Frigid Infliction
Winter Adventure Races - A Small But Enduring Tradition in the U.S.
Cliff White (ARC) / 31.01.2019
Unholy freezing temperatures. Biting cold wind. Walls of snow resulting in demoralizingly slow progress in already unfamiliar disciplines like Nordic skiing or post-holing.
For a couple of Race Directors in the Northern U.S. and a select group of racers, the above sounds like a great day in the woods.
The United States has just two true winter adventure races – the Michigan Adventure Race Winter Edition and the fittingly named Frigid Infliction in Vermont. Both have relatively long histories as far as adventure races go, resulting from the success they’ve had in drawing people out of their indoor stupors for a day of outside play during the long, cold northern winters.
Michigan Adventure Racing director and owner Mark VanTongeren has been putting on his winter race since 2012. He said his initial goal when starting the race was to fill a blank space in his state’s events calendar, but that it has grown to become one of his most popular offerings. This year’s race, which took place January 19th, saw more than 300 racers cross the finish line.
“Michigan has fairly long winters and not a lot of races of any type from December to March. So I figured that we could draw quite a few people, especially if we kept the race short and fun,” VanTongeren said. “People have cabin fever around here and just want to get out.”
The Winter Edition is three hours long and mostly takes place on foot, with a handful of special challenges, such as completing a bouldering wall solution, launching squeeze balls with giant water balloon launchers at a yeti in the woods, dropping tennis balls into a bucket from a 30-foot-high tree fort, and following a string maze through a pine forest. Whenever there’s enough snow, VanTongeren adds a snowshoe and fat-bike loop.
Chris Yager and Shawn Freebern of the Green Mountain Adventure Racing Association (GMARA) co-direct the Frigid Infliction. Founded in 2006, the 2019 race, scheduled for March 2nd, will be the fourteenth edition.
“We started this event primarily due to racer demand,” Yager said. “For years, people suggested we host a winter event and we finally relented and gave them what they wanted. More than a decade later, here we are.”
The race takes place in in Bolton Valley, with surrounding mountains that jut up 2,000 feet in every direction from the race start area at the base of a ski area. Over the years, the race has fluctuated between eight and 12 hours in length – this year, Yager and Freebern have put together a 10-hour course. Usually, the race starts before daylight, forcing racers to confront both nighttime navigation and subzero temperatures in their first few hours of the race. Two years ago, the race was shortened to an eight-hour edition and racers had the advantage of starting in the light. But that was canceled out by a temperature at the start line of minus-four degrees Fahrenheit.
“A big concern for me is having a course designed around safety,” Freebern said. “In the summer, if something bad happens and a team ends up spending an unplanned night in the backcountry, it would be lousy for all involved but generally recoverable. In the winter we've had days where it's minus 18 Farenheit. Spending a night in that kind of weather could be truly disastrous. That limits course design in many ways – for example, we don't want people ending up stuck on the wrong side of a ridge, where going downhill means getting farther from civilization, so we don't always get to use our best ideas.”
Nevertheless, there are advantages to the winter format, Yager said.
“Winter races allow us to hold events in a smaller woodland footprint, which opens up terrain that wouldn't be quite as useful in the summertime,” he said. “It also allows us to start in the morning at a time when it is still dark out; it's not for long, but teams tell great stories of their initial challenges navigating in the woods in the dark. Unlike the summer, we can often see the headlamps moving around on the ridges from quite far away; it's great to see the teams spread out and exploring as the course opens up.”
Typically, the Frigid Infliction involves cross-country skiing, snowshoeing or post-holing, and a ropes challenge such as a Tyrolean traverse. Yager said course-design can be more difficult given the requirements of each sport and the unique winter conditions.
“One interesting aspect of winter navigation is that teams can often see much further than they can in the summer. Unless there's been recent snow coating the tree, nearby CPs are likely to be visible from further away,” he said. “Another unique challenge in a true winter race is that, unlike the summer, every team leaves a track behind that other teams can follow. This potentially takes away a lot of the navigation challenge and decreases the fun and adventure factor. We have learned several techniques to reduce the impact, ranging from choices of discipline order, mini-rogaines, and allowing multiple paths through the course. Some racers miss having the entire race be point-to-point, but overall satisfaction with the events has been higher as we've learned to manage the conga line appropriately.”
The Frigid Infliction usually attracts 60 to 90 racers, but Freebern admits marketing is a bit more of a challenge than, for example, the Bitter Pill – GMARA’s summer race.
“You can talk people into trying biking, hiking, paddling, and swimming relatively easily, but ‘10 hours lost in the snow’ is less of a draw for many people,” Freebern acknowledged. “We have far more teams drop at the last minute in the winter - either due to sickness or changing weather conditions. That's a big part of the reason we're trying ‘Test Your Nettle’ type events on the same courses – three hours outside is a great introduction to a fun event, and you lose fewer toes to frostbite.”
Yager said no racers have actually lost any appendages (as far as he’s aware), but one of the wildest stories to emerge from the Frigid Infliction was in its first year, when three feet of fresh snow fell the night before and morning of the race.
“Several teams couldn't make it to event in time for the start,” he said. “We cut out almost a third of the course to keep the timing on track.”
In 2013, VanTongeren also had to deal with the consequences of a major snowstorm and subzero temperatures.
“I hung all the flags during the night in three-foot snow drifts. And then had to come back and put on the race the next day,” he said. “I slept well that night!”
VanTongeren said there’s no shortage of bloopers related to running a winter race. One year, the local ski area where the race was taking place in Michigan built a tubing run for one of his challenge activities.
“But they miscalculated the speed that the racers would be going,” he said. “We had people at the end of the run who were going way too fast, flying over the barrier at the end. We quickly lowered the starting line!”
Despite the challenges and the increased competition, VanTongeren said he wouldn’t mind seeing more winter adventure races pop up on the U.S. calendar.
“I really encourage Race Directors to consider putting on a winter race, with or without snow,” he said. “Cold weather is not really that much of a deterrent. Once people are aware of AR, the biggest challenge or barrier, in my opinion, are all the other conflicts in warm-weather months. In winter, we have very little to compete with.”
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