Mountain Challenge
Some people have found their way through the sidebar links to Dave Walter's Mountain Challenge.
Dave has taken a hiatus from organizing the challenge, and has kindly offered it up for suggestions. Normally the challenge is designed to be a good ridge run connecting a number of peaks. It is meant to be accessible for good scramblers. The 2002 challenge ran the ridge north of the Red Rock higway (Newman, Glendowan, Dungarvan, Galwey, and Bellevue). The 2001 challenge ran the Blakiston to Lineham horseshoe. The (friendly) competition is based solely on time to complete all peaks. Winners will get to choose next year's cirque.
So for the 2005 challenge, we need some good suggestion before we can get things started. The only condition is that it should involve local peaks, whether inside or outside the park.
posted by chris g @ 5/19/2005 03:04:00 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
The Anderson loop is a nice scramble that isn't too long. Also, the Sofa - Vimy traverse isn't too bad. Going from the head of the lakes over to Kintla lakes and then up the Nunatuk and back to Wall and then Cameron isn't too bad either. It is mainly on trail.
Posted by chris goble
I was talking to David about this three weeks ago. I asked him if I could take over the organization, and possibly the hosting of its Internet presence. I took it to the RMB Peakbaggers and OldGoats (which are the two groups I belong too). It was received with a lot of interest, but nobody seems to be interested in having it in Waterton. The Oldgoats are particularily interested. Most of those guys do this kind of stuff for fun. For instance, one group last year did some crazy traverse around the Six Pass route going from Sunwapta to Jasper as a day trip. It was around 100km with 20,000 ft of height gain in 36 hours. Not bad.
Last year, the OldGoats had the "Death Race", which was a bunch of passes linked together with one peak. I think it was around 50km and 15,000 ft of height gain. I think there were eight teams that participated.
I'm hoping to put something together for this summer. There are a number of different ideas. While some like the idea of a long course that should take 18-24 hours to complete and your team could do the course at anytime, there is also a thought of having a 12-18 hour race where everybody starts at the same time, first one back wins.
Helly Hansen is trying to get involved with mountain adventure racing, and given my connections with Helly, I could probably get them to sponsor the event with HH prizes. Of course, when it becomes a more formal event, you run into liability problems.
Posted by Dave Stephens
Always doing lots of work Dave. Those ideas sound good. It is a tough call whether to make it a full day endurance event that may not be feasible for many, or a shorter speed race. 100km seems a bit long, although it certainly would attract people from far away. Shorter (30km), open date ones will attract more people.
Personally short courses like the Blackiston horseshoe don't have too much appeal to me I prefer longer ridge runs. Something around 50km, for me, is a nice medium.
For a long run, hiking from the border up Cleveland, across country and over and up Blackiston would be interesting.
As to the location, I can't see the Waterton area ever being much of a draw for most of the peak baggers. I guess it depends if one wants a Waterton area event, or more of a province wide event. Of course, the two aren't mutually exculsive. Both could go. The more formal the event, the more liability is a concern, just like you mentiion. I guess it would be nice to hear back from interested people to find out what others would prefer. (Lurkers, time to come clean!)
Posted by chris goble
Howdy from Hann AB (Home of Nickelback)
I have always thought the thunder mountain ridge traverse to be a cool idea, I dont know much about it except we could watch the entire race from Axes little house on the praire. Then once were done the race we can all do a little sport climbing up in the valley, were the Medicine hat club has put up some routes.
chris morris
Posted by Chris morris
Is that the long front range ridge that goes from Blairmore to the gap?
Posted by chris goble
yep..
Posted by chris morris
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