The results and lots of photos were posted through Facebook and Twitter within few hours after the Dogtooth Dash race party, however, I want to apologize that I slacked with writing up a nice race report for you. Here it is.
Secondly, one more big shout out to all 26 volunteers that came out to help marshal the race course on Saturday!
Thirdly, big Thanks to main sponsors goes to Kicking Horse Mountain Resort for their unwavering support, BUFF Headwear for keeping the Dash going for another year, Live Out There store for superb enthusiasm, and Clif Bar and Hammer Nutrition for fueling the participants and volunteers.
»For reference here’s the original 2014 Dogtooth Dash event page
Friday’s vertical: Thight margins
The new addition to the Dogtooth Dash was an 800 m (2625 feet) vertical race that featured a steep 200 m section sandwiched between rolling and flat terrain.
Marg Fedyna on her winning path.
Gun went off just after 5pm and 24 racers charged from the start line. I was standing at the beginning of the steep section to cheer and brief everyone of what was to come. All racers were grinding and grimacing but everyone appeared to have good times.
In the men’s race, everything was kept very tight all the way up to the finish. At the end, Reiner Thoni managed to get a small gap to secure his vertical national title (in 35:52), but behind him there was an Olympic-like diving finish for second between Nick Elson and Pascal Egli (from Switzerland). After some discussion, even 3 pairs of sharp eyes could not pick one over the other and so we had two second place finishers! Fourth went to a great Canadian trail runner, Adam Campbell, who was trying his luck in skimo this past season. My SkinTrack’s co-author, Eric Carter, finished fifth.
The women’s race started to take shape much earlier as Marg Fedyna used her known climbing abilities well. Mid-way through the steep section she already started to establish a nice gap. Eventually, she took the vertical national title ahead of Lizanne Bussieres and Michelle Roberts who were separated by only 35 sec after a 53 min of climbing! Fourth went to a young Katarina Kuba and fifth to Jean Ann Berkenpas.
Saturday’s individual: Full on ski mountaineering
After taking over the Dogtooth Dash, from the very competent hands of Ian Gale, Eric and I knew the expectations will be high yet we decided to raise the bar for course setting even higher.
The unstoppable train, Reiner Thoni, collected his 5th Canadian individual race title.
With the main 1890 m (6200 feet) course consisting of 6 downhills and 6 climbs – featuring 4 steep descents, 4 boot packs, and about 100 switchbacks – there was no question that technical skills will play as big of a role as conditioning.
With such a course, the single biggest challenge for us organizers was to keep all skin tracks and boot packs well set and marked. At the end we managed to pull it off!
With the traditional downhill start and not very long first climb the men’s race stayed quite close. Gaps started to appear on the second climb (the biggest of the day) when Reiner Thoni began to turn the screws and Nick Elson started to find himself in no-man’s land between Reiner and a group consisting of Eric Carter, Ben Parsons and trailing Travis Brown and Pascal Egli.
Very similar scenario was playing out in the women’s race as well when none of the girls were establishing significant gaps. This started to change on the third (and the most technical) climb where by the top Michelle Roberts was leading Katarina Kuba (only 19 years old) by about 4 min who managed to establish the same gap to Kylee Ohler by this point.
As all the top racers managed to take good care of their skins and fueling the order didn’t change. However, Ben and Eric had a great sprint battle with the later eventually snatching the third – a nice reward for all the organizational work.
On the Enduro course (about 800 m or 2625 f), the race for junior’s national title (under 20) played out with Brinton Wolever (16) taking the gold just in front of Tyler Gillson (19). Brinton’s brother Riley Wolever (16) took bronze a bit further behind the two. All three are new to skimo so we hope they like it and will stick around.
Full results
Below is a PDF with results, however, for an unexplained reason, the times from the vertical race are missing “1h”, thus, affecting all times that were more than 1h.
Photo gallery
All individual race photos by Malcolm Taylor – thank you!
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- Marg Fedyna on her winning path.
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- The unstoppable train, Reiner Thoni, collected his 5th Canadian individual race title.
Once again, thank you everyone for coming!
My name is Stano Faban and as a member of the Canadian National Ski Mountaineering Team I have been fortunate to compete in races like Pierra Menta or World Championships.
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