Mountaineering racing: An uphill, downhill battle

The sight of skiers dashing uphill while trading sharpened elbows usually signals an untapped powder stash ahead. These days another diversion has backcountry ski hounds charging up the peaks: ski-mountaineering racing, a sport that's generating a big buzz among the swelling ranks of backcountry skiers.

Ski-mountaineering races combine the thigh-frying ascents of ski touring with downhill plunges in sometimes made-for-crampons terrain. At least seven races are scheduled around the West this winter, including one at Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia Jan. 7 and a Feb. 25 event at Alpental, near Snoqualmie Pass.

Though competitive ski mountaineering is a New World novelty, the sport is as old as the Great War, when the European soldiers who patrolled Alpine glaciers turned sentry duty into sport. (The Ironman of the genre remains the wicked Patrouilles du Glaciers, or "Glacier Patrol," a 33-mile slog along the famed Haute Route between Zermatt, Switzerland, and Verbier, France, that includes 25,000 feet of ups and downs across crevassed glaciers. Top racers finish in seven hours.)

The first Winter Olympics in 1924 included ski-mountaineering racing, as did three more Games before the race disappeared due to a controversy about professionals competing in Olympic ski racing.

Revived in Europe in the late 1980s, the sport today boasts a thriving World Cup circuit: 22 nations competed at the first World Championships a few winters ago in Serre Chevalier, France. And although the sport didn't make the cut for the 2006 Turin Games, boosters are bullish on its chances for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.

What it's all about

So what the heck does a ski-mountaineering race look like? Imagine a caffeinated hybrid of steeplechase, trail-running and Eco-Challenge. Starting with a jostling LeMans-style start, racers charge uphill to ridgetop waypoints wearing skis equipped with climbing skins, race downhill to the next flag, then zag upward again — often for six miles and a lung-busting 5,000 vertical feet of climbing. The races are sometimes called "randonnee rallies," after the French term for ski-touring.

But is it mountaineering? Some European courses "are pretty damn dangerous. You'd better be able to handle yourself on pretty steep stuff," insists Jim McCarthy, past president of the American Alpine Club who sits on the International Ski Mountaineering Committee, the sport's governing body. Racers must carry avalanche beacons and shovels, and ice axes and crampons can be required. Race courses in North America are usually less dangerous, although last winter at the North American championships in Jackson Hole, Wyo., the course ran straight up the famed Corbet's Couloir, which was equipped at the top with a fixed rope for contestants to cling to.

Travel light

In this sport, light is right. Serious racers obsess over shaving ounces. Former Olympic biathlete Nancy Johnstone, the sole U.S. female to compete at Serre Chevalier, still shakes her head when she recalls standing at the starting line wearing the touring gear she uses at Teton Pass, Wyo. Flanking her were competitors tricked out in the latest ultralight gear: skin-tight suits; stubby, foam-core skis; mousetrap-sized Dynafit bindings; and Scarpa's one-buckle speed boot, the F1 — skiing's equivalent of a track shoe. "It was like jumping into a World Cup slalom with wooden skis on," Johnstone recalled.

The sport will catch on in North America, predict Johnstone and others, but today it's like soccer here 30 years ago. Meanwhile, dominant French, Swiss and Italian teams — chock-full of former top-notch Nordic racers — have coaches, wax technicians, masseuses, sponsors and youth programs to nurture talent. Races bring out cowbell-clanging groupies, and champions like Frenchman Stéphane Brosse are celebrities.

"We're so far behind already, to catch up to the Europeans we need to train as if we were training for an Olympic event," said Brendan O'Neill, a Jackson guide and the U.S.'s only male competitor at the last Worlds. "They're gonna need financial backing," added O'Neill, who finished 24 minutes behind Brosse in a race of under two hours. "This is gonna be a full-time job."

Martin Volken, owner of North Bend-based Pro Guiding Service and the course setter for the Alpental race, said he expects about 70 entrants. "I like the fact that it's not as professional as in Europe; it's a little more rowdy and fun. It's just really neat to see a growing community of ski tourers."

Christopher Solomon is a Seattle-based outdoors writer