There aren’t too many winter ARs in existence. The Frigid Infliction must be one of, if not the single longest continuously operated winter ARs in the country, if not the world.
Even so, it still has the feel of an informal, backyard race, most likely because of the low-key, Vermonty humbleness of the race directors, Chris Yager and Shawn Freeburn, and most of the racers, who hail mostly from northern New England, upstate New York, and Eastern Canada, with a few Bostonians sprinkled in here and there for flavor.
The race has evolved over the years. Even three years ago, our first year doing the Frigid, we were up at 3 a.m. for an alpine start, racing for 12 hours, and the course was linear and all points were mandatory. Then last year, the course was a complete snowshoe ROGAINE, cut down to eight hours in length, and all points were optional. This year, the race was once again eight hours long, but due to a fortuitous snowstorm (that we even more fortuitously avoided during our drive to Vermont), it would include both cross-country skiing and snowshoing/post-holing stages.
The race takes place in and around Bolton Valley, a medium-sized ski area about 30 minutes east of Burlington. The race starts at the base lodge at around 2,000 feet in elevation, and an altimeter is the most important piece of gear you can bring to the race, as every point is spread out on the surrounding hillside, all the way up to ridgeline at 3,400 feet. You’re always heading straight uphill or straight downhill during the race, meaning you’re pretty much always basting in your own sweat or appendage-numbingly cold. As you can tell, It’s one of Strong Machine’s favorite races.
For this year’s race, we’d be racing as Chaos Machine, with a hybrid line-up of myself (Cliff), Eric from Chaos Raid (see the Raid Gallaecia race report for a little background on this guy), and his girlfriend Paige, who was doing her first AR. Both Eric and Paige are excellent runners, and with the mild weather Vermont had been experiencing before the race, we were all half-hoping the RDs would cancel the winter sports sections of the race and just turn it into a foot-O, as they had in 2017, as we thought we could do really well if that happened. In fact, Eric was so sure that we would be racing in mild temperatures that he neglected to pack any kind of appropriate handwear. Throughout the race, Paige and I swung between having enormous pity (and a bit of fear) for his bright red hands, which were featured from hour 2 to hour 8 of the race, and laughing uncontrollably at the sight of those silly red hands.
One small downside to having the race in the same location every year is that local and longtime racers have an enormous advantage due to their familiarity the the topography and the trail system. One quirk of the race is that maps are given out only 30 minutes before the race start, and the CPs are only marked on a USGS, 1:24,000 topographical map, which doesn’t include any of the numerous trails that criss-cross the terrain. The key to being successful at the Frigid is having the skill to quickly identify where the CPs are on the trail map and mark them successfully there, so you don’t even need to look at the topo map while you’re racing. Personally, I find this really frustrating, as in the 30 minutes before a race, I usually have to go to the bathroom twice, take five minutes to tie my shoes perfectly, adjust my backpack, and stuff my mouth full of food. But as lead nav for the team, it was my responsibility to do the map work. Thankfully, Chaos Machine teammate and nav-master extraordinaire Rick Keilty was on-hand, as he was racing with a big team composed of family and friends. He let us crib off his notes, and it gave me no small relief to see that his marks were very close to most of mine.
Before any of us really knew what hit us, we were clipping into our X-C skis and heading out onto the trails, with the race getting underway right at 7 a.m. Immediately, Paige shot out of the gate with a Olympic-quality skate-ski stride. Just as immediately, Eric, on his rental skis, fell behind.
“I think they gave me the wrong poles!” we heard him shout.
We turned around and had the most comical view of Eric trying to push himself along with poles that would have been comfortable for an average-sized 8-year-old. Which Eric is not, in any way.
Without too much time to think about our route choice, we split the course up between north and south, and started going after the lower points on the northern section. We skied past Chafing the Dream, always one of the fastest teams in the Green Mountain ARA races, and a fleeting through crossed my mind - maybe we should just stay on the lower elevations with the better ski trails, at least under we collected the mandatory five CPs. But I dismissed the idea, thinking that would require the team to cover a lot more ground on the foot section. It was a critical, costly mistake.
Instead of staying on nicely groomed ski trails, we pointed our skis uphill. Very quickly, it became too steep to ski. We unclicked out of our ski bindings and began a long slog to ridgeline, picking up three trailside CPs but electing to skip two that were off-trail in steep areas, which we deemed to difficult to get to in our plastic-soled X-C ski boots.
At this point, we came to the realization that we weren’t going to be skiing much, and made compensatory gear moves. Paige handed her skis to me, as I found they worked conveniently as poles. Eric took my poles, which were the right height for him, and Paige took Eric’s. We continued uphill.
There were two bonus CPs on the two high-points above us, worth three points each. We had somehow fallen way behind our time estimates, so we decided to skip the southern one and head for the northern one. We trekked on the icy trail for a long time; it seemed like this CP was a very long way away from anything. Just as we were starting to wonder if we had gone too far down the Catamount Trail, I spotted the orange-and-white checkpoint flag out of the corner of my eye. We had been shortcutting the the trail and almost missed the CP, hanging out in a dark, woodsy bend in the trail.
Finally able to stretch our legs, we began galloping downhill. We hit one CP on trail, and then Paige spotted another flag from way far away, like a true AR veteran. It was the highlight of a really solid first race for Paige - she is going to be one heck of a great racer and Chaos Machine is not letting her get away!
We made our way down to near the TA/Start/Finish/Nordic ski lodge, and before heading in, we hit the nearby ropes section, also worth 3 points. Arriving on scene, we found out that we had to do one of four high-ropes challenges. I went first and chose to lunge between four widely spaced plastic poles, strung between a thin strand of wire. This was no easy feet in X-C ski boots. I got through it and Eric went next on the same section. While I chowed down on Pringles and started plotting our afternoon course, Eric snapped some photos of Paige and shouted some words of encouragement. Paige chose a different route, involving a wire bridge and a loosely hanging guide-rope, and got through it perfectly. We stripped off our harnesses and made a sprint for the warmth of the Nordic center, as we had chilled off considerably at the ropes section.
We made a fairly quick transition of about 15 to 20 minutes. In one of those weird AR rule quirks that some RDs seem to get a huge kick out of, we were required to carry our X-C ski boots with us on the snowshoe leg (but for reasons left unexplained, not our X-C skis or poles). As we ran out of the TA, we joked about how Bear Grylls might find use for his boots in the wilderness. In posh, enthusiastic British accents, we shouted ideas as they came to us - “We can use them to hunt snowshoe hares!” then “They make for useful gloves in a pinch!” and finally “They’re great for when you find a spare pair of cross-country skis in the middle of the wilderness!”
We found two CPs without much trouble, but then had real difficulty locating a point that we thought we should have been right on top of. It was right beside a big river, and we knew we were in the right place, but we couldn’t see the flag. We found a way across the river, which was raging and probably not safe to cross (and which we almost lost Paige in), and made our way to the next CP on our route. On our way, we crossed paths with another team, and we followed their tracks right into the next checkpoint. Squarely reoriented on the map, we then decided to go have another look for the missing CP. Following the same team’s tracks, we found the CP ensconced in a thick copse of trees, perfectly hidden from the vantage point from which we had been looking for it. Oh well.
We ran into more problems at the next CP, which both Rick and I had marked too low. This took about 15 extra minutes to sort out. It was now 1 p.m. and the race cutoff was at 3 p.m. Time was running out on our hopes to make up time. After a quick debate, we abandoned two more bonus CPs, and stayed low but made quick progress back toward the TA, picking up three more CPs, including one randomly easy bonus CP that was in the middle of the course. With 1:20 left to race, we decided to head uphill, and I had my best moment of the race, guiding us efficiently to an off-trail CP using the topo map and altimeter. Only at this point did I feel really comfortable on the maps. It had taken six hours, and we all realized our hopes of doing well in this race were long gone. There was one more CP a little higher that we could have gone for, but the temperature had never really warmed up during the day, and we were all pretty cold. So we bailed, hitting one last CP on the way down the mountain, and then getting into the finish with a luxurious 25 minutes to spare (last year, in a mad rush, Chris Sussman and I had finished four minutes late).
We had a nice hug after finishing, and Paige and Eric went back to their room to shower while I took an exquisitely restorative hot tub at our own hotel. Kate was there with Wilder, and she told me about her fun couple of hours racing the Test Your Nettle beginner race. My son is now officially an adventure racer! (Granted, he did the Two Rivers in Kate’s belly when he was negative-six months old).
At the awards ceremony, it was confirmed thatChafing the Dream took the win and came the closest out of all teams to clearing the course (they missed three CPs total; I think we missed something like 9 or 10). I believe we finished third out of five co-ed premier teams. Chafing the Dream had split the course up into two concentric circles, skiing the smaller one, which mostly consisted of nice trails, and hiking the bigger one, which involved a lot of distance but less vertical than I had foreseen - clearly the smartest route available for the course). They are really great racers and I hope they go to Nationals again and show everybody just how strong the New England racing scene is!
The biggest surprise of the night was Kate and Wilder winning a prize for their race. RD Chris Yager’s wife makes a batch of cookies and awards them to the team name she likes the most, and Kate won for “Chaos Baby Machine.” Being generous people, we shared them over post-race conversations, not-so-subtly trying to entice anyone who would talk to us to do the Maine Summer Adventure Race.
Thanks to GMARA for another tough, fun, exciting race in an always-beautiful setting. If you’re reading this, we demand that the Bitter Pill happen again this year! And if anyone else is reading this, Chris and Shawn are asking for help in putting on their summer race. If you can spare some time and have the will, I’m sure they can use your help in keeping another long-running New England adventure racing tradition alive - get in touch with them through their website!
Even so, it still has the feel of an informal, backyard race, most likely because of the low-key, Vermonty humbleness of the race directors, Chris Yager and Shawn Freeburn, and most of the racers, who hail mostly from northern New England, upstate New York, and Eastern Canada, with a few Bostonians sprinkled in here and there for flavor.
The race has evolved over the years. Even three years ago, our first year doing the Frigid, we were up at 3 a.m. for an alpine start, racing for 12 hours, and the course was linear and all points were mandatory. Then last year, the course was a complete snowshoe ROGAINE, cut down to eight hours in length, and all points were optional. This year, the race was once again eight hours long, but due to a fortuitous snowstorm (that we even more fortuitously avoided during our drive to Vermont), it would include both cross-country skiing and snowshoing/post-holing stages.
The race takes place in and around Bolton Valley, a medium-sized ski area about 30 minutes east of Burlington. The race starts at the base lodge at around 2,000 feet in elevation, and an altimeter is the most important piece of gear you can bring to the race, as every point is spread out on the surrounding hillside, all the way up to ridgeline at 3,400 feet. You’re always heading straight uphill or straight downhill during the race, meaning you’re pretty much always basting in your own sweat or appendage-numbingly cold. As you can tell, It’s one of Strong Machine’s favorite races.
For this year’s race, we’d be racing as Chaos Machine, with a hybrid line-up of myself (Cliff), Eric from Chaos Raid (see the Raid Gallaecia race report for a little background on this guy), and his girlfriend Paige, who was doing her first AR. Both Eric and Paige are excellent runners, and with the mild weather Vermont had been experiencing before the race, we were all half-hoping the RDs would cancel the winter sports sections of the race and just turn it into a foot-O, as they had in 2017, as we thought we could do really well if that happened. In fact, Eric was so sure that we would be racing in mild temperatures that he neglected to pack any kind of appropriate handwear. Throughout the race, Paige and I swung between having enormous pity (and a bit of fear) for his bright red hands, which were featured from hour 2 to hour 8 of the race, and laughing uncontrollably at the sight of those silly red hands.
One small downside to having the race in the same location every year is that local and longtime racers have an enormous advantage due to their familiarity the the topography and the trail system. One quirk of the race is that maps are given out only 30 minutes before the race start, and the CPs are only marked on a USGS, 1:24,000 topographical map, which doesn’t include any of the numerous trails that criss-cross the terrain. The key to being successful at the Frigid is having the skill to quickly identify where the CPs are on the trail map and mark them successfully there, so you don’t even need to look at the topo map while you’re racing. Personally, I find this really frustrating, as in the 30 minutes before a race, I usually have to go to the bathroom twice, take five minutes to tie my shoes perfectly, adjust my backpack, and stuff my mouth full of food. But as lead nav for the team, it was my responsibility to do the map work. Thankfully, Chaos Machine teammate and nav-master extraordinaire Rick Keilty was on-hand, as he was racing with a big team composed of family and friends. He let us crib off his notes, and it gave me no small relief to see that his marks were very close to most of mine.
Before any of us really knew what hit us, we were clipping into our X-C skis and heading out onto the trails, with the race getting underway right at 7 a.m. Immediately, Paige shot out of the gate with a Olympic-quality skate-ski stride. Just as immediately, Eric, on his rental skis, fell behind.
“I think they gave me the wrong poles!” we heard him shout.
We turned around and had the most comical view of Eric trying to push himself along with poles that would have been comfortable for an average-sized 8-year-old. Which Eric is not, in any way.
Without too much time to think about our route choice, we split the course up between north and south, and started going after the lower points on the northern section. We skied past Chafing the Dream, always one of the fastest teams in the Green Mountain ARA races, and a fleeting through crossed my mind - maybe we should just stay on the lower elevations with the better ski trails, at least under we collected the mandatory five CPs. But I dismissed the idea, thinking that would require the team to cover a lot more ground on the foot section. It was a critical, costly mistake.
Instead of staying on nicely groomed ski trails, we pointed our skis uphill. Very quickly, it became too steep to ski. We unclicked out of our ski bindings and began a long slog to ridgeline, picking up three trailside CPs but electing to skip two that were off-trail in steep areas, which we deemed to difficult to get to in our plastic-soled X-C ski boots.
At this point, we came to the realization that we weren’t going to be skiing much, and made compensatory gear moves. Paige handed her skis to me, as I found they worked conveniently as poles. Eric took my poles, which were the right height for him, and Paige took Eric’s. We continued uphill.
There were two bonus CPs on the two high-points above us, worth three points each. We had somehow fallen way behind our time estimates, so we decided to skip the southern one and head for the northern one. We trekked on the icy trail for a long time; it seemed like this CP was a very long way away from anything. Just as we were starting to wonder if we had gone too far down the Catamount Trail, I spotted the orange-and-white checkpoint flag out of the corner of my eye. We had been shortcutting the the trail and almost missed the CP, hanging out in a dark, woodsy bend in the trail.
Finally able to stretch our legs, we began galloping downhill. We hit one CP on trail, and then Paige spotted another flag from way far away, like a true AR veteran. It was the highlight of a really solid first race for Paige - she is going to be one heck of a great racer and Chaos Machine is not letting her get away!
We made our way down to near the TA/Start/Finish/Nordic ski lodge, and before heading in, we hit the nearby ropes section, also worth 3 points. Arriving on scene, we found out that we had to do one of four high-ropes challenges. I went first and chose to lunge between four widely spaced plastic poles, strung between a thin strand of wire. This was no easy feet in X-C ski boots. I got through it and Eric went next on the same section. While I chowed down on Pringles and started plotting our afternoon course, Eric snapped some photos of Paige and shouted some words of encouragement. Paige chose a different route, involving a wire bridge and a loosely hanging guide-rope, and got through it perfectly. We stripped off our harnesses and made a sprint for the warmth of the Nordic center, as we had chilled off considerably at the ropes section.
We made a fairly quick transition of about 15 to 20 minutes. In one of those weird AR rule quirks that some RDs seem to get a huge kick out of, we were required to carry our X-C ski boots with us on the snowshoe leg (but for reasons left unexplained, not our X-C skis or poles). As we ran out of the TA, we joked about how Bear Grylls might find use for his boots in the wilderness. In posh, enthusiastic British accents, we shouted ideas as they came to us - “We can use them to hunt snowshoe hares!” then “They make for useful gloves in a pinch!” and finally “They’re great for when you find a spare pair of cross-country skis in the middle of the wilderness!”
We found two CPs without much trouble, but then had real difficulty locating a point that we thought we should have been right on top of. It was right beside a big river, and we knew we were in the right place, but we couldn’t see the flag. We found a way across the river, which was raging and probably not safe to cross (and which we almost lost Paige in), and made our way to the next CP on our route. On our way, we crossed paths with another team, and we followed their tracks right into the next checkpoint. Squarely reoriented on the map, we then decided to go have another look for the missing CP. Following the same team’s tracks, we found the CP ensconced in a thick copse of trees, perfectly hidden from the vantage point from which we had been looking for it. Oh well.
We ran into more problems at the next CP, which both Rick and I had marked too low. This took about 15 extra minutes to sort out. It was now 1 p.m. and the race cutoff was at 3 p.m. Time was running out on our hopes to make up time. After a quick debate, we abandoned two more bonus CPs, and stayed low but made quick progress back toward the TA, picking up three more CPs, including one randomly easy bonus CP that was in the middle of the course. With 1:20 left to race, we decided to head uphill, and I had my best moment of the race, guiding us efficiently to an off-trail CP using the topo map and altimeter. Only at this point did I feel really comfortable on the maps. It had taken six hours, and we all realized our hopes of doing well in this race were long gone. There was one more CP a little higher that we could have gone for, but the temperature had never really warmed up during the day, and we were all pretty cold. So we bailed, hitting one last CP on the way down the mountain, and then getting into the finish with a luxurious 25 minutes to spare (last year, in a mad rush, Chris Sussman and I had finished four minutes late).
We had a nice hug after finishing, and Paige and Eric went back to their room to shower while I took an exquisitely restorative hot tub at our own hotel. Kate was there with Wilder, and she told me about her fun couple of hours racing the Test Your Nettle beginner race. My son is now officially an adventure racer! (Granted, he did the Two Rivers in Kate’s belly when he was negative-six months old).
At the awards ceremony, it was confirmed thatChafing the Dream took the win and came the closest out of all teams to clearing the course (they missed three CPs total; I think we missed something like 9 or 10). I believe we finished third out of five co-ed premier teams. Chafing the Dream had split the course up into two concentric circles, skiing the smaller one, which mostly consisted of nice trails, and hiking the bigger one, which involved a lot of distance but less vertical than I had foreseen - clearly the smartest route available for the course). They are really great racers and I hope they go to Nationals again and show everybody just how strong the New England racing scene is!
The biggest surprise of the night was Kate and Wilder winning a prize for their race. RD Chris Yager’s wife makes a batch of cookies and awards them to the team name she likes the most, and Kate won for “Chaos Baby Machine.” Being generous people, we shared them over post-race conversations, not-so-subtly trying to entice anyone who would talk to us to do the Maine Summer Adventure Race.
Thanks to GMARA for another tough, fun, exciting race in an always-beautiful setting. If you’re reading this, we demand that the Bitter Pill happen again this year! And if anyone else is reading this, Chris and Shawn are asking for help in putting on their summer race. If you can spare some time and have the will, I’m sure they can use your help in keeping another long-running New England adventure racing tradition alive - get in touch with them through their website!
