The American Alpine Institute Car Free Ski-to-Sea team was successful. And we all had an awesome, albeit wet, weekend.
If you’re not in the loop, the Ski-to-Sea is a seven leg relay race that starts at the Mt. Baker Ski area. The first leg is cross country skiing, followed by downhill skiing, followed by running, followed by biking, followed by canoeing, followed by mountain biking, and finishing off with kayaking. Check out the entire course, here.
Most teams elect to do the race with lots of car shuttling. We decided to forego that and did the entire race using human power, with no cars. Everything was staged with bikes, even canoe and kayak.
Here’s who did what:
Jeremy’s Camp
James and I rode our bikes up to the ski area on Saturday and spent the night. Jeremy rode up to milepost 47 and camped. Dan tried to but had bike issues, so slept in Maple Falls. The following morning Dan rode to meet Jeremy at Silver Fir Campground, then ran up and met me as I finished my leg.
The rest of the team made their way to their respective legs early in the morning.
Hillary and Chris about to start pulling the kayak.
The first leg of the race was cross country skiing. James had this leg and can be seen somewhere in this video…
The finish line of the ski leg and the start of the running leg.
Dan had run up the from Mile 47 to the start of the running race and then ran right back down.
Dan making his way down the mountain.
Dan handed off the chip to Jeremy, who made a very wet and chilly 42-mile ride to the start of the canoe leg.
Jeremy topping out on one of the numerous climbs.
Tom and Cliff took the chip from Jeremy and started paddling.
Jeremy pulling the canoeists’ bikes and cart… getting warm again!
After the canoe section, Tom and Cliff handed the chip off to Dylan who did a mountain bike ride from Hovander Park to Zuanich Park and the start of the kayak leg.
Hillary coming into the finish line.
Hillary, legs numb from sitting in the boat, jumped out and ran up the beach in Fairhaven where she rang the bell and finished the race. Unfortunately, none of us were there to cheer her on. We were still scattered all over Whatcom county.
Hillary rings the bell to finish the race.
Though the race was finished, we all had to get our stuff back where it belonged using bikes. James and I both suffered two flat tires each. And the boats were heavier for everybody after the races were done. But that didn’t matter…we all had a blast.
We will definitely be doing a human powered Ski-to-Sea adventure again in the future!
–Jason D. Martin