Holy crap I just found this looking for a pic of full tilt boots.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbsteers/98173414/
Great Race by dbsteers.
It was a damn long way to run in ski boots...
The Victoria Day long weekend used to be a really big deal in Whistler. It marked the end of skiing for the year. Once upon a time the ski season used to go out with a great big bang. There was the Mogul Bash, the party at UBC club cabin, the semi X rated party down at the Christiana, the neighborhood party in White Gold, and of course the Great Race.
The Great Snow, Earth, Water race grew from modest beginnings into a monster. It eventually got so big that nobody was willing to try and stage it. It became a victim of its own success.
It began in 1975 with a fairly simple concept. Hold a race that begins at the top of Whistler and ends in the valley. Thrown in some other sports. Have some fun. The rules evolved as the years passed.
. The first year the race was run down the Creekside. Competitors started at the top on skis, then had to get to the valley any way they chose. Some chose to ski as far as they could and then run, walk, and sometimes crawl down to the valley floor.
Others chose to ride the gondola down, a plan which involved much less effort but which fell apart when a liftie at the bottom forgot to wait for the return carriage and de-railed a car. Competitors stranded on the stopped cable could only watch in frustration as all those who chose to run got to the bottom first.
Nancy Greene had a 4x4 waiting for her at mid-station. There were a few trial bikes. There was one hang-glider but mountain management nixed that plan.
When the skiers/runners/riders got to the bottom they handed offf to a team member on a bike. The bike rider passed off to a canoe team. The canoe team eventually passed off to a runner.
The first year proved the race was a hit and was probably one of the few races that was as fun to watch as it was to compete in. As it grew in popularity it inevitably grew in complexity and the rule book got longer.
The start became a Le Mans start. Those in the skiing leg had to place their ski equipment up around tower 18, back away from it some 100 yards, then, when the starting gun went, run like hell for their gear. Running full tilt in ski boots isn't the easiest thing in the world to do and the older bindings weren't always easy to fasten. The start was often side-splittingly funny.
It was decreed that skiers had to get off the hill under their own power. No more trucks, bikes, or lifts. Not only that, they had to arrive at the bottom with all their ski gear. Canny competitors screwed drawer handles to the shovels of their skis to make them easier to drag. Hours were spent debating whether it would be faster to carry hiking boots and change into them at the snowline, or just go like hell for the bottom in ski boots.
The skiing leg was fairly easy when the snowline was relatively low; it was hell when a warm spring chased the snow up past midstation. Those years the skiers would often arrive at the bottom covered with mud, bleeding from scrapes on knees and hands, absolutely exhausted.
After the town center was poured race organizers decided to run the course down the north side of the mountain. The north side has a much gentler grade than the Creekside which was both good and bad for competitors. The gentler slope angle meant falling ass-over-teakettle was less likely, but it also meant the run was longer. Much, much longer.
By the time the move was made to the north side the course was pretty well set. The skiers skied off the hill and passed off to a bike rider. The bike rider would ride around the West Side road and pass the baton (actually a bottle opener) to the canoe team at Wayside Park. The canoers would paddle up Alta Lake, through the River of Golden Dreams, then up Green Lake. The canoe team would meet a runner who would then run back to the village.
The bike stage was fairly hard to watch so most people the skiers come off the mountain and then headed straight for the River of Golden Dreams. The best action always happened on the river.
The canoe teams were widely distinguished by abilities. Some of the ringer teams had, especially in later years, world class paddlers. Most of the teams had members who could tell the front of a canoe from the back. A few teams didn't even have that.
The River of Golden Dreams is not the Mississippi. Stuff over a hundred canoes into it and the results are predictable. And usually hilarious.
The ringer teams knew their skier had to get down near the front. They knew their biker had to finish in the top ten. That's because if their canoe team, even if it was comprised of Olympic gold medalists, hit the river after even a dozen teams had gotten into it, their efforts were probably all for naught.
The River of Golden Dreams is cold in May. Many, many Great Race competitors found this out the hard way. Between the sweepers, bridges whose overheads would vary with water levels, and other canoes, it often seemed like half the canoes that went into the river went into the river.
Noisy, excited, beer-guzzling spectators lined the length of the river. Almost all carried cameras. Those brave spectators were a boisterous group, they expected a good show, and they always got it. There are hundreds of ways to tip a canoe. Canoers would misjudge a corner and run the bow into the shore. With the bow stuck the stern would swing across the stream. The following canoes would ram it. Most or sometimes all of the teams would end up in the water. Camera shutters clicked madly.
After the last canoe had gone by everyone would jump back on their bikes or into their cars and hurry back to the town center to find out which team would win. The neat thing about the race was that the various legs took so long that it was possible to watch the skiers come off the mountain, then go get some beer and watch the canoes run the river, then head to the finish to cheer on the winners.
As the years passed the race got bigger and more serious. There were more ringer teams. It was beginning to resemble (to a lesser degree) adventure races of the present day like the Ego Challenge. Towards the end a cross country leg had to be added to separate the skiers The year before the cross country leg was added a lot of the skiers who went into the first corner didn't come out of it. It looked like one of those crashes in the Tour de France bike race where one guy goes down, ten crash into him, then ten more crash into each of those ten, and so on and so forth. People and ski equipment splattered all over the hill.
Eventually the race got so big it was taking almost as many marshals as there were competitors to run the thing. Since each team was comprised of five members, and there could be over two hundred teams, it obviously required a lot of volunteers. And a lot of organizing.
It became too much. A couple of years ago no one could be found to run the race. All the likely candidates, the people who knew the race also knew how much work it was, and they all bowed out.
It might be possible to resurrect it. It was a great race. It would probably take four to six months to organize and require an overhead team in place no later than the middle of next January. Any volunteers?
