from with Dave.

I rammed the 340 Arctic Cat onto the tilt deck trailer. It didn’t tilt and I slid back down. I took another run at it, same thing. I stacked firewood and a jerry can at the top of the trailer for extra weight and took one last run at it. Success. I swung by Dave’s house and we loaded up his 250 Bravo, much easier with two guys. The rig we’re driving costs us a dollar a mile in gas (literally) but luckily our starting point was not far out of town.

We arrived to find five or six other trucks and trailers at the trailhead. I thought, “this must be a good spot” but I also thought, “if there’s any bison out there, surely those guys have already beat us to them”.

We loaded up the sleighs and started putting along with our underpowered machines. We stopped along the way to make sure the rifle was still sighted in since I bumped, fell on, and dropped it while chasing rams behind Kusawa last fall. It was dead on. Dave popped a grilled cheese into his HotDogger before we continued down the trail. HotDogger? It’s a mini Dutch oven fixed to the exhaust. It’ll cook you a wiener in no time, or a grilled cheese for that matter.

It took about five K to get the cheese nice and gooey and we stopped for lunch. A couple bison-less hunters passed us going back to the vehicles. We were happy that they didn’t find our bison but worried there was no bison to find. We’ve never hunted bison and those guys looked like pros.

We were too cheap/didn’t have enough time to buy a topo map so I drew one on a sheet of lined paper from looking at google earth. According to the map, we were just entering bison territory. We finally spotted what we thought were bison tracks. We strapped on our snowshoes and followed them until we realized they were moose tracks. I saw some more tracks up on a side hill across the lake. We trekked over to where the tracks were but they were old and we couldn’t even tell if they were bison tracks. “Ahh they’re just old tracks”, Dave said. I like to think it was our stone-age ancestors who were looking down on us that guided us overtop of the next hill to another lake. “HHOO FUCK!” we whispered loudly, simultaneously. “We found em Dave!” I said in the voice of a giddy little schoolgirl.

We quickly thought out a route best suited to get within shooting range. Trying to tip toe through a foot of crusty snow we were being anything but sneaky. It soon became apparent that the bison knew we were there. Now it was a game to see how comfortable they would be with us. We inched forward to try and get a clear line of sight. There were three monster bison on top of the hill, two calves just below them, and another medium sized one lower down. The big ones were too big, the little ones too little, and the medium one just right. We each had a rifle at the ready. If I missed him, Dave was going to blast a second shot.

“Ready Dave?” “Yup… Oh wait, there’s a twig in my crosshairs.” Of course it was then that the bison started to gallop over the hill, out of sight. “Come on, turn you big bastard”, I said under my breath. Sure enough as he crested the hill his curiosity got the best of him. He just had to see what that was on the opposite side of the hill. Boom! His hind legs crumpled and he stood still for a second before bolting into the bush. I worked the action frantically and squeezed off another shot as he was disappearing. “Did I get em”, I asked. “Looked like it”, said Dave.

We looked for blood. Nothing. And then, a drop, and another, and another; pretty soon we were following a steady blood trail along the ridge. A hundred meters further and Dave spotted him. “There he is… he’s dead!” We hi-fived.

As the excitement wore off we realized we had three hours of daylight left and a kilometer of dense bush between our skidoos and the bison. We hadn’t eaten dinner or set up camp. We rushed back to the skidoos. Aside from a kilometer of bush there was also a big daddy hill we had to climb right off the start. 45-degree slopes everywhere we looked.  A ways to the left we found one hill that was slightly less steep. Our little kitty cat snowmobiles screamed as we tore through the powder. First run we made it half way, then three quarters, and third time’s the charm as we made it to the top. With the sun setting it was apparent we would not get the snowmobiles to the bison that night. I’ve never had to skin a cold animal before but I know enough to know it would suck.

We left the skidoos on top of the hill and headed back to the bison with a daypack full of skinning knives, game bags, and trail mix. It didn’t take long before we realized our bison was in fact a female (Don’t worry, everything all good and legal). We skinned and skinned. We skinned into the night. With darkness upon us, and fiddling knives with numb fingers it wasn’t long before Dave cut himself. Hands already covered in bison blood it was hard to tell which was who’s. We got out the headlamps and kept at it knowing that it would be damn near impossible to field dress a frozen bison. Hindquarter after front quarter, rib cage after rib cage, we pieced apart the bison. Exhausted and hungry I would stick my bloody hand into the trail mix now and then and swallow a hand full of nuts and raisons.

It took what seemed like all night but was probably about 4 to 5 hours. We were cold, soaking wet, covered in bison blood, and hungry. Dave set up the tent and I lit a big bonfire to warm up. I changed clothes and propped up my soaking wet, now frozen, bloody clothes on sticks next to the fire in a hopeless attempt to dry them. We boiled water to heat up our army rations: premade meals packed in MSG and sealed in a foil package. At around midnight we crawled into our sleeping bags.

Morning. I looked over at Dave who had apparently put on every piece of clothing he could find during the night and was still shivering. We made a pot of oats over the fire and didn’t waste time getting to work. First thing to do was find the best route to get the skidoos to the bison. Either that or pack 600 lbs of meat from the bison to the skidoos. I noticed an old trap set yesterday which led me to think there might be an old trap line trail somewhere close by. I returned to the trap set and it didn’t take long before I started to spot some old blazes on the spruce trees. They didn’t lead exactly in the right direction but I was able to get a good deal closer. A half hour’s work with the axe and I was through.

We loaded up the toboggans and broke trail through the bush to the old trapping trail which led us to the bison. I took a hindquarter, both front quarters, the ribs and a bag with the loins, backstrap, neck meat and heart. Dave took the hide, head and the remaining hindquarter. Our little machines worked hard to crawl at walking speed. I was glad we shot one of the smaller bison.

It was a bumpy 60km trail back to the truck. We stopped a few times on the way back to throw a sandwich in the HotDogger and to let the machines cool down. They were working pretty hard.

We were back in good time. To be honest I could hardly believe how well it worked out. I was kind of expecting to take the wrong trail, have our snow machines to break down or to run out of gas. We were back a day early with a bison. Makes up for the numerous unsuccessful hunting trips this fall. I’ll be eating steaks for breakfast, burgers for lunch, and roasts for dinner from now on.

Out East

Right from the get-go I've been feeling pretty tip top this year. Summer training, fall time trials, there was never time I've felt so good to be a skier. I think I did get a bit excited right at the start of the season however. My races in December weren't quite matching up to my november time trials. First distance race of the year: 15km Classic, I killed myself. I really pushed myself too hard and I blew up. A month later I think I'm finally recovered. 

Over Christmas break I played it safe. I didn't go out to all of those Christmas parties, I didn't play a lot of hockey or interval workouts in -30. Even so, I did manage to get sick. Only for a week though and I was healthy just in time for trials in T Bay.

Being sick just prior, I didn't have a whole lot of time to prepare but I was pretty confident none the less. I didn't have to have stellar races to qualify… and I didn't. I had three decent races, unfortunately for me a lot of other guys seemed to pull the race of their life that weekend. So here's how it went…

The first race was a 30km Pursuit. In a pursuit race you change equipment (poles and skis) half way through the race; starting in classic and finishing in skate. These are always fun because we usually only get to do one or two of these a year if we're lucky. It was a mass start and the pace was slow of the start. It was more of a ski 15km and then do a 15km skate race. A big group of skiers came into the exchange at the same time. All of a sudden the race started in the skate portion and I got dropped pretty hard. Not a bad race but far from what it could have been.

Sprint day was similar. I qualified seventh (first U23). I made it through the quarterfinal and had the option of using David's skis for the semi. They were lightening fast but when I came to the big hill half way through the race course I was slipping all over the place. I finished the day in second U23. If I'd won i'd be going to Czech. So close…

                                      My quarterfinal        photo by John Sims

I still had a chance. All I had to do was have a good race in the 15km skate. I had an good race, but it turns out some other guys had great races and I ended up just short. They took five junior skiers to Czech and four U23. If they took 5 of both I'd probably be going. Everyone going is a year or two older than me though so I have a couple more years. My teammate Colin Abbott pulled off some really good races last weekend and made the team so I'm happy for him. 

I'd sort of expected, even planned on being in Czech Republic this coming week but instead I'll be racing some Super Tours in Minnesota. I'm actually really excited because I haven't done many of these and you can often get better points here than racing overseas. 

The weather is dismal and skiing is hard to come by but I have no doubt the races will go on. After a good rest during Christmas I think it just took a weekend of racing to get me back in shape and I'm expecting to see some Yukon Elite squad on the podium in the Tour de Twin cities in Minneapolis.