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Posted by Grant on 10. April 2010 07:40
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I'm waiting for photos to upload, so here's a quick rundown from today
Now, back to today and Stage 2. I was shadowing Chris Roberts, taking a couple pics as we started the big climb of the day, when the Chips and Curry duo and Wijnand Jager all arrived at Checkpoint 7 at the same time. It was part way up the mountain, and there wasn't an obvious route to follow from this point. Several minutes passed while the teams debated where to go, which approach was fastest etc . . . they had a very big alpine traverse in store, the leg from Checkpoint 7 to 8 was around 4 km, and it would be exposed high mountain travel with snow in every direction. There was, however, less snow lower down the mountain, and I suspect this is what drove these racers to tackle this trek using a lower elevation approach. There were even some sparse trees, here and there, so this lower route looked less severe than the uphill route over a huge field of white snow.
Did I mention we all left our snowshoes behind today? This would prove a poor decision for this lower route, as it turned out hours were spent postholing and scrambling over wet snow and exposed rocky ledges. I wouldn't call it a "dangerous" approach, just a very demanding route both physically and mentally. The higher route would have been faster, it turns out, and most every other team avoided the trap of the lower elevations on this trek.
Full credit to Wijnand Jager, Curry and Chips, and Chris Roberts for sticking it out and making the best of it. We were 5 people spread over the mountain side, each one watching the others to see if a winning trail had been found. Nobody won. I finally abandoned this lower route, and tacked straight up the 300 meters of elevation gain to reach the really high alpine area where the snow was more frozen and packed hard by some ski grooming from weeks ago. From below you couldn't tell it was a good trail, it looked solid white and just like the surrounding area, but in reality this was a winter road of sorts that was runnable and so much faster than the snowfields we had found.
Eventually everyone reached the high packed "road" and carried on, but I gained 90 minutes on the group I had been shadowing while they made up the lost time completing their postholing extravanza. I was fortunate to get out early! It's hard to do justice to the challenge, as they crossed rotted out bridges over gorges, scree slopes, and other "interesting" terrain during the couple hours on the sides of Piz Minschun (mountain peaks are called "Piz" here so this would be "Minschun Peak"). I think Piz Minschun will be the subject of many fine tales for years to come, and I can't wait to see some of the photos the other guys took. For my part, my photos are mostly on Flickr already and here is one in particular showing the scale of the day. I don't really have any of the hairiest sections because you never stop and take photos when you're waist-deep in snow and struggling for every inch of ground! I do have some video, too, but that will have to wait a few days.
We'll have a more complete race report tomorrow, but that's my tale from today. Elsewhere, many other racers had fabulous days clearing the course and taking in the spectacular scenery. Results etc are available at the main race HQ site. Staffan won again, and has a good lead but the race for 2nd is going to really be tight. Anything can happen tomorrow, so it will be fun to see how it plays out.
I wonder who I should choose to shadow tomorrow?