TENNESSEE PASS — Bruce Kelly isn’t into popularity contests. He’s into snowshoe contests.
“These people are going to come in here today, and they’re going to hate me,” said Kelly, organizer of the 2010 Colorado State Snowshoe Championships held Saturday at the Tennessee Pass Nordic Center. “But we’re trying to give people something they may not do on snowshoes on their own. Even the best snowshoers out there won’t go out and do what I just marked as a course out there. The best guys, the fastest snowshoers — they’ll never do that on their own.”
Kelly, in his 14th season orchestrating races for the Pedal Power Snowshoe Adventure Series under the title of his Eagle-Vail bicycle shop, knows well the simple selling points of the sport. But when it comes to the adventure race series, he’s not much interested in the “if you can walk, you can snowshoe” audience.
The Pedal Power series has carved its niche as a truly core snowshoe racing experience that takes competitors off the beaten track and into the winter wilderness. There the racers are pushed to the red line as they struggle for footing on the snow flippers in deep, loose powder at elevations approaching 11,000 feet. There is no downhill gliding, no recovery opportunities, just 10K of unadulterated pain as wobble-kneed racers tramp through the snow-covered forest at the speed of suffering.
“I’ve done a lot of different racing in my life, from running and swimming to World Cup triathlon racing, and I have to say that 10K snowshoe racing is one of the hardest sports I’ve ever done,” said Logan Wealing of Colorado Springs, who outsprinted Bernie Boettcher of Silt to earn his first snowshoe state championship title Saturday in 1 hour, 14 minutes, 57 seconds. “You may have the power, but the hardest part is the application of your power and the technical ability to really get your foot down in the right place to be able to accelerate. It’s like running, but way harder. Way harder.”
Wealing, who races under the banner of Crescent Moon Snowshoes and the Colorado Running Company, is now qualified to compete in the U.S. National Snowshoe Championship races March 5-7 in upstate New York. He finished among the top five nationally in 2008, his first year as a snowshoe racer. After a year away from the sport, he’s returned with renewed vigor, competing — and often winning — in more than a half dozen races this winter.
“It’s great to be a Colorado resident and be a part of this culture,” Wealing said. “It’s a sport of love.”
Nearly 65 racers tested their mettle at the cozy nordic center straddling the Eagle/Lake County line. And despite losing some top competitors to coinciding endurance contests such as the U.S. Winter Triathlon Championships in Utah and a Colorado COSMIC randonee race in Glenwood Springs, Kelly was surprised by what he considered a strong turnout for a race series flying below the radar.
While popular recreational snowshoe racing events such as those hosted throughout the winter at Beaver Creek resort can attract upward of 500 participants running on wide swaths of largely groomed snow, organizers and competitors in Saturday’s state championship view their event in a different light.
“It goes beyond just being able to run in a pair of snowshoes,” Kelly said. “This is technical snowshoeing with a lot of single track, and we’ve tried to stay true to that.”
And the raw appeal resonates throughout the ranks.
“The people that are out here at Bruce’s races are the people who love the huge challenge. They’re different from, say, the Beaver Creek races or a lot of other races you find,” said Anita Ortiz, a top mountain runner and ultramarathon champion from Eagle who placed second in the women’s division behind Keri Nelson of Gunnison. “I think snowshoeing in general appeals to everybody that tries it. You’re outside, in the snow, it’s beautiful — you can’t beat it for a wintertime activity that anyone can do. But hard snowshoe racing like this? You sort of have to be a glutton for punishment.”
The gluttons found their feast Saturday in the form of slippery sugar snow beneath a layer of firm crust that increased the challenge. Participants with lightweight snowshoe setups struggled to maintain traction. Even pedigreed endurance athletes found themselves panting hard as they fought for footing.
“It was harder than I thought it was going to be, for sure. There was more technique than I expected, and I kept falling,” said Gretchen Reeves, a professional mountain biker and Team Nike adventure racer from Avon. “But I figure if I do something that I think is that hard, it will make other things seem easier. So that’s good.”
The Pedal Power Snowshoe Adventure Series has a soft side as well. The five-event series contributes a portion of every entry fee to a charitable cause, be it a local charity or community member in need.
“We’ll take a couple hundred dollars from this event and put it toward Haitian relief efforts,” Kelly said. “We’ve never really been about making money. But we really enjoy helping people.”
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
Upcoming races
Jan. 30: Aria Spa & Club Winter Triathlon — 8k ski, 10k bike, 5k snowshoe; Tennessee Pass Nordic Center, Ski Cooper; 10 a.m.
Feb. 20: Street Swell Winter Triathlon No. 2 — 8k ski, 10k bike, 5k snowshoe; CMC Timberline Campus, Leadville; 10 a.m.
Visit or call 970-845-0931 for registration and information.
