The winning Kat to Koot team made it to the finish line nearly an hour ahead of the rest of the pack of 27 racers during the Valentine’s Day race. Despite that commanding lead, one half of the winning duo, Erik Stevens, said the snow conditions were among the worst he’s ever skied during the annual alpine adventure race.
Stevens sat down with Chilkat Valley News reporter Rashah McChesney to talk about the race and what made this year stand out.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
McChesney: What does it take to get from one end to the other?
Stevens: So you start out at the fairgrounds, and you’ve got to make your way to the Piedad Trailhead, which involves walking or running down the Haines Highway in ski boots or snowboard boots, which is a challenge. And then you go up Piedad Road to the trailhead, and you start boot-packing up the Piedad Trail, which this time of year is usually very icy and challenging because it’s so steep and it’s low elevation. So yeah, it was definitely a little bit icy this year, but not nearly as bad as some other years.
It goes straight up for, basically, 2,000 feet. Some people wear ice grippers for that part. Once you get up to about 1,000 feet, maybe a little higher than that, there was enough snow that we could take the skis off of our backs and, you know, clip into the skis and start skinning up the mountain from there.
What was the snow like this year?
The whole way up we were thinking, it’s a little crusty, but when we get on to the north side of the mountain, hopefully that crust will go away and it’ll be soft powder snow like it has been in previous years. But that was not the case. We were quite dismayed when we started our descent from the summit, and you know, it looks like good powder snow, and you dropped into it, and you just immediately broke through the crust.
It was very hard to stay upright for the entire descent. That crust was absolutely heinous, one of the worst crusts I’ve ever seen. Being first down the mountain meant that we kind of had to bulldoze that crust the whole way down, and it really slowed us down. It is a lot of fatigue on your legs when you’ve climbed real fast to get up there and then trying to stay on top of that crust and not get sucked underneath. It just took all the strength left out of our legs and it, you know, we were just feeling the burn the whole way down.
What was the weather like?
The weather was gorgeous. It was warm and calm and beautiful. You know, we’re skinning up Piedad, and you break through this little layer of fog, and all of a sudden you’re above the clouds, and the summit is clear ahead of you, and the sun is out, and looking down the fjord. It was just this dark blue, almost purple color underneath. A fog that added this contrast to the sky and everything above that, the mountains were just golden, sunny, beautiful light. It was amazing.
What is the route like?
I really think the Kat to Koot race is a classic. I don’t know if world class is the right term or not but it’s a really beautiful course. You start going up the Piedad Trail and immediately go by these beautiful waterfalls on your right. There’s this steep cliff, and the cliff is covered in green moss, and it just looks like something out of Iceland. So you’re going up that, and then all of a sudden you hit the trees in Piedad where it gets a little bit less steep up there, and you can skin at those higher elevations, and it’s perfectly spaced trees for skiing, and then you break up through tree line, and the views open up in every direction. It feels like you can just see forever. And as you go up, you start to get a view of Lutak and Chilkoot Lake and the Ferebee mountains back behind there. So you just get this incredibly panoramic view of the whole area.
Most years, the snow conditions are pretty good. You start your descent from the summit. And you can, you know, on a good year, you can ride from the summit all the way down to Lutak Road. You get some variation. You know, usually the snow is a little different up top and then better in the middle, and then a little icy down below. It has open Alpine bowls, it has ridges. It has little jumps that you can catch air on during the descent. Then you drop into the trees, and there’s glade skiing. There’s even a couple spots that could be a little steeper if you wanted to go that way, and then you get into the trees, and it turns into like gully skiing, and then steep mossy logs and all sorts of weird terrain features and challenges to get through.
What do you carry with you?
I had mountain goat for breakfast before the race, which I give full credit for my strength that day. When you’re doing a race you don’t really plan on taking breaks. So I treat my body like a machine, and like any machine, it needs fuel. So the fuel that I plan on is usually something dense and sweet. A high calorie in my pockets. My wife, Kayla, made an amazing banana bread the night before with chocolate chips in it. So as I’m skinning up, I can take a bite every now and then, and then eat a little bit of snow for hydration, and then take another bite. And so that’s what I did the whole way up.
Where does the race end?
So you come out of the trees on Lutak Road, and you just kind of hit the hit the road there, and you take a right, and you have another, I don’t know, maybe 1000 feet of pavement to travel to get to the actual finish line, which is a funny thing to do after all that climbing and skiing and then hiking through the woods, and then you’re back on pavement with your skis, either in your arms or on your back again, and you’ve got to run or walk another section of pavement to get to the finish line. It adds a final little push to the end of the race which I think is really fun.
Did you guys stick around at the finish line to greet other people as they were coming in?
Yeah, that’s one of the great things about this race is the group of people and the community aspect. When we came down, we were like, “wow that crust was really bad,” but as we talked to people who were coming down later, they did not have that same experience. They thought the skiing was okay. I think what happens is, after enough people have made tracks through it and busted up that crust, you end up with basically a little area that you can ski down that’s tracked up and the crust is all broken up, and then it’s a lot easier to deal with. So I think the later you came down the mountain, the better the experience was.