Every Trail Craftsbury
Several Mondays ago (on March 8th), Akeo and I checked off a big item on our bucket list: we skied every Outdoor Center groomed ski trail in the Craftsbury - Greensboro area in a day. I first dreamed of this after the Center’s Every Road Craftsbury running challenge in 2019. When Jeff Tucker biked that challenge in a day, it made us wonder what we could do on skis. Still, even with this dream in our minds, the huge energy demand and trail condition constraints necessary for the challenge made it difficult to complete during a typical ski racing season. However, this March, a less frequent COVID racing schedule and cooperative snow conditions gave us an opportunity to give the Every Craftsbury Ski Trail challenge our best shot.
Planning
At first, I studied trail maps and tried to define an exact route by listing intersections in the order we could ski them. However, when I surpassed 130 junctions with half of the trails remaining, I realized this wasn't going to work - I had no interest in memorizing this many intersection decisions or incessantly checking a map. Instead, Akeo and I briefly strategized general guidelines that would lead us to ski every trail segment with minimal overlap. We broke our day into 5 big loops and agreed to ski connecting out-an-backs at our earliest opportunity. It wasn't a perfect strategy, but I don't think it was far off either. We anticipated that the trails closest to the Center would require the most route attention, so we planned to take care of these early on in the day. Then, a couple big loops around Sam's, Ruthie's, HP, and the lakes would cover all the remaining trails north of the Common. For the village and Greensboro trails, skiing to Highland and traversing the Great Circle is a good start, but covering every trail requires additional, pesky out-an-backs.
*Driving to Highland Lodge and skiing back to the Outdoor Center would have cut off significant distance and elevation gain, but Akeo and I wanted to start and end from the same place.
Happy with our route plan, we turned to our fueling strategy. The number of calories our bodies can absorb while exercising is limited (often cited in the 120 - 240kcal per hour range), so it was important to start fueling early on. I packed up an assortment of bars, shot bloks, gels, and a six pack of Oreos. We planned to ski by the Center roughly half way through to refill on water and bars, eat something more substantive (a big bowl of overnight oats for me), change clothes and socks, and (crucially) switch to a fresh pair of skis. Once we were done strategizing, I began feeling tremendously excited. I was stoked to ski, and empty myself, without any motivation from a specific result or training benefit.
*By the challenge's conclusion, I ended up consuming 5 Clif bars, 6 regular Oreos, 3 Clif shot bloks, a big tupperware of overnight oats, and 2.5L of water. My watch calculated that I burned 7,000 kcal.
The Day
Photo by Caitlin Patterson
Monday morning after an indulgent mug of coffee and ambitious bowl of oats and nut butter, we started skiing a little after 7:30am. The snow was cold but transformed enough to be quite slippery, and Akeo and I agreed not to restrict ourselves to "L1" recovery pace. We exuberantly flew through the Center trails in a state of type I fun. Nick Brown's race prepared (and fluoro free) skis also helped the K's go by more quickly than normal.
Living in Craftsbury, I had already skied nearly every trail prior to the challenge, but skiing both Hosmer's in their entirety all at once was new. Despite good conditions on the lakes, I found the sustained skiing surprisingly fatiguing. After circling Great Hosmer, I felt beat skiing up to the new West Side loop and worried that our initial pace had been too hot. Fortunately, a few minutes of undulating terrain recharged our legs, and when we emerged into the beautiful, sunny West Side field and saw that we had already skied 50k, our spirits were renewed.
Another memorable part of our morning was Keith Woodward's fist pump cheers from his PistenBully cab whenever we crossed paths. Four hours in, we stopped for a lunch pitstop after skiing all of the Craftsbury Campus map less the Common and Village Trails. And since it warmed up 25 degrees since we started, our fresh change of clothes felt amazing.
After the brief pause, we started toward Highland and the inevitable type II fun portion of the challenge. Despite my familiarity with the Greensboro system, I was not mentally prepared for the unforgiving out-an-back uphills branching out from the Great Circle. My watch said we climbed 11,000 feet of elevation in the challenge, and I suspect the Highland trail system accounts for a big part of this. Six and a half hours in, climbing up Gray's Drive strewn with conifer needles, my suffering reached a high point. Thankfully, Akeo encouraged me to eat more, despite having just stopped for a bar, and I pulled out my secret weapon: a sampler six pack of Oreos. Miraculously within an hour, those Oreos revitalized me to a state of mind where I could enjoy the great skiing.
After reading Endure (by Alex Hutchinson) several summers ago, I think about instantaneous effort compared to my expectation of remaining effort. For both Akeo and I, around 7.5 hours in, skiing became noticeably easier. I can think of physiological and physical explanations for the decreased effort: the digestion of our larger food intake at lunch may have finally relinquished its hold on our blood supply and the setting sun and corresponding glazing snow gave our skis a welcome boost. However, I also wonder how much the realization that we were nearing the finish freed our subconscious internal governor to empty our last energy stores. In any case, crossing King Farm road on the way back, I asked Akeo if he was game to pick up the pace back to the Center, and with his nod of approval, we contentedly pushed to our finish line in fewer than 19 minutes.
Just before 5:30pm, Akeo and I happily skied back through the upper field to finish our quest. It took us 9 hours skiing and 10 hours on the clock. Our GPS watches gave different measurements: mine just over 100 miles and Akeo's just under 90. I know which one I want to believe, but either way, we believe we accomplished our goal to ski every trail.
After
Going into this challenge, I was curious how I would recover after the effort. Monday night directly after, I felt horrible, a sensation akin to flu-like symptoms. (Rest assured these weren't caused by Covid-19.) I took the next three days off or very easy, and felt noticeably better each day. By Friday, I felt decent, and by Monday, I felt normal (maybe better since I was fully rested).
Having completed the challenge, I feel incredibly fortunate to have the fitness, time, and willing partners to take this on. Furthermore, it gave me renewed appreciation for the amazing cross-country ski trail system around Craftsbury. It's amazing that over 100k of trails were (and routinely are) recently groomed, and I will cherish each of the many beautiful views in the adventure like looking out over Caspian while descending Gray's Drive or viewing the emerging sunset as we came around the east end of the Great Circle.
Happy Skiing,
Adam Martin
