Vermont Sports Magazine 2021 January/February issue

SNOWBOARD STAR JAKE BLAUVELT AT HOME | WINTER WARMING GEAR | THE 2021 CALENDAR

VERMONT

SPORTS

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25

HOME-GROWN

Adventures YOUR WINTER BUCKET LIST

10

ATHLETES

OF THE YEAR

THE VERMONTERS WHO OUTPERFORMED IN 2020

3 WAYS TO STICK TO A DIET HOW TO GET FITTER AND FASTER

FREE JAN/FEB. 2021

SOUTHWESTERN VERMONT MEDICAL CENTER

RESTORING

ACTIVE +

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VERMONT

SPORTS

NEW ENGLAND’S OUTDOOR MAGAZINE ON THE COVER: Mt. Mansfield, by headlamp.

Photo by Nathanel Asaro

PUBLISHER

Angelo Lynn - publisher@vtsports.com

EDITOR/CO-PUBLISHER

Lisa Lynn - editor@vtsports.com

DESIGN & PRODUCTION Shawn Braley

MEDICAL ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. Nathan Endres, Dr. David Lisle, Dr. James Slauterbeck —University of Vermont Robert Larner College of Medicine; Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation; Jamie Sheahan, M.S., R.D.

CONTRIBUTORS

Brian Mohr, Phyl Newbeck, Leath Tonino

ADVERTISING

Lisa Lynn | (802) 388-4944 ads@vtsports.com

ADVERTISING SALES

Peak bagger Sue Johnston got up early on December 23 and captured the sun casting its first light on Mt. Pisgah, from Mt. Hor. Photo by Susana Johnston

Greg Meulemans | (802) 366-0689 greg@vtsports.com Wilkie Bushby | (646) 831-5647 wilkie@vtskiandride.com Dave Honeywell | (802) 583-4653 dave_golfhouse@madriver.com

5 The Start

16 Nutrition

11 Gear

That which does not kill us...

The secret to a successful diet isn't just about food and exercise.

Here's what can help.

Want to get out this winter?

These Vermont products have you covered.

10 Feature

30 Calendar

The Light Ahead

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6 Great Outdoors

25 Goals for Winter

This winter learn to ice climb, build an igloo, winter camp, try ice fishing, do a snowshoe race.. and more. Here are 25 things to do, see and explore around Vermont.

14

Reader Athlete Jake Blauvelt Returns to His Roots One of the world's most acclaimed snowboarders spends most of his time in Vermont.

How to Get Fitter, Faster

10 Athletes of the Year

Meet the 10 athletes who helped put Vermont on the map this year and read about: Lea Davison's Year in Limbo, Training with Jessie Diggins, Ryan CochranSiegle's Wild Ride, Ted King's Excellent Adventure, Elle Purrier's Record Shattering Year, How Paula Moltzan Got her Groove Back and more.

Winter Essentials

Race & Event Guide

34 Endgame

Love at First Shovel

Ferrisburgh native Leath Tonino has had jobs shoveling snow in Antarctica and from roofs in Colorado. Here's why he still digs it.

ADVERTISERS! The deadline for the March/April issue of Vermont Sports is February 18. Contact ads@vtsports.com today to reserve your space.

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 3

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THE START

THE LIGHT AHEAD

RIDE ALL YEAR.

A staff outing, above the clouds on Mt. Mansfield. Photo by Jay Pilcer

I

t was late December and a low cloud hung over the Champlain Valley. It seemed to suck the energy out of me, as well as out of what little snow there was left on the ground— a fitting close to 2020.

I headed up to ski that day, expecting little visibility. But halfway up the mountain, the clouds thickened, then we were above them. It was an awe-inspiring sight – not unlike the remarkable view from Camel’s Hump that photographer Stephanie Graudons captured in her photo on page 6. An ocean of clouds rippled below. We were above the clouds, sun warming my skin for the first time in a while. In the distance, the peaks of the highest Greens rose through them.

This winter could have been a homebound, cloud-covered quarantined bore.

But if you change your perspective, it doesn't have to be: those of us stuck in here in Vermont are among the luckiest.

What’s encouraging is that despite Covid-19, there are still hundreds of ways you can get out– be it backcountry skiing in Braintree Forest, snowshoeing the Slate Valley Trails or fatbiking at Kingdom Trails.

There are new things to learn (on my list: be a better birder, build an igloo, take an avalanche workshop). New sports to try (ice climbing, anyone?). And events are coming back in new, Covid-safe formats.

In this issue, we have your winter game plan: 25 things to check off your bucket list starts on p. 6.

You can also learn a lot about how to

create new goals and challenges from interviews with the "10 Athletes of the Year, profiled on page.

Never have we had such a historymaking group of athletes profiled under one banner: Elle Purrier—the American mile record-holder, Jessie Diggins Tour de Ski winner, Tara Geraghty-Moats, winner of the first women’ Nordic Combined World Cup competition.

Brave Enough co-author Todd Smith followed the Tour de Ski winner and Olympic Gold Medalist as Jessie Diggins ran 7 minutes forward and then 3 back, all the way up Stratton Mountain. Lea Davison competed on Zwift. Ryan Cochran-Siegle found his flow, turning in the performance of his lifetime by winning a World Cup Super-G. Ted King became the Pied Piper of DIY challenges.

Joy, inspiration, challenge, fun are where you find them. For Leath Tonino (see Endgame, p. 34) there’s even pleasure in shoveling snow.

Maybe it’s because of those low clouds that Vermonters climb a little higher, work a little harder and rejoice in the little things like a day at the top of the mountain with midwinter sunshine. Maybe winters’ dark days, ice and snow are what makes us stronger and more resilient.

Maybe that’s what brought athletes like Jessie Diggins and Ted King to Vermont.

I’d like to think so.

In any case, there’s light ahead.

—Lisa Lynn, Editor

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25

GOALS for

WINTER L

ook at this winter two ways: On the one side, you’re stuck in Vermont. On the other side, you’re stuck in Vermont – and there are a ton of things you can do. This winter, plenty of events are still going on from candle-lit snowshoe romps to avalanche workshops to ice climbing to an igloo building class. Think of this quarantine time as a chance to try something new. How many of these things can you check off your bucket list?

For links to these adventures, visit vtsports.com/25-ways-to-win-winter/

6 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

On the summit of Camel's Hump in early January, 2021 photo by Stephanie Graudons

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 7

This winter take an ice climbing course in Smuggler's Notch or any of several ice destinations around the state.

1. BAG THE BIG 10 IN WINTER For a few weeks in early winter, hikers who headed for the summits were treated to this awe-inspiring site: a sea of clouds punctured by an archipelago of Vermont’s highest peaks. Summiting in winter has serious risks – you should be prepared with crampons, file your hiking plan with a friend and carry necessary safety and rescue gear. But the rewards are often spectacular views,

8 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

ice formations, alpenglow (if you go early or late) and lunar-like landscapes.

Winter is also a good time to bag 10 of Vermont’s highest peaks without the crowds of summer and fall. For half of Vermont’s highest peaks, you can cheat and take a lift at least partway up. In order of height, they are Mt. Mansfield, Killington, Lincoln Peak, Mt. Ellen, Pico, Jay and Stratton. Camel’s Hump, though, is probably the most stunning

hike and both that and Mt. Abraham have views west to Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. The last of the Big 10, Mt. Equinox near Manchester, has a road leading to its summit that’s closed in the winter – making it ideal for skinning, snowshoeing up (or sledding down.)

2. CAMP OUT Winter camping, especially as the days

grow longer and milder, is something that can qualify as either Type 1 or Type 2 fun, depending on your preparations.

Ski in, snowshoe or fatbike, if the trails are packed. Many of Vermont’s state parks are officially closed in the winter, but with a permit, their lean-tos and cabins are open on a first-come, firstserved basis—often with fire pits and picnic tables there and ready for you. The same is true for many of the shelters on

Cutline here courtesy of

the Long Trail. That said, keep in mind that many of these shelters don’t offer the same level of warmth as cozying up in a tent. If the conditions are right, explore some of the parks that are packed in the summer, such as Burton Island, Green

River Reservoir, Champlain Islands or Ricker Pond. See vtstateparks.com 3. LEARN TO BUILD AN IGLOO If you want to learn how to build an igloo from an expert put February 13 on

your calendar. That’s the day Norwich’s Montshire Museum is hosting an “Igloo Build.” Dr. Bert Yankielun, engineer and author of the book How to Build an Igloo and Other Snow Structures, will be on hand to offer a Covid-safe

demonstration, as well as instruction on the structural secrets of building with snow—from making an initial snow angel to placing the final block on the dome and sawing your way out.

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Don’t let injuries, like hand or wrist, or chronic knee, hip, shoulder, or ankle pain keep you from enjoying the winter sports you love. The experts at Mansfield Orthopaedics can help with state-of-the-art treatments designed specifically for you. Using leading-edge technologies and procedures, we work with you and your physician to provide comprehensive treatment and rehabilitation geared just for you.

After all, we’re here for you!

The orthopedic team at Mansfield Orthopaedics: Brian Aros, MD; Bryan Monier, MD; John Macy, MD; Joseph McLaughlin, MD and Nicholas Antell, MD

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Orthopedics | Cardiology | Diagnostic Imaging | Emergency Services | General Surgery | Gynecology & Obstetrics | Oncology | Rehabilitation | Tele-Health Services JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 9

4. ROMP OR RACE ON SNOWSHOES Grab or demo snowshoes and sign up at Onion River Sports for their annual Montpelier Snowshoe Romp, a half mile lantern-lit loop, along with hot chocolate, ice cream and a warm fire. It takes place in Hubbard Park on January 22 from 6 pm, to 8 pm. Want something harder?

Sign up for the sixth annual Face Race up Suicide Six of Feb. 2. Race up a black diamond and down a blue square run for 1.6 miles of “fun.”

Even harder? Peak Adventures’ Snow Devil Ultra in Pittsfield on March 13 has races that range from a 5K to a marathon, with a 100-miler starting the day before.

5. LEARN TO ICE CLIMB While places such as Smuggler’s Notch and Lake Willoughby have become ice climbing destinations, there are plenty of spots around Vermont where even beginners can learn and practice climbing the blue ice that forms on so many of Vermont’s cliffs and crags. Sign up for a class. Petra Cliffs and Adventure Spirit operate out of Burlington and Rutland’s Vermont Adventure Tours also offers introductory courses with all the equipment.

6. FATBIKE THE TRAIL NETWORKS Most bike shops will let you demo a fatbike but for a day of fun, head to one of the trail systems that’s been groomed for big wheels. More and more Nordic areas are turning parts of their trail systems over to fatbiking with lessons and rentals. The fat tires roll easily over bumps and grip on ice, making you feel like a kid on a giant Tonka toy.

Grafton Trails and Outdoor Center in southern Vermont, Rikert Nordic Center in Ripton and Kingdom Trails in the Northeast Kingdom all rent fatbikes and have miles of groomed trails.

7. TAKE SKATE OR CLASSIC SKI LESSON If Vermont’s cadre of Olympic skiers hasn’t already inspired you to do so, this is the winter to learn to skate ski (or classic). Rikert Nordic Center in Ripton is limiting its clients to Vermont residents this winter. With 55 kilometers of groomed trails, snowmaking and rentals, you can get three private lessons (each one hour) for $195 or join in the group lessons (for both classic and skating) that happen daily at 10 am and 1 pm. At the Trapp Family Lodge Outdoor Center, you can take an adult lesson (minimum of two people) for $40 or do a package with rentals and lift tickets for $85.

Get back to you Has taking the stairs become unbearable? Is joint pain keeping you from skiing or snowshoeing? Are you missing out on other activities you once enjoyed?

Gifford’s Orthopedics team can help you get back to you. Our specialists provide surgical and nonsurgical care to treat a wide range of conditions and injuries to hip, knee, hand and wrist ailments.

Call today to schedule an appointment.

Randolph: 728-2430 Berlin: 224-3200

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8. BECOME A BIATHLETE Become a biathlete and learn to shoot and ski. While the Ethan Allen firing range is closed this winter and the Ethan Allen Biathlon Club isn’t hosting its regular beginner clinics, the Strafford Nordic Center is offering clinics for up to six people by appointment only. Cost is $40 per person, rifle and instruction included but bring your own Nordic gear or rent there.

9. GET READY TO RUN RunVermont, which puts on events such as the Burlington City Marathon, has always had training programs to help newbies or experts get ready to do their best. This year they hope to run the marathon on its regular time slot Memorial Day. But coaching has gone virtual with the 2021 Rdy2Run Digital Coaching Services platform. It includes bi-monthly discussions on goals, mileage tracking, nutrition tips, and access to 5K, 10K, half-marathon and marathon training plans. The program is free if you sign up for a Passport (which also gets you 20% off races), or you can buy it for $45 to $75, depending on how long your goal event distance is. Runvermont.com 10. ENTER AN ONLINE RACE Tired of training on your own, indoors?

As long as you have a compatible smart trainer, download the Zwift app (or another) and enter the alternately fun/ grueling/obsessive/compulsive world of online racing. You can choose routes based on real rides or runs around the world or from the fictional island of Watopia. You set your pace, your weight and your ability level. Do your own training plan, a preprogrammed one or race against other (alert: you’ll get competitive and yes, people do cheat).

The app works with compatible smart trainers for bikes or treadmills.

11. GO DOG SLEDDING If you’ve dismissed dogsledding as a tourist attraction, think again. For Jim Blair, owner of Eden Dogsledding, it’s a sport he’s much of dedicated his life to.

Over the last 18 years, Blair has carved a trail system out on his 140-acre property in Eden. His more than 30 Alaskan Huskies, a group he calls the UnChained Gang, have helped him win numerous dogsled races and earned him the title of International Sprint Champion. Blair offers cabins on his property for rent, a chance to interact with the dogs (whom he treats ethically, as pets) and private trips. Sled trips start at $495 for up to six Vermonters (weight dependent) or $695 for others. Umiak Adventures is now also organizing trips in both the Stowe area (evening tours) and the Mad River Valley. Cost is $399 per sled (with a 350 lb. weight limit) for a two-hour tour.

12. BREAK INTO BACKCOUNTRY SKIING There are several ways you can learn to backcountry ski. One is to buy the gear (try Outdoor Gear Exchange for consignment gear), order David Goodman’s newly-released second edition of Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast and figure it out yourself.

The other is to head to the Bolton Valley Adventure Center. Bolton Valley has become Ground Zero for folks getting into backcountry, thanks to its Adventure Center which rents backcountry alpine touring and splitboarding gear from Dynafit and Burton. The ski area also offers private guided tours (including access tickets and two lift rides) starting at $175 for one person, and $60 for each additional person (up to four). With acres of backcountry terrain as well two cabins you can access and overnight in (reservations must be made through the Green Mountain Club for Bryant Camp and Bolton Lodge), it’s a perfect taste of backcountry, just 30 minutes from Burlington. Need advice on gear? Tune into @outdoorgearexchange on January 26 for an Instagram Live chat on all things backcountry skiing.

13. SKI THE CATAMOUNT TRAIL What the Long Trail is to hiking, the Catamount Trail is to skiing. The 300mile trail intersects with some of the best backcountry skiing zones in the state . But perhaps the most fun part of the Catamount Trail is tackling various sections that can be done as point-topoint. The most famous, Bolton Valley to the Trapp Family Lodge is an arduous, all-day tour but has great skiing and views. The Catamount Trail Association which manages the trail organizes single and multi-day tours. For dates and details see catamounttrail.org.

14. EXPLORE A NEW BACKCOUNTRY ZONE Beyond the sidecountry accessible from most ski mountains, a number of backcountry zones are being developed and mapped by groups around the state. These range from the Dutch Hill Alliance of Skiers and Riders work in southern Vermont to the Brandon Gap and Braintree Mountain terrain that the Rochester/Randolph Sport Trails Alliance has made famous to new areas that the Northeast Kingdom Backcountry Coalition is working on in the Willoughby State Forest and other areas. For a list of these chapters, an overview of the zones and live links, see vtsports.com. And if want to find a zone of your own, a number of guides can show you around. Among them: Sunrise Mountain Guides out of Stowe and Killington Mountain Guides.

15. TAKE AN AVALANCHE COURSE While you may not be traveling in avalanche country this season, now is a

great time to prepare for when you do.

The American Institute of Avalanche Research has Level 1 and Level II classes that will teach you not only snow science behind how avalanches form and how to assess the likelihood of a slide, but also the leadership skills needed in any backcountry adventure and what you need to know about rescues. Shops such as Onion River Outfitters, Petra Cliffs and others are offering classes this winter. Expect to pay $400 or more. It’s worth it and classes often sell out fast.

16. SKATE FOR MILES While there are plenty of ponds and ice rinks around the state where you can circle around for an afternoon or an hour, there is nothing like traveling a distance on skates. If you want to get that sensation, head to Lake Morey. The Fairlee lake claims the longest groomed skating track in the United States — smooth 4.3-mile loop that’s maintained by the Lake Morey Resort, where you can also rent skate gear. The skate trail, which opens in late January, is free but donations are appreciated.

17. LEARN TO TRACK Ever wondered what those prints in the snow are? The Vermont Wilderness School in Brattleboro offers one-day

Umiak Outfitters in Stowe is booking dog sled tours in Stow and the Mad River Valley. Courtesy of Umiak

Gear up for winter.

Open Tuesday - Sunday Curbside pickup available!

Shop online @ onionriver.com 20 Langdon St. Montpelier, VT (802) 225-6736

JAN./FEB. 2021 VTSPORTS.COM 11

Skate skiing can burn up to 1,000 calories an hour. Take a lesson at Trapp Family Lodge or Rikert Nordic Center.

(Feb. 20) and weekend courses (register to find out when the next one is) and learn how to follow a fox or a bobcat. The Roots School in Bradford is also offering full-day classes ($150) on January 30 and February 27.

18. COUNT BIRDS FOR SCIENCE The Christmas Bird Count might be the National Audubon Society’s most famous event and a way that many get into birding but don’t despair if you missed it. The Winter Bald Eagle Count goes from January 6-20. If you see one, note the date, location and time of day

as well as other markers and you can submit your siting at vt.audubon.org.

On Wed. January 20, the organization will also be holding an online Climate Watch 101 where you’ll learn about the technology and bird identification skills needed for the Climate Watch bird survey which goes until February 15,.

19. TRY ICE FISHING Ice fishing is about as true-blue Vermont as sugaring and wearing flannel. You may not think about it as a sport until you see a gnarly Northern pike on the hook. A number of outfitters can get you started with the gear and guiding you need. Whitetail Strategies Guide Service

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out of Benson even boasts an ice shanty with wood stove and can rent portable jigging houses.

20. GO EXTREME SLEDDING Sure, saucers and toboggans are fun.

But have you ever tried piloting a Hammerhead sled or a Mad River Rocket down Lincoln Gap? In winter, the “steepest paved mile” in America becomes the “steepest unplowed road” with screaming, hairpin descents. Pretty much any other closed road will also do. Think Mt. Philo, Mt. Equinox… you name it. Just keep it safe.

21. PLAN A HUT TRIP Stowe’s Stone Hut may be closed due to Covid-19 this season but there are plenty of other huts around the state. Shreck’s Cabin, a stone hut atop the Green Mountain Trails is the closest you might come to that experience, especially if you fatbike or skin up. Merck Forest has a series of dispersed huts and cabins that come with wood stoves and outhouses. They range from simple to downright cozy and are located on 3,100 acres high on a hill in the Taconics, near Manchester. If you want to get

first tracks in the backcountry zones on Brandon Gap book the ski-in only Chittenden Brook Cabin. All of these can be booked through Vermonthuts.org.

22. SKI A DOWN-HOME HILL It used to be that villages around Vermont had their own backyard ski hills. Most of those have since disappeared. But a few have stayed strong and some are even being resurrected. Get a taste of community-supported skiing (think a CSA for skiing) at Hard’Ack in St. Albans (which has a cool terrain park), Mt. Ascutney (with a new rope tow and good backcountry skiing off the top), Northeast Slopes in Corinth (Glen Plake’s favorite Vermont ski area) or Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond (if you haven’t been). You can even go smaller than that at place such as the Brattleboro Ski Hill, a T-bar-accessed slope operated

by Living Memorial Park Snow Sports with night skiing on Fridays and Saturdays and $5 lift tickets (cash only).

23. REV UP A SLED If you’ve never driven a snowmobile, it might be hard to understand the allure.

But gun up a sled and fly along at 35 mph

and you may change your mind. While many ski towns offer guided snowmobile tours (Vermont Snowmobile Tours operates in Mount Snow, Okemo, Killington and Stowe), if you really want to get off the beaten track, head up to St. Johnsbury and head out for a two-hour tour with NEK Adventures.

24. TAKE A WINTER PHOTO WORKSHOP “I think winter is the most beautiful time of year to be a photographer. I love seeing the simplicity created by a heavy blanket of snow and photographing the clean lines and the pureness of the countryside that only appears in winter,” says Loren Fisher, a professional who has shot for newspapers around the world, who is teaching an outdoor winter photography workshop Jan. 2224, out of Woodstock (see lorenphotos. com) or take a Hunt’s Photo Adventure course (also out of Woodstock), Feb. 4-7.

Both focus on landscapes.

ice of Lake Memphremagog is for them.

For others, just jumping in, screaming and scrambling out as fast as they can is more their speed, and Burlington’s annual Penguin Plunge may be their ticket. This year both events have gone virtual. You can log your own Winter Swim the week of Feb. 20-27 and send in a photo to Kingdom Games. The only rules? No distances, no timing required, you just have to wear a bathing suit.

There will be prizes and even a Zoom “Jammies and Vodka Shooter Party” to celebrate on Feb. 27. The Penguin Plunge to benefit the Special Olympics is also virtual. Send in a photo of your personal plunge event, done anytime between Feb. 6 and March 27. On that day, there will be a live-streamed virtual party with photos and videos of the plunges shared. As the Penguin Plunge states: There will be water, you will be cold, you will have goosebumps, whether it’s at the Burlington Waterfront, at home, or somewhere in between.

25. MAKE THE PLUNGE Some people swear by winter swimming – and in non-Covid years, events such as Kingdom Games Winter Swim – a swim competition held in a “pool” cut out of the

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FEATURED ATHLETE

JAKE BLAUVELT RETURNS TO HIS ROOTS Age: 34 Lives in: Waterbury Center Profession: Professional Snowboarder Family: Wife Kristin and two daughters

ake Blauvelt was only 19 in 2004 when he won the US Open in Stratton for Slopestyle. Not long after that, the rider who grew up in Waterbury Center, Vt. headed to the Pacific Northwest and made a name for himself as backcountry snowboard video star. In 2009 and again in 2010 he was named one of Snowboarder Magazine’s Top 10 Riders of the Year.

J

Why did you decide to come back home to Vermont?

I spent 12 winters out West, with the majority of them in Washington state near Mount Baker and some in California, but I came back because Vermont is my home and always will be. I’ve been basing out of Vermont for

14 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

the last five years. It’s where my family and my wife’s family is from and where we are raising our two girls. It’s great to be raising them so close to their grandparents. I will do a few trips to the Mount Baker area this winter when the snowpack is stable but Vermont is my home.

Tell us about the Blauvelt Banks competition at Bolton Valley.

I started snowboarding at Bolton Valley in their after-school program so it was great to be able to return there. Banked slalom courses where the fastest time wins have gotten really popular in the snowboard world in the last five to ten years. Some of the famous ones are the

Back home in the backcountry, Jake chops through his woods. Photo by Nathanael Asaro

Mount Baker Legendary Banked Slalom and the Rat Race at Mount Hood. Every one that I’ve been to has had a great crew of individuals with everyone grinning from ear to ear and really stoked. It’s a great way to bring people together and raise money for a good cause which last year. for the inaugural Blauvelt Banks, was Protect Our Winters. We were really happy we were able to pull it off last

Why did you choose Protect our Winters?

I support Protect Our Winters because they are involving the community in taking active steps to fight climate change. I want to be able to use my platform to help spread their message that we all need to start taking action, big or small. I think climate change and living sustainably are things that everyone needs to have in the back of their minds.

What else do you do to promote sustainable living?

I was fortunate enough to grow up in Vermont which is known for local food. My parents grew their own food so it’s second nature for me to do that.

We bought this place in Waterbury Center six years ago and it already had a greenhouse and outside garden beds.

We grow plenty of veggies and raise meat birds. I think eating good food is almost more important than training or working out. I do those things too, but there can be such a disconnect between people and the food they eat.

Will there be a Blauvelt Banks in 2021?

We’re hoping to hold a second one this year, but we’re not sure how we’re going to do it. We will probably make a decision in January with the goal of holding it in March. We’ll have to scale it back quite a bit and it might end up being virtual with the course at Bolton open for everyone to ride. This year we’re hoping to raise money to build a skate park in Waterbury and the event would be a good catalyst for a fundraiser. Hopefully we can start construction of the park in the summer of 2022.

Let’s talk about your progression from lift-served ski areas to the backcountry.

After my start with the Bolton afterschool program, I began competing in USASA (United States of America Snowboard and Freeski Association) contests on the East Coast. I won Nationals when I was 14 and got some sponsors and kept competing until I won the U.S. Open at 19. That let me make a name for myself and get more sponsors, but I wasn’t having that much fun competing and I wanted to get creative. I was watching videos of my heroes in the backcountry and I told my sponsors I wanted to switch to filming backcountry videos with their equipment and they agreed. There is a learning curve on how to access the backcountry safely and effectively via splitboard, helicopter, or snowmobile. My sponsors stuck with me [Eds. note: adidas even has a signature Jake boot] and I learned how to navigate effectively and safely and that’s

Riding on a curve at the inaugural Blauvelt Banks competion at Bolton Valley. Photo by Nathanael Asaro

what speaks to me the most – looking at terrain and being creative with it. I’m not interested in being a stuntman or doing the craziest tricks, but in being creative with what’s out there.

Can you tell us about the 2013 film Naturally.

Normally, when pro snowboarders make a film there are anywhere between five and a dozen riders. Each one has, on average, a three-minute part in the movie and you spend the whole winter filming to have it boiled down to that.

I felt that I was riding well enough and was confident that I could select just a couple of my friends and film a video about my travels. That’s how it came about. I asked my sponsors, such as Oakley if they were willing to have a movie just about me and they were okay with it. That was my first and only fulllength film. Since then I’ve gone back to filming smaller parts with others or doing shorts like Full Circle which is available on Vimeo. [You can see both at vtsports.com/Jake-Blauvelt-at-home.}

I believe Atmosphere is your most recent short.

These days I’ve been doing more of those ten-minute movies. That’s what people have the attention span for. Packing the best of the best into a ten-minute edit is the formula we’ve been using, and the most recent one was Atmosphere. We worked with Gabe Langlois who films, produces, and edits my films. We filmed for seven days for that project but we had to fly back from British Columbia when Covid hit. We generally just go wherever the snow is good which ended up being interior BC and Pemberton.

Tell us about the creative process for making the films. What comes first?

It’s best to have a concept first and then match the imagery but sometimes you just start filming and the concept comes later. In Atmosphere we wanted a lot of audio mixed in with the imagery so you really feel like you’re there. We wore microphones and it ended up being a lot to carry with the avalanche beacons and

transceivers but there’s the sense that you’re right there on the mountain with us. You can hear the edge of the board as it slices through ice or powder.

What is the secret to your continued joy in riding after all these years?

I’ve been filming video for the last ten to fifteen years. When I was younger, I was filming tricks and lines in the backcountry because I thought other people wanted to see that. When I got older and began burning out I realized I wanted to feel inspired and to do that, I needed to do what makes me happy on the board. It was similar to when I got burned out racing. The secret is to be creative and do what makes you happy.

Sometimes it’s not about building the biggest jump but going out and feeling grateful for all the places you can go with a snowboard. It’s an amazing life where I get to live where I live and do what I do and call it a job. ­—Phyl Newbeck

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 15

NUTRITION

T

his new year holds a different meaning than in Januaries past. Often a time of reflection, looking back at the highs and lows of the previous year typically helps shape our goals for the future as we look optimistically towards what lies ahead.

That was until the absolute dumpster fire that was 2020.

It likely won’t come as a big shock that a global survey found what so many of us have experienced firsthand: the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked serious havoc on our physical health.

Worldwide, people are exercising less, eating more unhealthy foods and seeing the results of that on their scale.

Jokes about the “quarantine 15” or “COVID-19” weight gain are rooted in reality as the motivation to move our bodies and eat well have waned and the pounds have piled on. A Weight Watchers survey found that individuals gained an average of 12.5 pounds between March and June and it is likely this number has only increased as the months of living in various degrees of lockdown have continued.

I witnessed this firsthand. Like many back in March, I transitioned from commuting to work every day where I would exchange casual hellos, hand-shakes and even (gasp) hugs with others to working from home and communicating entirely through a computer screen. In meeting with nutrition clients virtually, I spoke regularly with individuals feeling defeated by undesired weight gains.

With routines completely disrupted and stress at an all-time high, their eating and exercise habits drastically changed.

Take Carol, a longtime client I worked with who had been consistently losing weight prior to the pandemic.

Preparing meals from scratch, packing healthy lunches for work and diligently following a training plan for an upcoming half-marathon were just some of the things that had been allowing Carol to succeed in her weight loss goals. You can probably see where this is headed.

The pandemic and ensuing lockdown left Carol scrambling to adjust to a new schedule and seriously stressed. Her new “home office” was located at the kitchen table and food became a source of comfort. With the refrigerator and pantry just steps away, she found herself mindlessly grazing during the work day on the crackers, chips and baked goods she stocked for

16 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

THREE WAYS TO GET FITTER, FASTER

COVID-19 TOOK A MEASUREABLE TOLL ON OUR WAISTLINES THIS PAST YEAR. HERE’S HOW TO GET BACK ON TRACK. BY JAMIE SHEEHAN, M.S., R.D.

Cutline here Photo by

Journaling —keeping track of what you eat, when and how much you exeercise—is one of the most proven paths toward weight loss.

her kids. Dinner became takeout and, after the kids went to bed, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s was the only thing that seem to help her feel better even if just fleetingly.

Numerous studies back up this psychological drive to overeat when stress levels rise. As for those training runs? Her upcoming half-marathon was postponed indefinitely, leaving her unmotivated for daily runs.

As she lamented how difficult it was to see the results of her hard work slip away, she, like many others, struggled with how to break out of this pit of despair as the stress of gaining weight only compounded the anxiety she felt from everything else going on in the world.

I heard very similar accounts in Zoom after Zoom call. However, I began to notice an interesting dichotomy.

While many of us like Carol found that our extra time at home was spent completing puzzles, making sourdough starter and binge-watching Tiger King (what were we thinking?!) others saw it as an opportunity to emerge from quarantine life stronger, fitter and generally healthier than ever before.

For that small minority, the new “normal” was finally time to dedicate themselves to health in a way that had previously eluded them. What so many viewed as negatives to pandemic life were reframed into positives. Working from home meant no more commute to work allowing for time in the morning

“Worldwide, people are exercising less and eating more. One Weight Watchers survey showed people gained 12.5 lbs. between March and June. to cook a healthy breakfast. Social distancing may have made gathering with friends for a drink after work taboo, but a solo evening bike ride with water as the beverage of choice? Even better.

An abrupt and forced change to our way of life was not something to be met with resistance and contempt, but embraced as the opportunity to finally do the things that for too long we just didn’t have time for.

And that right there is the key.

Perception is reality. If we see barriers and lack the self-efficacy or motivation to overcome those barriers then positive change is all but impossible to achieve.

But what if we reframe those barriers and find the hidden opportunities to exact positive change in ourselves? Now

we’re talking a recipe for success.

Of course, easier said than done. For the most part, we know what we should and shouldn’t do when it comes to diet and exercise. Finding the motivation to make the healthy choices day in and day out is hard even in the best of times. Doing so during a pandemic?

Yikes. Fortunately, you don’t have to blindly search for some hidden source of motivation that constantly eludes us the moment we have to decide between another night of ordering a pizza or preparing a healthy meal from scratch.

Here’s how: Set SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based. This framework is designed to help you clarify what your want, focus your efforts and increase your chances of success. Here's what should be addressed for each: Specific: Identify what you would like to accomplish and why it’s important to you. Measurable – make your goal more tangible by defining the metrics that you will use to gage your progress.

Achievable: Ensure your goal is realistic and attainable to increase your odds of success. It’s important to push yourself, but not to aim so high that you get discouraged when your goal proves to be too far out of reach.

Relevant: consider how much your goal matters to you and whether it aligns with your values.

Time-based: set target dates for when you will accomplish your goal. If you are identifying a long-term goal, set some smaller progress goals that work toward getting you there.

Hold yourself accountable. Once you’ve established your goals, the key to seeing them through is accountability.

Enlist a friend or family member to help by letting them in on your goals. Even if they can’t physically be with you, the social support and just knowing someone else is aware of your goals can help keep you on track. If you prefer to play things close to the chest then consider strategies to be accountable to yourself. The best way to go: a food journal.

A 2019 study found that subjects who spent just 15-minutes or less per day logging their food intake lost more weight than those who didn’t consistently track. Seeing as these days we have plenty of extra time on our hands, spending less than 15-minutes a day to note what we’ve consumed isn’t a big ask. Whether you prefer an app such as MyFitnessPal, Excel sheet or a

hand-written journal, the key is being honest and consistent. Think of these as the Strava or FitBit for your diet.

Be kind to yourself. We tend to beat ourselves up, especially when it comes to eating and exercise habits. Everyone has an off day or two. Throwing in the towel simply because you skipped a workout can be tempting as you start to question your ability to follow through on your goals. Instead of seeing these missteps as failures, take a step back and recognize all of the good things you are doing. Making healthy choices is challenging so hit reset and refocus on why your goals matter.

This is a new year and although our circumstances may not have changed as much as we would like and a lot of uncertainty remains, there is still plenty of opportunity ahead. We can learn a lot from the past year. Particularly from examining both those who have faltered in their health habits and those who have thrived. Understanding what separates the two just may be the key to making 2021 your healthiest year yet.

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APPS FOR YOUR APPETITE FITBITS, STRAVA, ZWIFT: Technology has helped us track how much we exercise, where we go, for how long and for how fast. And if there were an app that could miraculously help you lose weight, someone would be very, very rich. Well, the following three apps take different approaches to helping by making you more aware of the foods you are eating and their nutritional values. Here are the pros and cons.

LOSEIT: With challenges you can join (e.g. log your food every day for a year; lose 10 lbs in ten weeks, etc.) as well as all the calorie and fitness tracking most apps offer, and pop-up tips about the foods you add, LoseIt has become one of the most popular apps, especially for anyone who is competitive and an athletes. It can connect to FitBits, Apple watches and more and the app even has fitness guides and nutrition plans. It has a bar code scanner so you can scan foods at the store and a Snap It feature which allows you to take a photo of your meal (though analyzing portion sizes is a challenge.) The basic app is free but you’ll get endless prompts to upgrade to a yearly plan ($39.99) for personalized fitness plans and other bells and whistles. Go ahead, if you are serious about dieting, it’s worth it.

MYFITNESSPAL: This is a simple, straightforward app owned by Under Armour that you can use to track your food intake, nutrients, exercise and more. What we like about it is that it has a vast database of foods (if candied walnuts are your thing, you can pick from multiple brands) and is easy to use. It also prompts you to drink water and log your exercise and it calculates total nutrients. If you’re going Keto, it can track carbs –but you will also see how much sodium you are consuming. And, like many apps, it has a social media connection and a community you can join to help you maintain your goals and get social support. And its basic functions are free.

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NOOM: Unlike many weight loss apps, Noom goes beyond just tracking calories in versus calories out, emphasizing a behavioral component that has users dig into the “why” and “how” of their weight loss goal. The app provides daily tasks to facilitate this, often short articles to read or quizzes that can be done throughout the day. Nutrition is still a top priority with a user-friendly color-coding system that rates foods as green, yellow or red based on the nutritional value of each food and how often you should eat it. Similar to other weight loss apps, Noom entails daily food logging and weigh ins to monitor progress and increase accountability. The cost is $150 for a six-month subscription, which is a small price to pay for meaningful lifestyle change that provides lasting weight loss.

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 17

IN 2020, THESE VERMONT ATHLETES SUBHEAD HERE TO GO HERE

E

ven with race schedules cut short, travel curtailed and isolated from training partners, these athletes pushed through the year of

Covid-19 and showed how you can stay motivated, stay fit and stay on top of the game. Here’s our annual salute to 10 athletes Vermont should be proud of.

Lea Davison, coming into 2021 in her best shape ever and gunning for the Tokyo Olympics. Photo by Ansel Dickey

18 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

LEA DAVISON’S YEAR OF LIMBO For anyone training for the 2020 Olympics, the past year was an excruciating challenge. Here’s how Lea Davison, the Olympic mountain biker from Sunderland, made the best of it.

In early March of 2020, Lea Davison had just flown back from Spain when she began to feel ill. She had just come off the grueling, Andalucia Stage Race, a six-day cross-country race that sent more than 700 riders over 367 kilometers of village streets, goat path-narrow mountain switchbacks and up and down the rocky, dusty hillsides of southern Spain. There was nearly 11,000 feet of climbing.

Lea had pushed hard and after the final stage on March 1, found herself in fifth place overall, representing USA Cycling and Team TWENTY20.

At the time, the novel coronavirus, aka Covid-19, had already begun its steady march through Europe.

Northern Italy was in lockdown and Spain was soon to follow. “I thought I’d gotten back in the nick of time,” Lea says when we talk on a Zoom call in late December 2020, But then she woke up to a sore throat and chest pain. “I was in pain. My whole diaphragm was in pain. I couldn’t walk that well and I couldn’t ride my bike and I didn’t know what was going on.”

At the advice of her doctor, she checked in for testing at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, near the home she shares with her wife, Frazier Blair in Sunderland. “I think I was one of the first to get tested in Vermont for Covid,” she says. “They were just great and did MRIs and chest X-rays.” As it turned out, Lea didn’t have Covid; she had pneumonia.

“Thank heavens I did go in and they caught it early so I was able to get on antibiotics and rest but it was an incredibly stressful time,” she says with a laugh, looking, as she seems to always do, at the half-full side of the glass.

W

hen an Olympic cross-country mountain biker who has just ridden a six-day stage race says she’s in pain, you might as well multiply that by 10 to understand how it might impact mere mortals. As for stress? Consider her past 18 months.

For the past year, Lea has been fighting not only for her own spot on the Olympic cross-country team, but also to help the U.S. women move high enough in the UCI (Union Cycliste International) rankings so that the U.S. could send three riders.

At 37, the Mount Mansfield Union

Lea Davison: will ride for doughnuts.

Photo by Ansel Dickey

High School graduate and Middlebury College alpine ski racer has more than proven herself: she has a silver and a bronze medal from the World Championships in 2014 and 2016 respectively and two Olympics under her belt. In the 2012 Games she finished 11th and in 2016, at Rio, was seventh.

A co-founder of Little Bellas, an organization that empowers girls through mountain biking, Lea has also been a role model and mentor to younger racers, such as her former Specialized teammate Kate Courtney. Now 25, Courtney punched her 2020 (now 2021) Olympic ticket by finishing fifth at the World Championships in Mont Sainte Anne, QC in 2019 and then won a World Cup in West Virginian a week later Along with Courtney, emerging riders Haley Batten, 22 and Hannah Finchamp, 25, were named to the U.S Cycling Long Team for last summer.

For the first time in a long time, the U.S. has a depth of talent to choose from, with veterans Davison, Erin Huck, 39, and former Olympian Chloe Woodruff, 32 rounding out the six-woman team.

And for the first time, the governing body, the UCI, will allow the two top-ranked nations to send three contestants, instead of two, to the Olympics (something that has been the norm for men’s teams.) Before the Tokyo Games were postponed, the U.S. had until May 2020 to secure that ranking.

With the support of USA Cycling and a newly-founded Team TWENTY20, Lea Davison, Erin Huck and Chloe Woodruff—the three who had been working on shoe-string budgets with a handful of private sponsors — started working together to do just that. ‘We mapped out this crazy, round-the-

world schedule of races so we could divide and conquer and rack up as many UCI points for our country as we could,” Lea said. It was like something out of Mission Impossible.

That meant Lea would spend part of her traditional “off-season” flying to Tokyo to race in the Olympic test event on October 6. There, at 17th, she was the top U.S. woman, with Huck in 23rd and Woodruff in 32nd. Four days later, Lea was in Greece, racing to second place in the Attika Stage Races. A week later found her racing another stage race on the Greek island of Kos, where she took fourth. By the end of 2019, the women had collectively racked up 4,308 UCI points, ranking the U.S. second overall. Lea headed to the Andalucia race in February 2020 hoping to add to that. As Covid shut down racing worldwide, the UCI froze the points.

"They’re going to take the points up until that March 3 date that they close the points and then I think they’ll reopen them,” Lea said. With Kate Courtney already in, the five other women will be competing for the other two spots.

M

aybe the best thing about having pneumonia is I caught it early and it forced me to rest and recover,” Lea said in December. She and her wife Frazier, an executive with Orvis and a former NCAA downhill ski racer (and Division I All-American) at Williams College, had driven to Asheville, North Carolina so Lea could train.

“Once we got to the point where the Games got postponed, it was like a pressure valve release,” Lea says.

And for the first time since they were married in 2018, Lea got to really

spend time with at home with her wife. “It was absolutely amazing to be with Frazier for this long and for the whole summer in Vermont, which I haven’t done maybe in 20 years.”

While Lea has been openly gay for much of her racing career, the positive response to the couple’s 2018 wedding at Kingdom Trails opened her eyes to the role she could play in helping other LGBTQ athletes. Suddenly, being gay wasn’t a liability. “It’s been amazing.

I mean, it’s a game changer, really, to have sponsors like Louis Garneau (Clif Bar isn’t my sponsor anymore so I would love to focus on my current sponsor, Garneau) celebrate Frazier and I getting married and throw it out in their email blasts, make us special skin suits and do a photo shoot. Those actions redirected my thinking,” Lea says.

“This felt so amazing to me and so supportive so I want to give that gift to other people. From that point on, I made it a goal to tell my story more to make a positive impact.” And she did.

On July 20, Lea posted a photo of herself and Frazier to Instagram with the caption: “When I came out to my dad, he simply said ‘Lea, there’s too little love in the world’. Those impactful, wise words set me free to love whomever I wanted to. Fast forward 15 years, and I’m legally married to the love of my life. Now, more than ever, these words are relevant. We need to show up for the black community and to love BIPOC. We must keep pushing for an inclusive world. Let’s go. Black lives matter.”

W

ith no races on the schedule and no travel possible, Lea and Frazier cycled to creemee stands, bought an espresso machine (“I made a deal with myself that if the Olympics got postponed, I was going to need more caffeine”) explored back roads. Lea also set up her own new training regimen.

“I wanted to create new habits so I started going to bed earlier and training earlier – more like 9 am than 11. I also started doing things differently, like I turned off my cycling computer and just started to get back to the basics of why I love being on a bike.” .

She mapped and discovered new routes around Southern Vermont, including a new favorite two-andhalf hour ride to a doughnut cart in Cambridge, N.Y. and back.

She mixed it up with mountain, gravel and road. “Simi Hamilton designed me this crazy 80- to 100mile gravel ride, I was out there for like

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 19

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR 6 hours,” Lea recalls. Hamilton, the U.S. Ski Team Nordic A-teamer and Olympian who lives in Peru, Vt. with his wife, Olympian Sophie Caldwell, rode with Lea at Slate Valley Trails in Poultney on a course Lea called “a World Cup Similation—probably the most fun ride of the summer,” Lea recalls.

With many of the U.S. Nordic team in Vermont last summer, Lea also rode with skiers Ida Sargent and Julia Kern. “If it hadn’t been Covid, I would have loved to have trained with the Nordic team,” she said.

Lea continued to work with her longtime coach, former Tour de France racer Andy Bishop, of Williston and she signed up for Zwift races online.

“Those races really opened up new opportunities for me. They presented a very safe environment for me to push myself because I’m on my trainer in a basement. It’s not like I would go off a drop or through a rock garden so I was able to push myself and find new limits.

There’s no down time when you’re in one of those races,” she notes.

During one sprint Lea saw her heart rate reach 206 “I don’t think I’ve hit over 200 since I was 18 and that was a long time ago,” she says, laughing.

“Andy [Bishop] was blown away, he was like ‘what were you doing before this?’

He was psyched. He was also racing the World Cup simulation and then we got to ride together in person for a week and he was really psyched with the progress I had made this summer.”

Ryan Cochran-Siegle is taking the 2021 fast out of the gates.

Photo courtesy USSA

W

ith the year in limbo behind her, Lea is looking ahead to getting back to racing in real life. After training in Asheville, N.C. over the Christmas holidays, she was driving to Tucson where she planned to be based through April, then heading to California to race, then to Arkansas, then home to Vermont for a couple of weeks before heading to Europe for the World Cup. The first two World Cups, the opener on May 8-9 in Albstadt, Germany and a second race, a week later in Nove Mesto in the Czech Republic, will decide who goes to the Olympics. A win in the Czech World Cup event would automatically qualify Lea to compete at the Tokyo Games, rescheduled for July. If no American wins then the first American in the top 8 would get to go.

Nove Mesto will be the last

20 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

opportunity and when she talks about it, Lea is gleeful. It’s where Lea won one of her most prized medals: silver at the World Championships, in 2018. It’s a course she knows well and is happy about. “I LOVVVVVE that course she says,” grinning ear to ear.

And she’s going into it feeling, as she has said, stronger and fitter than ever. “I do feel like I’m definitely in a different place. And I’ve done everything that I can to take advantage of this time, I really have.”

Watching and listening to her talk— animated, happy, enthusiastic, strong— you can’t help but think: Lea’s got this.

RYAN COCHRAN-SIEGLE’S WILD RIDE On December 30, the ski racing world held its breath as Ryan Cochran-Siegle, a favorite to win that day’s downhill race in Bormio, Italy, hurtled over a jump and landed in the backseat. His butt scraped his skis, a move that can often spell disaster – not to mention a

shredded

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G-forces, Cochran-Siegle managed to pull his torso forward, recover, then lost his balance again, wobbling on

one ski, arms flailing. Again, he pulled it back together, resumed his tuck and continued hurtling down the mountain as commentators and the crowd gasped.

Incredibly, he still finished seventh.

“I was happy to survive when I got to the finish and seeing that I was still competitive was cool, but I’m realizing that it could have been a really good day,” Ryan told the media after.

Ryan Cochran-Siegle,or RCS as he is often known, was coming off a string of “really good days.” On downhill training runs on Dec. 26 and 27 he had posted the fastest times. Then on Dec. 29, he did what no American male has done

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR

Jessie Diggins, leading the World Cup in early January .

in 14 years: he won the Super G. Not since Bode Miller won in 2006 had an American taken a Super G. And his 0.79 of a second lead over Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr was the largest margin in the discipline in nearly five years. These races were not flukes, earlier in the month at the Val Gardena, Italy World Cup he placed second in the downhill.

Ryan’s remarkable recovery was, in some ways, a metaphor for his career. It is hard to believe that the kid

JESSIE DIGGINS’ WINNING TOUR Photo by Tom Horrocks/USSA

from Starksboro whose mother, 1972 Olympic gold medalist Barbara Ann Cochran taught him to ski on the family ski hill in Richmond, is still only 28.

Ryan raced his first World Cup in 2011, won the Junior World Championship in 2012 and then a year later crashed at the same event, tearing his ACL and meniscus, injuries that would sideline him for 18 months, just as he was building up World Cup points. He came back and in 2016

achieved his first top 10 (a 10th in alpine combined.) He has done consistently well but until this year, only made occasional forays back into the top 10.

To kick off the 2020/21 World Cup season with two podiums is a feat no American male ski racer has accomplished in some time.

Ryan Cochran-Siegle is without question carrying on the family legacy by skiing "the Cochran Way."

On Sunday, January 11, 2021 Jessie Diggins dug deep into her pain cave, lunging up a final hill in the last of 8 races she had skied in 10 days. She crossed the finish line in second place at the 10-k freestyle race in Val di Fiemmi, Italy, collapsed face down in the snow and then burst into tears. .

She had just accomplished what no American had ever done: she won the Tour de Ski. The Tour de Ski, a test of stamina, counts not just wins but overall accumulated time for those 8 races.

She had taken the lead in the third race of the series and by Sunday, had amassed a 54 second lead.

Even though she finished nine seconds behind the leader, her winning margin was intact. It also placed her at the top of the World Cup standings.

Rosie Brennan, of Anchorage, was right behind her in the standings. The Norwegian team, which has won the past seven Tours, citing concerns for the coronavirus, did not compete this year.

The Tour win, combined with the 2018 gold medal she and Kikkan Randall earned in the 2018 Olympics, underscores Jessie’s place in history as the best U.S. Nordic skier since another Vermonter, Bill Koch, won the World Cup in 1982. Jessie called her victory “a career goal come to life.”

Though she hails from Afton, Minnesota and the Midwest rightfully claims her as theirs, Jessie owns a home in Stratton and spends summers and fall training here, along with the many other Vermonters on the the T2 Team that former coach Sverre Caldwell mentored. Most of the rest of the year, she is on the road racing.

This year saw her spending more time in the Green Mountains than ever. In April, she got engaged to her longtime boyfriend, former hockey star Wade Poplawski. With Wade able to work remotely from his Boston job and quarantining required, the two spent the summer training, hiking the Presidential Traverse and jumping in swimming holes. As for her training, see Todd Smith’s account of what it’s like to work out with Jessie Diggins on the following page.

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 21

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR

O

n a ripe June morning at the base of Stratton Mountain in Vermont, Jessie is squatting down in the dirt and lifting a volleyball-sized boulder to her chest.

Then the power-packed 5-foot-4-inch Olympic cross country skier suddenly springs up and heaves the rock high into the air like a shot put. No one marks the distance of her throw. No fans are there cheering her on. Jessie is simply grinding her way through a dryland training session worthy of a “Rocky” montage.

When Jessie and teammate Kikkan Randall won their historic gold medal in the women’s team sprint freestyle race, their victory was the U.S. Women’s Cross Country Ski Team’s first Olympic medal ever. It was one of the greatest sprints to the finish line ever recorded in the history of sports. When Jessie bravely made her move in the final turn—surging from her third place position past the two best sprinters in the world to take the lead—our hearts were gorged with adrenaline from the spectacle of it all. Here was a pint-sized underdog from tiny Afton, Minnesota, on the world’s biggest stage, roaring from behind and ruthlessly going for the win. For days afterward, I openly wondered how the hell she pulled it off. My curiosity led me to meet her in Stratton, Vt where I went to interview her for a book project and, more importantly, visit the workshop that built Jessie into a world beater. There was just one catch to my spending a week with Jessie: she insisted that I train with her.

It was a very sincere gesture, albeit a ridiculous one (I was 45 years old with a body built like a keg on legs).

I naturally had reservations about working out with an Olympian. But Jessie is contagiously positive and I couldn’t pass up the chance to experience firsthand the forces that shape her. So it was that I found myself, a runty middle-aged hobbit, on the side of Stratton Mountain, a ski hill with an elevation close to 4,000 feet and the highest peak in the Southern Green Mountains, about to be destroyed by a smiling 27-year-old Energizer Bunny.

Our morning hike would be the first of three workout sessions I was to endure, and it barely scratched the surface of the absurd amount of training Jessie would put in that week. Despite reaching the pinnacle of her sport, the bedrock of Jessie’ athletic ethos—humility and trusting in her training process—has remained unchanged since winning gold. Jessie continues to work out twice a day, six days a week as part of her regimented training program. In a sports culture that aggressively focuses strictly on results, Jessie refreshingly views her career as one that is not to be solely judged by medals and race results.

“For me, only being results-orientated is not the way to go. Because there are so many things you can’t control that could affect whether you win or lose,” Jessie says. “The one thing I can control is showing up to the start line knowing I’ve done everything in

22 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

A WEEK IN JESSIE’S PAIN CAVE What’s it like to train with Jessie Diggins? Todd Smith found out the hard way.

Come summer, you can find Jessie Diggins skiing Vermont's backroads.

my power to be ready to go. For the last 10 years, I’ve put skiing first. I’ve kept it balanced, kept it fun.

But every training session I’ve gone out there and not slacked off. Success for me is looking back and not having to say, ‘I should’ve trained harder.’”Any doubts about her effort level were erased in the first few minutes of our time on Stratton Mountain, hiking on a steep gravel service road. She climbed up for seven minutes, then retreated back down the mountain for three minutes, and repeated that process—seven up, three down—until she reached the top. In doing

Photo courtesy USSA

so, she climbed the mountain not once, but twice.

Harder still, instead of simply climbing, Jessie was mimicking a cross country ski stride the entire time, bounding up the mountain with ski poles in a process called “moose hoofing.”

While I dissolved into a sweaty schmutz, Jessie quickly reached a level three pace—meaning her body was hovering around the point where she can feel her muscles burn. At this pace and beyond, Jessie sets up residence in an aerobic torture chamber she’s nicknamed “the pain cave,” which is located at the

convergence of her body and mind. For years, Jessie has trained both her physical body and her mental state to straddle this threshold between dealing with the pain and quitting. “Suffering is what I know how to do best,” Jessie says.

Jessie may be an Olympic gold medalist and FIS Cross Country World Cup champion, but she’s admittedly not the most technical skier or elite strategist in her sport. She also doesn’t possess raw speed. What she does have is a single intangible that defines her: “I know how to push my body to its outer limits, hold it there, and then push just a little bit more.”

During her gold medal race, Jessie made a midrace decision to push the pace of the lead pack in her second lap in an attempt to drain her opponents’ tanks so they’d be empty for the final third lap and eventual sprint. Up on Stratton Mountain, a world away from the Winter Olympics, I saw the same stern race face she wore in South Korea. She was feeling the pain of the incline, and her face contorted into pure focus. She held her pace and kept pushing forward up the mountain at a punishing speed.

Her breath grew slightly ragged but she remained steadfast, not giving a single inch to the pain that was now rising in her like a flood.

After a mere four-hour break to shower, eat lunch, and watch “Grey’s Anatomy” on Netflix, Jessie was back at it, at a strength training session at the Stratton Mountain Ski School. Our second workout of the day was a mix of more cardio, weights, and CrossFit. With Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty” blasting through the gym, Jessie was effervescent in spirit and decked out in various shades of neon, including bright pink socks. She was also a complete badass.

Here in the gym is where Jessie fine-tunes the engine that allows her to epically surge down the homestretch during races, and she didn’t waste a second in gaining all she could from every rep of every exercise.

First, we rode spin bikes to warm up. Within 10 minutes, I felt psychotic from the heat and flop sweat. Next to me, Jessie pedaled at an insane pace, completely upright and on her phone, preparing an offer for a house. “It’s got a garage and one-anda-half bathrooms!” she exclaimed excitedly as she scrolled through her email, never once breaking her intense stride.

Next, she did 10 sets of eight pull-ups in between weight training stations. I crawled into the fetal position as she walked across a tightrope, balancing while simultaneously heaving a medicine ball onto the rubber floor and catching it on its bounce back.

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR (Yeah, that happened.) After two hours, I left the gym so tired I promptly collapsed into my hotel bed with the weight of a corpse.

The next day at 9am sharp was our third training session, the one in which I became roadkill.

To build her endurance, Jessie was out on an hourand-a-half long roller ski on the deserted roads that climb through the rolling Green Mountains.

She was skiing with members of the U.S. women’s cross country ski team. They skied in rhythmic unison, a locomotive of ponytails and sinewy muscle. I, on the other hand, rode Jessie’ bike as the caboose. I tapped out after just 20 minutes, during which, under an oven broiler of a sun, I rode up a steep mountain road for nine straight minutes (!) and my body melted like the freak at the end of “The Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Our three workouts were only a fraction of her weekly regiment, too. Over the course of the week, Jessie would amazingly endure seven more hours of intense roller skiing (sprints and long distance runs), five more hours of strength training, and a three hour run on the Appalachian Trail. And that was considered her easy week.

Jessie knows winter skiers are made in the summer. It is a truth that fills her bones like marrow. That’s why she was out there grinding in the wilderness. Climbing mountains, hurling boulders, and on-road roller skiing for hours was where she was forged into a champion. In Vermont and at the infamous Snow Farm in New Zealand was where the pain was made malleable, bending the fire inside of her muscles into the steel that fills her veins.

There was a moment on Stratton Mountain during that first workout that solidified Jessie’

badassery. Near the top we came upon a crew of construction workers doing maintenance on the service road. The men were grizzled and snorting and intimidatingly blocking the road with their dump trucks and rumbling skid steer. I loitered on their periphery thinking that it would be a good time to stop and turn around. We were almost to the top anyway, and Jessie had already done more than enough. But she unrelentingly charged straight ahead at the construction zone. Focused in her mind was her upcoming four-month winter professional season in Europe. It may have only been June, but the hike up Stratton Mountain was another necessary, utilitarian chore Jessie knew she had to complete to build her base conditioning to continue to compete at the highest level.

As she approached the horde of working men and their heavy machinery, her stern race face was back and it was clear that nothing was going to stand in her way. To Jessie, no obstacle is insurmountable. Not the barren desert of a four-decade American medal drought in cross country skiing at the Olympics. Not her legendary opponents from Norway and Sweden. Not the unfathomable volume of her training hours. Not the vice grip of nerves on race day. Not the suffocating confines of her pain cave. And certainly not the industrial roadblock that was in front of her now.

She did not back down a single inch, and the men paused their labor to let her pass. Jessie was an athlete at work and she had a job to do. Seven up, three down. No matter what, she was determined to finish climbing this mountain. Twice. ` Todd Smith is the co-author of Jessie Diggins' of her story Brave Enough.

Sophie Caldwell and Jessie Diggins training this summer.

Tara Geraghty-Moats, triumphant at last as a World Cup winner.

TARA GERAGHTY-MOATS’ DREAM COME TRUE

Ever since she was a 9-year-old girl launching off the Storrs Hill ski jump near her home in West Fairlee, Tara Geraghty-Moats has loved ski jumping. And since then, she's been thinking about one thing: becoming the best Nordic combined female athlete in the world.

This may have been a goal she accomplished long ago: She’s been on the U.S. Ski Jumping Team for many years and was competitive on the international level as a junior in both cross-country and biathlon. In 2019 and the first part of 2020, she dominated the first Continental Cup for Nordic Combined.

But until December 18, 2020 when the first Nordic Combined World Cup was held in Ramsau, Austria, there was no such trophy or competition for women. Which made the chance for Tara to win in that inaugural event all the sweeter. “It’s an actual dream come true,” Tara said after the cross-country race, which she won by 1.5 seconds.

Nordic Combined, an event where an athlete’s start in the cross-country half of the event is determined by their finishes in the ski jumping portion, has remained the last winter Olympic sport that is only open to men. For decades Tara Geraghty-

Photo by Nordic Focus

Moats has been aiming to change that. She was deeply disappointed when a women’s event was passed over for the 2022 Olympics and is now gunning to compete in the first Olympic event in 2026, when she will be 32.

Last season, when the sport debuted at the Continental Cup level and Tara easily won five of the nine events, and finished second in two of them. For the first time, a women’s Nordic Combined event was introduced at the Youth Olympic Games last February and Tara was there as a role-model athlete, a part she has been quietly playing off the stage for some time.

TED KING’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURES This past year could have been a major bummer for Ted King. In 2019, he and his wife Laura started what quickly became one of the most popular events on the gravel racing circuit, Rooted Vermont. The Richmond, Vt-based event brought together both top cyclists and local amateurs in a celebration of all things Vermont: gravel riding, good beer and some of Ted'’s own UnTapped maple syrup – a business he helped found with members of the Cochran family and a few other Vermont locals. It sold out. It was scheduled to happen again in 2020, but, like most of the events on race calendars, it was sidelined by Covid-19.

Photo by USSA

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 23

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR That didn’t stop Ted. He may have won a lot of races in his years as a professional cyclist, Tour de France competitor and the king of gravel, but since retiring as a pro and moving to Richmond in 2018, his focus has been as much on getting other people out cycling and, in particular, gravel riding, as it has been on his own riding.

Like a Tour leader dragging the pack in his slipstream, Ted launched DIY Gravel to pull other riders into celebrating the biggest gravel events that were canceled by riding similar courses on their home turf. The season began with Rasputitsa on April 18 and ended on October 24 with the challenge to ride Big Sugar, a 100-mile ride through the dirt and gravel roads of Arkansas’s Ozark Mountains. As part of DIY Gravel, there were results to log, Strava routes to post and prizes to win.

More than 3,000 people participated, checking in from around the world.

Then Ted upped the ante for himself. Over the past six months he did three insanely difficult rides. In July, as his tribute to Dirty Kanza (the 200-mile gravel race across Kansas that is now known as Garmin UnBound), he did a 310-mile ride traversing Vermont on a diagonal on trails and old roads, using a route mapped out

by Joe Cruz, the bikepacking authority from Pownal. He did it in 23 hours.

Ted called it his hardest ride ever.

“I love that ride because it’s something of an evolution of me and my cycling career. The route is a riff off the paved 200 on 100, but unlike that route which is entirely paved, this one links Canada to Massachusetts on 90% gravel roads, class 4 roads, and nothing but chunky terrain the entire way,” he said. “Any point to point route is an undertaking, but this was just something of a next level, all-day ride."

In early November, Ted King set a new course record at the Arkansas High Country Race. He rode the 1,000 miles of mixed surface with 80,000 feet of climbing in the Ozark backcountry in 4 days, 20 hours, and 51 minutes.

Ted was looking for a way to start off 2021 on the right foot. ““Why don’t you ride the 200 on 100,” his wife Laura suggested, referring to the border-toborder ride down Vermont’s Route 100.

As he noted on his Instagram account,

24 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

Ted King, fattening up for winter.

Photo courtesy Ted King.

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR

Paula Moltzan got her groove back this season .. and it led to the podium. Photo by Ryan Mooney/USSA

“I could think of a two hundred reasons to say no, or 206 to be exact, but none of them were enough to eliminate this kind of type 2 fun from my January 1.”

PAULA

MOLTZAN’S

SECOND

ACT

Like her teammate Ryan Cochran-

Siegle, Paula Moltzan has been competing at the World Cup level in skiing for nearly a decade. Growing up on the same Minnesota ski hill that turned out Lindsay Vonn, Paula was racing the World Cup by age 18 and won the World Junior Championship in slalom

in 2015 and was scoring World Cup points a year later. Then, for 2016/17 she was dropped from the U.S. Team. It was late summer and she hadn’t made plans for college as she had assumed she would be in Europe racing. The University of Vermont scooped her up.

At UVM, with coaches such as Tim Kelley to work with, fellow Catamounts such as Canadian Olympic slalom skier Laurence St. Germain as friends and a boyfriend, Ryan Mooney, a former alpine racer and whitewater kayaker, who became her ski technician, Paula

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 25

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR

While she was competing at the University of New Hampshire, Elle Purrier was lightning fast. But few could have anticipated she'd shatter the mile record just years later.

relaunched her career on her own terms… all while pursuing pre-med courses at UVM as a bio-chem major.

Last season, she and Mooney traveled on their own dime to the World Cup and she managed to score enough World Cup points to get back on the U.S. Team. Then, over the summer, she joined his family rafting business, Crab Apple Whitewater in northwestern Massachusetts and worked hard on her fitness. By September the couple were engaged.

Paula came into this season stronger than ever. In her first World Cup in

26 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

Soelden, Austria on October 10, 2020, she finished 10th in the giant slalom– her best World Cup finish ever and was the top American. From there, she went on to win the Italian National Championships in early November and over Thanksgiving, the time she might have been racing at Killington had the coronavirus not upended the FIS travel schedule, she took second in a World Cup parallel slalom in Lech. Since then, Paula has earned a 9th and 14th, which on a circuit where simply breaking into the top 30 is a challenge, is impressive.

ELLE PURRIER’S YEAR OF SHATTERED RECORDS

The year 2020 will be remembered as the time the daughter of two dairy farmers from Northern Vermont broke one of the longest-held records in track and field: Olympic gold medalist Mary Decker Slaney’s American record for running an indoor mile.

As a student at Richford High School, Elle broke pretty much every high school running record in Vermont.

At University of New Hampshire, she became the school’s most decorated athlete of all time. After she graduated, she signed with New Balance in 2018

and has since been spinning heads.

Elle put the world on notice when, in the fall of 2019 she ran neck and neck with her New Balance teammate Jenny Simpson across the finish of New York’s Fifth Avenue Mile race – both women breaking previous records.

Simpson, the eight-time winner, crossed in 14:16:1. Elle, a relative unknown, had a time of 14:16:2.

On Feb. 8, 2020, at the Millrose Games in New York she sprinted the final 200 yards on the indoor track to post a new American record of 4:16:85, taking four seconds off Decker’s 37-year record. It is the

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR second fastest indoor mile in history: In 2016 Ethiopia’s Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia set the world record, 4:13.31.

Elle is a strong candidate for a medal (or two) at the 2020 Olympics, but the question is in what?

While most competitions were canceled this past summer, Elle and her teammates made it to Hartford Ct. for a sparsely-attended meet called “Track is Back.” There, on an outdoor track at Hall High School, she ran the 800 in 2:00:70. It was the fifth fastest time on an outdoor track that’s ever been recorded, worldwide.

“It reminds me of a high school meet because it is so small,” Elle told The Hartford Courant after the race.

“It’s kind of weird to think right now if I made the [U.S.] team, I’d be in Tokyo,” Elle said. “It’s still kind of weird to think about — what if?”

Though she claims that at heart she’s a miler, Elle also enjoys the 5k and qualified for the 5000 meter at the 2019 World Championships, where she finished 15th. In August, running on the Wellesely, Mass., high school track she ran 1500 meters in 4:00.77.

The new track and field Olympic team trials are schedule to take place in Eugene Orgeon June 18-21. Elle has not said what events she plans to run.

Instead of racing, Elle spent much of the year milking cows, scraping the barn stalls and helping her folks handle what would be their final year as dairy farmers in Franklin County. In late December, Elle shared a video of a truck snaking down a dirt road along with a heart-wrenching post saying her family had sold off their dairy herd. “The things that matter and are real in the dairy industry don’t make the media.

Things like the look on my dad’s face after the cows left and he was standing in a near empty barn,” she wrote.

However, she also noted an upside: in 2020 she also married her highschool sweetheart and neighboring dairy farmer Jamie St. Pierre so Elle will have a second job as a Vermont dairy farmer for a while longer.

VERA

RIVARD’S

LONG

SWIMS

For the past two years, Vera Rivard has made Vermont Sports’ Athletes of the Year list. And she’s only 16. This year, the phenom who spends much of her summers at home in Derby, Vt. raised the stakes for herself.

Vera Rivard, the first American woman to complete a crossing of the English Channel in two years.

On July 5, she joined in the group of swimmers who would plunge into the waters off Manhattan to start the 20 Bridges Race (formerly the Manhattan Island Race). The 28.5-mile swim took her through strong currents and under both the George Washington and Brooklyn Bridges. Vera finished the swim in 7 hours, 53 minutes. ““I didn’t see a lot of trash during my swim

Photo courtesy D. Rivard

but that’s mostly because I’d heard stories before and thought I’m just not gonna look at the river” she told Vermont Sports writer Sophie Hiland.

“That was a very, very good tactic.”

Of the 16 men and women who did the race this year, Vera finished sixth.

And that was just a warm-up. In early September she splashed into the waves off Dover, England and

battled the currents for 14 hours and 10 minutes, before reaching the coast of France. Her route took her on an S curve that covered 33 miles. She is only the second American woman to complete the swim since 2018. During the swim Vera wore the swim cap Dorsi Reynolds, her coach at the Upper Valley Aquatic Center had given to her before Reynolds succumbed to cancer in 2018.

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 27

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR

Raised on Bear Mountain moguls at Killington, Hannah Soar Photo by USSA

Vera could have hung up her swim cap on after the Channel but her ambition is to complete the triple crown of distance swimming and do the 20-mile ocean swim to California’s Catalina Island.

HANNAH SOAR BUMPED IT UP Killington is known for breeding moguls and mogul skiing greats such as Donna Weinbrecht and Hannah Kearney.

Now there’s another name to add

28 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

to that list: Hannah Soar. Soar grew up driving to Killington from her home in Connecticut most weekends and moved to Vermont to attend the Killington Mountain School. As a senior there, she burst onto the World Cup in 2017 at age 17 and has been gradually moving up the ranks.

In December 2019, Hannah earned her first World Cup podium – a third in Dual Moguls at an event held in China.

She followed that up with a silver in Dual in February in Deer Valley, Utah and ended the shortened season ranked fifth overall in the World Cup standings.

This season, in the three World Cups that have taken place so far, Hannah has shown consistently strong finishes scoring a fifth, a third and a seventh, putting her in fourth place overall.

Though she has been training with the U.S. Team in Park City Utah and

taking classes there, Hannah still considers herself a Vermonter. Over the holidays she was back home, skinning up Pico. She’s also been a volunteer and advocate for Vermont Adaptive.

On June 20, the date of the Virtual Vermont Adaptive Ride, Soar and fellow KMS grad and U.S. Ski Team mogul skier Alex Lewis rode 100 miles, finishing up part of their pledge to ride 2000 miles to raise funds for the non-

ATHLETES OF THE YEAR profit that helps people of all abilities access outdoor sports. ”Now that I have the time off due to the Coronavirus pandemic, I thought it would be a great time to get involved and show my support,” Hannah said.

MIRNA VALERIO’S OTHER BIG WIN Mirna Valerio will be the first to tell you that she doesn’t have a huge case of trophies at home and may not have ever won a big race. But she has certainly competed in them. At 45, Mirna has done 11 marathons and 14 ultramarathons, including the grueling, 120-mile TransRockies. She’s made the cover of Runner’s World and in 2018 was named a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

She has sponsors such as LL Bean, Leki, Merrell, Hydro Flask and others. She has 117,000 followers on Instagram.

In 2019 she moved from Brooklyn, N.Y. to Montpelier, Vt. ““When I made the turn off Memorial Drive and drove down Main Street, I saw two banners,” she told Vermont Sports in August 2020 for a cover story, “The New Face of Fitness. “One was a Black Lives Matter banner, the other was a Pride flag. I thought “Okayyyy. I can live here. This isn’t Georgia. ” (Before Brooklyn, she had been teaching at a school in Georgia.

Mirna competed in the Los Angeles marathon and three other races in 2020 before Covid-19 canceled events. With a knee injury to nurse, Mirna began to bike, Nordic ski and recently took up alpine skiing. .

If the hallmark of a great athlete is their ability to inspire others, Mirna, a.k.a. The Mirnavator, is at the top of the podium. The author of the "Fat Girl Running" blog, she has helped redefine what a runner looks like for new generations. And as a Black athlete, she’s fought hard for racial equity.

This year, Mirna replaced her race schedule with a full calendar of Zoom and socially-distanced in-person meetings as she helped businesses ranging from Darn Tough to Merrell work to combat racism in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as others worldwide, understand what contributes to racial inequity and exclusion and what they could do to change. She is, truly, one of Vermont’s most valuable Athletes of the Year.

Running strong, in 2020 Mirna Valerio switched from racing to helping companies combat racism.

Photo courtesy Mirna Valerio

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 29

Explore 60 Miles of Scenic Mountain Trails Cross-Country Skiing & Snowshoeing Rentals Home to von Trapp Brewing & Bierhall Austrian-Inspired Rooms & Restaurants Season Passes Available Online 700 Trapp Hill Road, Stowe VT www.trappfamily.com • 800.826.7000

WINTER CHALLENGE

S O C I A L L Y - D I S T A N T

2021

Ski and snowshoe the Blueberry Hill/Moosalamoo Trails

FROM JANUARY 1ST TO MARCH 15TH

to challenge yourself and compete for end of season prizes!

OUTDOOR FIRE PITS

will be open on the weekends.

PRIZES AWARDED FOR

most miles and most days skied & snowshoed!

LIMITED INDOOR SPACES available for single-household rental. Local snacks and drinks and hot soup available for purchase!

FREE INTRO

to skiing & snowshoeing mini-lesson available Saturdays at 10:30am!

For more details about the challenge and to save time by filling out the required COVID forms prior to your arrival, head to

MOOSALAMOO

blueberryhilltrails.com 30 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

V E R M O N T

GEAR

NEW WINTER ESSENTIALS

VERMONT’S TURNING OUT SOME GREAT NEW GEAR FOR WINTER. HERE ARE SOME NEW FAVORITES THAT ARE GETTING US OUTDOORS.

Fischer Aerolite

Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast Coyote Provisions Quilted Shirt Jacket

Floss-o-Fur neckwarmer

BEE WARM A new product out of Middlebury, VT with a great story behind it is the Floss-o-Fur neckwarmer. Mike Kiernan, an emergency physician at Porter Hospital and his family have been working to increase Vermont’s pollinator population through a nonprofit, Bee the Change. One of the things Bee the Change does is to encourage planting species such as milkweed, whose leaves Monarch butterflies rely on to raise their young. Kiernan and his daughter Emily hit on the idea of using the feathery floss from wild-harvested Vermont milkweed pods as insulation, a replacement for goose down with similar insulating properties but less allergenic.

As an Indiegogo project, Floss-o-Fur has already more than doubled its goal

and is offering its vegan neckwarmers in six patterns, starting at $40. Every neckwarmer sold goes to fund 180 square feet of pollinator habitat.

CHECK OUT THIS NEW VT BRAND Another product we love from a new Vermont brand, is Coyote Provisions Quilted Shirt Jacket ($89). It’s a warm quilted polyester/cotton (70%/30%) jacket that weigh in at 10 oz. The front snaps easily and the rear stretch panel gives it a tailored look. It can be worn as either a shirt or light jacket over something else. It’s our new go-to layer. Even better, Coyote makes clothes in small batches and source things locally and ethically wherever possible. And every purchase offsets 200 lbs of carbon.

START SKATING LIKE PRO Skate skiing is a full-body workout that is hard to beat. Fischer has been using air cores (as opposed to foam cores) in its race skis and this year brought that technology down to its recreational Aerolite skate skis. The Fischer Aerolite 60 is the perfect entry into skate skiing and comes with step-in Turnamic bindings (for $269.85, skis and bindings) that are compatible with NNN, Turnamic or Prolink boot soles.

Find them at Outdoor Gear Exchange in Burlington. Umiak Outfitters in Stowe or Onion River Sports in Montpelier.

Great for: racing laps around the Trapp Family Lodge trails in Stowe or at Rikert Nordic Center in Middlebury —both have snowmaking.

UPGRADE YOUR BACKCOUNTRY BETA In Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast, Waterbury Center’s David Goodman shared 50 of the best backcountry lines he discovered over years of tracing maps and talking with ski pioneers. In the book, he tells the fascinating stories behind them. In December, the second edition came out in paperback ($17.95.) It expands on the first and adds in more secret stashes, along with some of the recent developments in backcountry zones by groups such as the Rochester/Randolph Sport Trails Alliance and Granite Backcountry Alliance. If you own skins and live in Vermont you need this book, considered the Bible of backcountry skiing in the East.

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 31

VERMONT

SPORTS

LISTING YOUR EVENT IN THIS CALENDAR

IS FREE AND EASY. VISIT VTSPORTS.COM/ SUBMIT-AN-EVENT OR E-MAIL EDITOR@

VTSPORTS.COM. ALL AREA CODES ARE 802.

ALL LOCATIONS ARE IN VERMONT, UNLESS

NOTED. FEATURED EVENTS, IN YELLOW, PAY A NOMINAL FEE.

NOTE THAT COVID-19 MAY IMPACT EVENTS AND DATES SO PLEASE CHECK DIRECTLY WITH ORGANIZERS FOR UPDATES.

RUNNING/HIKING/ SNOWSHOEING JANUARY 22 | Snowshoe Romp, Montpelier Join Onion River Outdoors' annual snowshoe romp from 6-8pm. Fun, festive and free!

Demo snowshoes are available for the 1/2 mile lantern lit loop, along with hot chocolate, ice cream and a warm fire. Come by the old shelter in Hubbard Park and celebrate but please have a face covering, socially distance, and follow the state Covid-19 guidelines. onionriver.com

FEBRUARY 2 | Face Race, Suicide 6, Woodstock Time to Face It...Our Sixth Annual Snowshoe "Face Race." Enjoy bragging rights that you snowshoed up Suicide Six's famous black diamond trail "The Face" and returned down "Easy Mile". Course distance is approximately 1.5 miles, with 600 vertical feet ascent up "The Face." suicide6.com 27 | Sugarhouse Snowshoe 5K/10K Shelburne A unique race for competitive athletes as well as more relaxed race walkers. This year with a 10K division. Starting at Shelburne Sugarworks racevermont.com

RACE & EVENT GUIDE

MARCH

14 | Pi Day 3.14 Miler, Burlington You’re welcome to fun run your own distance for a virtual race or join the race on the 3.14-mile course. runvermont.com 12-13| Snow Devil Ultra Snowshoe Race, Pittsfield Race anywhere from a 5K to a 100-mile marathon at this ultra event on the Green Mountain Trails. Note: may be postponed again, pending Covid regulation. peak races,com 13| 4th Annual Leprechaun Dash 5K/10K, Shelburne Race to the pot of gold! Each of our first place overall finishers (all 4 of them), plus one lucky post-race raffle winner will each receive free entries for the 2021 RaceVermont series. racevermont.com

APRIL 10| 14thAnnual Half Marathon Unplugged, Burlington A single day of racing with start waves of 200 entrants at 30-minute intervals commencing at 8:00AM. The start and finish will be at Waterfront Park and the course will be outand-back along the Burlington Bike Path with a two-mile loop in Colchester midway through the race. runvermont.com 6-15 | Peak Bloodroot, Pittsfied Race through the rugged foothills of the Green Mountains in the500-miler on Wednesday, a 100-miler on Friday, followed by the 50-miler, 30-miler, 10-miler and kids’ hike on Saturday. peakraces.com

24 | l Paul Mailman 10-Miler and 5K, Montpelier A race primarily on dirt roads, this race ahs been the Road Runners Club of America 2019 Vermont 10-Mile State Championship and part of the Central Vermont Runners race series. cvrunners.org

MAY 1 | Northeast Kingdom Marathon, Island Pond A free USATF certified selfsupported half/full marathon designed to support Island Pond – a small former railroad town nestled deep within the Northeast Kingdom. brightonrecreationvt.com 1 | Sap Run, St. Johnsbury Join a 5k run and/or pancake breakfast at the Welcome Center. The Street Festival will be held on Saturday from 10a-3p on Railroad Street.All part of the World Maple Festival. worldmaplefestival.org 8 | Shelburne 5K/10K/Half-Marathon, Shelburne Brand new for 2021, this is going to be a beautiful half marathon course.

Leaving Shelburne Field House, you'll run south past the Shelburne Museum, Meach Cove, vineyards, and orchard, and through some gorgeous countryside before heading back north. Almost entirely on quiet back country roads. Racevermont.com 8 | Adamant Half Marathon and Relay, Adamant This scenic figure eight course runs past the hills and ponds of Calais and East Montpelier. Part of the Central Vermont Runners race series. cvrunners.org

13 | Road to the Pogue, Woodstock Race 6.1 miles along the carriage trails of Mount Tom at the Marsh-BillingsRockefeller National Historic Park, paced by Icelandic ponies. roadtothepogue.com 18 | Barre Town Spring Run 5K, Barre Central Vermont Runners host this race from the Barre Town Recreation facility. cvrunners.org 16 | Vermont Sun Half Marathon, 10K & 5K, Lake Dunmore Starts and finishes at Branbury State Park on Lake Dunmore, a spectacularly beautiful and pristine place to run. Our courses are mostly shaded. Amenities include digital photos, post race food and music, aid stations every 1.5 miles, custom awards to top 5 overall, top 3 in every 5 year age group, tech shirts, Massage, finishers medals and more. vermontsuntriathlonseries.com

22 | Kingdom Games Dandelion Run, Derby Choose between a half marathon, a 10K, a four-mile, a two mile, or a one-mile run or walk through the dandelion fields and the hilly but beautiful Northeast Kingdom. kingdomgames.co

JUNE 6 | Covered Bridges Half Marathon, Woodstock Rrun 13.1 miles through scenic covered bridges around Woodstock, starting at Suicide Six Ski Area. Registration for 2020 deferred runners opens March 29 and for new runners opens April 19. cbhm.com

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12 | 42nd Annual Capital City Stampede, Montpelier Central Vermont Runners hosts this 10K road race out and back, half on paved roads and half on dirt. cvrunners.org 29 | 20th Annual Basin Harbor 5K & 10K A 5K and 10K at beautiful Basin Harbor – a spectacular seasonal resort on the shores of Lake Champlain. Racevermont.com

BIKING

racevermont.com

FEBRUARY 20 | Winterbike 2021, East Burke Demo fatbikes, participate in group rides at all levels of experience, attend clinics and more at this epic wintertime celebration of all things fatbiking on the trails of Kingdom Trails. kingdomtrails.org

APRIL 17 | Muddy Onion, Montpelier Onion River Outdoors puts on the season opener with rides of 36.9 or 21.3 miles and divisions for everythign from fat bikes to singlespeeds. Come for the mud, stay for the BBQ post-ride. onionriver.com 24 | Rasputitsa, East Burke Rasputitsa is back and it's more than a gravel cycling race.

It’s a homegrown self-supported challenge of the mind, body, and soul that instills people with a connected sense of place and purpose. Ride 40k or 100k (there's already a waitlist) on the muddy, icy, gnarly back roads of the NEK Race it or ride it. rasputitsagravel.com

JUNE 11-13 | Bike the Kingdom, Derby Ffour days of riding: The three-day Tour de Kingdom including The Moose, a 103 mile “timed event” on wide open roads in June and our one-day Fly to Pie, a 26.2 mile “timed event” on mostly dirt roads through “The Gut” of the Kingdomkingdomgames.co

19 | VT Monster, Ludlow This is a challenging course primarily on quiet gravel roads, with plenty of climbing, flowing descents and epic vistas Monster is best attacked with a cyclocross bike, though road, mountain or fat bikes are also capable of handling the courses: 77 and 50 miles of epic and very challenging off-road riding. The 50-miler includes about 5,000 feet of climbing and the 77-miler features over 9,000 feet of climbing. vtmonster.com 27 | Central Vermont Cycling Tour, Montpelier An original gravel grinder, this ride takes you either 15, 30 or 60 miles of scenic country roads. Look forward to great food, convenient rest stops, well marked courses, maple creemees, and hula hoops. All to raise funds to build the Cross Vermont Trail. crossvermont.org.

JULY 16-19 | Farm to Fork Champlain Islands Adventure, South Hero Ride a guided tour past stunning lake and mountain views, villages, quiet meandering roads, fresh and fantastic local foods—this is Vermont, the heart of the small farm movement. farmtoforkfitness.com 17 | Raid Lamoille, Craftsbury A challenging 25 or 55 mile route that includes a significant amount of packedgravel riding and some major climbing segments. Some would call it a dirt road randonee, others a gravel grinder, we just call it a Raid. This is not a race.

AUGUST

JUNE

1 | Rooted Vermont, Richmond Join Ted and Laura King for a weekend long celebration of gravel roads, community and all things VT, with necessary Covid precautions in place. Race the long course (82 miles) and 8,000 feet of climbing or go your own pace and do the 48mile short course. And an epic afterparty featuring local foods and brews follows. rootedvermont.com

26 | Vermont Sun Triathlon, Lake Dunmore, Salisbury Try your hand at the USA Triathlon Vermont State Championships. Swim 1600 yards, bike 28 miles, and tun 6.2 miles. The classic, pristine course starts and finishes at Branbury State Park. Participants swim, bike and run around beautiful Lake Dunmore. Triathlon repeats July 18 and Aug. 15. vermontsuntriathlonseries.com

7 | Tour de Slate, Middletown Springs Ride a regular or metric century, 36 or 25 miles -- or ride the D&H Rail Trail. This is a great way to explore the emerging trails and quiet roads of Slate Valley. tourdeslate.org 7 | Vermont Gran Fondo, Bristol Ride Vermont's infamous four gaps in the Gran Fondo with 130 miles and 11,ooo feet of climbing or opt for an 85 or 40-miler. All will take you over heart-stopping hill climbs with breathtaking views. vermontgranfondo.com 29 | Vermont Overland Grand Prix, Ascutney The Overland is a 50-mile dirt road bicycle race featuring 6,000 feet of climbing, seven sectors of “Vermont pavé” (unmaintained ancient public roads), two well-fortified sag stops, a magnificently scenic route and an awesome party afterwards. It’s the ultimate overland adventure ride. Open dirt roads, amazing scenery and an epic course. vermontoverland.com

SKIING JANUARY 21 | Influential Women in Snowboarding, Stowe Zoom in for the Vermont Ski + Snowboard Museum's Red Bench discussion, hosted by Peter Graves. vtssm.com 24 | Women's Ski Day, Woodstock Woodstock Nordic Center hosts a day of clinics and demos for women. Capped at 50 participants so register ahead. nensa.net

FEBRUARY 27 | Camel’s Hump Challenge, Huntington A rigorous wilderness 13-mile ski tour and race where backcountry Nordic skiers traverse around the perimeter of 4,083-foot Camel’s Hump to raise awareness for Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementia. act.alz.org

JULY 26 | Branbury Classic, Lake Dunmore, Salisbury Paddle 1.5 miles, bike 14 miles, and run 3.1 miles. Our classic, pristime course starts and finishes at Branbury State Park. Participants paddle, bike and run around beautiful Lake Dunmore. vermontsuntriathlonseries.com

TALKS & WORKSHOPS JANUARY 19 | GearX Talk Nordic, Virtual Join at 7:30pm on Instagram Live to chat all things nordic skiing: the full spectrum of setups, from classic to skate to XCD and everything in between. Most importantly, we will be answering your questions, so get them ready! @outdoorgearexchange 26 | GearX Talk Backcountry, Virtual Learn about the full spectrum of setups, from lightas-a-feather skimo to AT and splitboard setups that charge through all types of snow. At 7:30 @ outdoorgearexchange 30, Feb. 27 | Winter Tracking, Bradford This Roots School class will be predominantly experience based, offering guided ‘dirt time’ in which students (over 16) push their skills in real tracking situations. Expect to cover a lot of snow in any weather conditions and to spend the day in the forests and fields tracking. rootsvt.com

MARCH 2 | Kandahar Mountain Race, Mad River Glen The Kandahar is a race from the top of the mountain to the bottom, over variable terrain incorporating both freeski and alpine racing technique. This event is open to all. madriverglen.com 2 | The Art of the Graphic, Stowe Zoom in for the Vermont Ski + Snowboard Museum's Red Bench discussion with the people who design ski and snowboard graphics. vtssm.com

WATER & MULTISPORTS FEBRUARY 6-March 27 | Penguin Plunge, Burlington Choose a date between February 6 and March 27 to complete their remote plunge. We’re asking all plungers to send us a video of their personal plunge event, to be included in the live stream of the Penguin Plunge celebration on March 27th! penguinplunge.org/burlington/

JAN./FEB. 2021 | VTSPORTS.COM 33

ENDGAME

LOVE AT FIRST SHOVEL

WHAT’S THERE TO LOVE IN THIS TIME-HONORED TRADITION SHARE BY NORTHERNERS? PLENTY. BY LEATH TONINO

F

or me, it was love at first shovel, love at first drift.

Growing up in Vermont, sure, clearing the walk was a chore—hit it for Mom after an initial three inches fell, hit it again later for Dad—but somehow, for some reason, the fact that the task was mandatory never diminished its allure.

No matter how arduous, no matter how sloppy, no matter how absurdly Sisyphean (progress? what’s progress when the sky is collapsing, ten bazillion flakes falling every second?), shoveling was always a game, an enticement to play both in and with the wild outdoors.

As any self-respecting Green Mountain kid would, I practiced, honing my skills, taking what the walk taught me and applying it elsewhere.

Driveway plow piles, once excavated, made incredible forts. Pillowy hillsides, given enough attention, became sled runs featuring banked turns and jumps. Throughout high school, during Adirondack mountaineering adventures, I built and camped in cozy (read: not claustrophobic) snow caves, and by the time I landed in Colorado for college, no joke, the prospect of digging avalanche test pits excited me almost as much as skiing.

Yes, indeed. Love at first ugh, at first oomph. Love at first cut-and-heave, at first plunge-and-toss.

Some consider my passion for huffing, back-busting, sweaty-yetsimultaneously-frigid labor bizarre. For instance, my uncle. At 22, when I told him that I was putting a newly minted philosophy degree to use by taking a job with the U.S. Antarctic Program (science-support shoveling at the South Pole!), he shook his head and mentioned Caterpillar tractors. I spent months on the austere, brutally flat East Antarctic Plateau, unblanketing drifted supplies: pallets of toilet paper, boxes of sirloins, construction materials, telescope hardware, the gamut. Despite 70-belowzero temps, I remained cheery, refusing to get sick of the scene, to tire of tiredness.

At the end of the earth, improbably, my adolescent hobby had morphed into a profession, into an official red parka with a faux-fur ruff.

Pros get rusty, though. My midtwenties found me trailing a girlfriend to gritty, noisy, way-too-temperate San Francisco. Our stuffy apartment deprived me of shoveling and, worse, the opportunity to routinely feel winter— burning my fingers and toes, cutting me with its sharp-edged shadows and

34 VTSPORTS.COM | JAN./FEB. 2021

silver-edged quiet. Still, for all the hummingbirds and crackheads and confusion and sirens and palm trees, I’ll admit that this urban interlude did help me better understand what, specifically, I’d been drawn to since childhood: not snow relocation or even snow sculpture, but the stirring confrontation with frozen, inhuman nature that these activities invite. Harsh nature. Powerful nature. Beautiful nature. The tactile engagement, the full-spine shiver.

And so, finally, having at last abandoned the city and temporarily resettled at 9,000 feet in Colorado’s Elk Mountains, I did the obvious: jumped on a "Help Wanted" ad in the local paper and joined a crew of roof shovelers.

Roof shovelers? Unaware that such a specialization existed, I was eager to learn what the job entailed. My hunch was that it entailed a fat dose of the primal contact I vividly remembered and sorely missed.

My hunch was proven correct.

You wake in the dark, grab your coffee, grab your harness, go. You wrestle an extension ladder into position, step gingerly from the penultimate rung, wade and burrow in search of an eye

bolt (they are as common on Colorado roofs as shingles), and anchor your rope. Hour after hour, you balance a deliberateness, a honed sensitivity to your sketchy environment, with the no-mind meditation of simply moving snow, moving snow, lifting snow, flinging snow, crushing snow, moving snow. Weeks begin and weeks end.

Weeks of blizzard, weeks of effort. And then, on a bright Saturday afternoon, a gorgeous afternoon, perhaps the prettiest afternoon in the history of the planet—calm, sunny, glittery—you tiptoe toward a log mansion’s eave, test your gear with a tug, lean out, and delicately nudge a Volkswagen of crust.

You watch the crust plummet: sparkling, shining, throwing sparks of blinding light.

You watch the crust plummet and— explode.

By chance, on that very afternoon, a young man in a nearby town died when a roof he was shoveling slid, burying him in the manner of an avalanche, pressing the air from his lungs and the life from his body. Of course, I wasn’t aware of the fatal accident, the impossible tragedy, at the moment of its occurrence. But

I heard about it that evening, after I’d descended from my log mansion, showered and cracked a beer. I have thought about it frequently ever since.

In Vermont, I think of it. With a Nor’easter scratching at my face, I think of it. In January, hitting the walk for Mom, dusting away the initial three inches of what just might morph into a three-foot dump if we’re lucky, I think of it. Gripping my shovel, gripping it harder than necessary, hood up, hunched, lumbar aching, I think and think and think: Yes, indeed, shoveling is Sysiphean, an absurd confrontation with an absurd universe.

Harsh nature. Powerful nature.

Beautiful nature.

The tactile engagement, the fullspine shiver.

Yes, indeed, a strange kind of love.

Vermont writer Leath Tonino is the author of two essay collections, most recently The West Will Swallow You (Trinity University Press, 2019). A different version of this essay originally appeared in Adventure Journal.

Play Here. Buy Here. Play Safe.

Outdoor recreation plays a vital role in both the health and economic well-being of Vermont’s communities. As members of the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance, we thank you for buying local and keeping Vermont healthy.

VOBA MEMBERS INCLUDE: ABD Culture|Alpine Luddites |Bicycle Express|Bill Supple|Bivo|Bolton Valley Resort |Burke Mountain Resort | Burlington International Airport |Burton Snowboards|Catamount Trail Association |Confluence Behavioral Health |Craftsbury Outdoor Center |Darn Tough Vermont | Equipe Sport |GM Consulting | Grassroots Outdoor Alliance|Green Mountain Club | Height of Land Publications | HULA | Kaden Apparel |Killington Resort/Pico Mountain |Kingdom Trail Association |KIT LENDER | Laura McLaughlin |Local Motion | Lyndon Institute |M.E.T. Consulting |MADRIO |Mountain Road Outfitters |Newport City Renaissance Corporation |Nor’east Trail Runs | Onion River Outdoors |Outdoor Gear Exchange |Pale Morning Media |Petra Cliffs Climbing Center | Pinnacle Outdoor Group |Place Creative Co.| PowderJet Snowboards |Power Play Sports |Press Forward PR | Rochester/Randolph Area Sports Trail Alliance |REI Co-Op |Rasputitsa |Renoun Skis | Sasha Dietschi-Cooper |Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters |Skida Headwear & Accessories |Skirack, Patagonia Vermont, Vermont Trailwear | Snowsports Industries America |Spruce Mortgage | Stoner// Andrews | Stowe Mountain Bike Academy | SunCommon |Sun Dog Creations | Ten Acre Creative |Terry Bicycles |TJ Whalen | The Orvis Company |Three Peaks Media |Timber and Stone |Trust for Public Land | Turtle Fur| Velocity Sales and Marketing | Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports |Vermont Bike & Brew | Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility| Vermont Community Loan Fund | Vermont Glove | Vermont Huts Association | Vermont Sports / Vermont Ski + Ride | Waterbury Sports | Wendy Knight | Woodstock Inn and Resort

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