"Uhh, where's the snow, Brad?" On I-81 near Watertown, NY it wasn't looking good, but minutes off the highway and we were looking at 6-12" of firm base in the woods with a dusting on top. Thats the thing about the Tug Hill - its not terribly high, but location is everything. Lake Ontario did its job and there was plenty of snow for this year's SNOWGAINE. The event is a 2-day, 7 hours-per-day winter ROGAINE. Standard ROGAINE rules apply, and any non-motorized form of transportation is legal (skis, snowshoes, boots, O-shoes, dogsleds, etc.) The only difference is that the course is closed at night for safety reasons.
This year 10 teams were competing, and conditions were just about optimal. Brad Whitmore and I had been considering taking snowshoes as well as XC skis, but after having a look at the conditions we decided they wouldn't be necessary. Last year we brought them along, and they were great fun, but not much of an advantage given even less snow that year. This year, skis would be king. The Tug plateau is a rolling plain with some deep canyons cutting through it, fabulous white woods and lots of frozen marshes. Most of the relief is in the NW corner. The map covers an area roughly 6x8 km and is criss-crossed with roads and trails. Most of the roads are left unplowed for skiers and snomobiles, and the daily traffic from the latter keeps the roads groomed nicely for skating and classic skiing. The start/finish and base area was an old CCC camp. Bob Ireland kept the woodstoves burning in a cabin all weekend, making for a cozy place to relax after a day of skiing and running.
The next few paragraphs are about our routes and kooky adventures. Skip to the bottom if you just want the gist.
Day 1: 12, 30, 16, 26, 15, 28, 38, 39, 34, 32, 17, 22,
21, 27, 20, 31, 19, 35, 18, 37, 14
The teams were given 30 minutes to look over the map before the 9:00
AM start. We planned our day-1 loop to the south to take advantage of
the flatter terrain and lots of skiable trails while we were fresh.
There were also more controls near the end of the loop, giving us more
options for lengthening or shortening the day. We managed to ski into
the first control ahead of the pack, but we were outskied by the
Leonards for the rest of the day - they were moving faster than we
were. Stayed close behind them through the next few controls. Watched
a dogsled go by - don't see many of those back home in Maryland. At
control 28 we punched with two other teams (Leonards & Smiths). They
headed along the trail to 39 and we skied south through the woods
towards 38. We saw the other two teams again on the trail coming out
of 39 as we were going in. I think the woods in there were nearly as
fast as the trail. The groomed roads were great! I remember screaming
down a steep hill, in a tuck, with my poles in one hand and a
half-peeled banana in the other...A spill would have been ugly. One
thing that we decided to do differently this year was trying to eat and
drink more often and keep moving. Last year we both ran out of energy
on day 2 because we waited too long to stop for lunch, and when we did
stop we got cold and stiff. This year we ate and drank continuously,
at least at every other control. Some of the other teams may have
noticed a few M&M's in the snow. The bag split and we were usually in
a hurry to down a slug of 'em. That is, until Brad decided to put the
split bag into another bag with the old banana peels. They seemed less
appetizing when you had to stick your hand in a bag of mushed-up banana
goo to get them. Oh, and that business about not melting in your hand?
It's a lie.
Control 32 was interesting as well. The control was on a small island in the middle of a stream. You could see the marker from the stream bank, but had to get onto the island to "punch." Apparently when Bob hung the control a month before there were some nice ice bridges across the stream. They weren't there anymore. I didn't want to put my feet into 35 degree water, so I managed to find a fallen tree covered with snow at about eye level (thats 5 feet on me) over the stream. That got me onto *an* island, but not *the* island. There were two more running jumps from ice-shelf to ice-shelf to get to the control. I'm told the approach from the south side was a little easier. Punched with the Smiths here. We dropped down to the stream early on the way from 17 to 22 to be sure we could find a crossing point somewhere along the way. At control 20 we decided that it was early enough and we were feeling good enough to pick up 31, 19, and 35 before heading in. The south and west facing slopes on this side of the map were bare, so we did some walking. I wanted to sneak up to 23 and skip 18 to cut a large leg off of day 2, but Brad argued that we were already tired and the loss of 18 would cost us some day 2 time as well, so we picked up 18, 37, 14 and got back to base about 30 seconds before the 7 hour time limit. The road from 37 to base was phenomenal - skate city - so we planned to finish on it on day 2. Bob had decided to score things based on cumulative time, so teams that returned 30 minutes before the 7-hour limit on day 1 actually had a 30 minute advantage on teams that used the full 7 hours. After day 1 we had collected one more control (21 total) than the Leonards, but they were in 32 minutes before us. We considered it a tie and knew we had to motor on day 2 to win.
Day 2: 11, 36, 10, 33, 25, 41, 40, 23, 29, 24, 13
The area got 1/2" of new snow overnight, and the skiing was
terrific. Heading out to 11 and then 36 we were somewhat surprised to
see the Dominies keeping up with us, as they were on foot and we were
moving along fairly well on skis (kick-n-glide on singletrack).
Running and skiing were about equal on flat to rolling terrain with the
firm snow. But the legs from 36 to 10 and 10 to 33 were downhill runs
on a firmly packed road. They were lightning fast and took no energy
at all on skis. Mark Dominie pointed out that they had seen us leaving
10 and they were only 1 minute behind us, but in fact we had taken 4
minutes or so for food and water at the control, so I figure we gained
about 5 minutes on the runners in that single 1 km leg. The real
advantage was the rest though. Gravity rules! Unfortunately, Brad's
ski broke on the way into 33 - snapped in two just behind the heel.
Fortunately this was the part of the map with the least snow cover, so
we were gonna be on foot anyway. The next few involved slogging up big
hills. Gravity no longer rules. Saw the Smiths coming out of 23 and
then saw them again at 29. We had heard reports of people not finding
29 on day 1. We found it, on the ground, but in the right location.
The Smiths re-hung it on the tree. The snow was starting to turn good
again as we made the road. We weren't able to move as fast as we had
wanted on our finish leg because Brad had to run on uphills, but his
ski held well enough to glide on the flats and downhills. We were back
at base by 12:45.
We cooked ourselves some hamburgers, relaxed a bit, and after waiting 1.5 hours with no one else coming in we decided to get an early start on the long drive back home. Bob had some nice hand-crafted wooden snowflake awards to give to the winners in each category.
Our total time was 7:00 + 3:45 = 10:45 for the two days. Day 1 distance covered was 38 km and day 2 was 18.5 km. Our average per-km time was 11.4 minutes. We were slightly slower on day 2. Many Thanks to Bob Ireland and CNYO for a great 1999 SNOWGAINE. Last but not least, we'd like to thank Famous Amos for the moral and caloric support he provided. We couldn't have done it without him!
Eddie Bergeron