Lorenzo Semple:
"Last weekend the Aspen Skiing Co. successfully held the second Power of Four ski mountaineering race. My partner, Roger Marolt, and I completed it in just less than nine hours. It was nothing short of brutal. If you’re at all interested in doing the race next year, which I would highly recommend, go buy the super light gear now and get used to it. Without it you’re dead. Oh yeah, and bring your wallet.
The race itself is actually more like the power of three. There are basically three different geological features: Snowmass/Burnt Mountain/Buttermilk, Aspen Highlands and Ajax. We budgeted three hours for each leg and finished roughly just under that.
The pack started extremely fast for a 22-mile race with 10,000 feet of climbing. Within one minute of the start, there were a total of five people behind me. In retrospect, if I had started any faster I probably wouldn’t have finished. I was struggling just to keep up with my partner all day.
The fun parts of the course are the leg from the top of Burnt Mountain to the top of West Buttermilk, and the mysterious Congo trail. By the time we got there, approximately 100 people on lightweight mountaineering skis had passed over the terrain and it was absolutely butchered. There were huge deformed moguls and skinny trench ruts leading to narrow high-speed double tracks into thick wooded sections. When you entered the timber, there were pine needles all over the ground telling a harrowing tale of racers passing dangerously close...." (Read more? Click title)
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