Boulder Mountain Tour - Heavy breathing
The Boulder Mountain Tour is a 35k point to point skate ski race that follows the Harriman Trail from Galena Lodge to the Sawtooth NRA. It’s pretty much all downhill right? I spent a winter in the Idaho Montana area in 2017 and learned about this race back then. At the time I was just learning how to skate ski and I wasn’t very good. It was a sort of long term goal that hopefully maybe one day I’d come back and race it. It took me a few winters to really get good at skate skiing and in 2022 I finally raced the Great Ski Race. It was hard but a ton of fun and the energy community was contagious.
The Great Ski Race takes little to no planning since I live so close but with the Boulder Mountain Tour there needed to be a bit more planning. After turning 29 in October and then quitting my job in December. I thought there was no better time than now to finally check this off. I signed up, requested the week off from my new job, and booked a hotel. And with the whole week off of work I decided to make it a ski vacation!
Corbin and I loaded the dogs in the truck and drove to Jackson Hole first. We spent 4 days skiing Jackson Hole. It was wicked cold but super fun. We then headed for Sun Valley to continue the resort tour. We skied Sun Valley for a few more days and I came down bad with a stomach bug. There was a very short moment when I wondered if all this travel and time off would actually lead to the race that started it all but I was determined.
On the Friday before the race I did a 15k skate ski with Eigen on the second half of the course. It was amazing conditions. Fast and cold and I just wanted to do it forever. It was by far the highlight of the trip being out there with Eigen.
On Saturday morning Corbin dropped me off at the buses and I took the ride from Ketchum to the Galena Lodge. I set beside a young man racing his first ski race and his nervous energy was exciting. I stood around a fire at the start before making my way to the enormous start area. I was in wave 6 of 7 so I got to watch 22 minutes of racers go by before it was my turn to go.
The race starts with an uphill which feels really hard when you haven’t really warmed up yet and there are 100s of people around you. It then crosses the road and continues undulating up and down for the next 15k. The uphills felt hard but I was passing lots of people. The downhills were icy and people were passing me like I was standing still. It took me a long time to finally break into my spot in the race were I wasn’t getting passed or passing people anymore. All in all I kept telling myself to embrace the tour aspect of the Boulder Mountain TOUR.
The race had over 800 people in it so being in wave 6 meant the trails were chopped to pieces by the time I got to hit. This made some of the skating a little funky but it was cold enough to still be fast. When you reach the half way point all the hard parts are behind you and the trail turns to flat and fast. This is the section I had done with Eigen the day before and it is by far the best part. I got to open up and skate fast all the way to the finish.
When I crossed the finish line in 2hrs 20 minutes I was so relieved to be done and so ready to never do that again. I averaged a 6 minute mile and even did several sub 6 miles. Yet I still finished mid back of the pack. Skate skiers are super athletes! We loaded up and headed back to Tahoe to shovel snow. The cool thing was that I wasn’t even sore from 6 days of resort skiing and 2 days of skate skiing. I’ll credit that to cross fit and diet changes.
Every time I race I wonder why I keep racing. I don’t particularly enjoy it and it’s hard. But sometimes it’s good to do hard things I guess. When I returned home I decided my next goal is going to be the biathalon. Skate ski racing has been fun but next up is to skate skiing and shooting.