Xavier Fane/courtesy
Gunnison’s Cam Smith closed out his Grand Traverse Triple Crown title over the weekend by winning Saturday’s trail run and taking sixth in Sunday’s mountain bike race.
The annual endurance races, put on by Crested Butte Nordic, are traverses from Crested Butte to Aspen, and back. The mountain run is 40.7 miles with a finish near the base of Aspen Mountain that includes more than 6,000 feet of climbing and more than 7,000 feet of descents. The mountain bike race was 41.2 miles back to the finish in Crested Butte, with more than 7,600 feet of climbing.
Smith, 23, won Saturday’s foot race with a time of 5 hours, 38 minutes, 18.79 seconds, a course record. Lafayette’s John O’Neill was second in 5:57:08.85 and Oregon’s Max King was third in 6:23:55.09.
Winning the women’s side of thing was Park City’s Liz Stephen with a time of 7:17:38.24, good for 16th overall. Stephen is a three-time Olympic cross-country ski racer originally from Vermont. Aspen’s Caroline Tory finished 18th overall in 7:18:49.06, while Gunnison’s Liz Smith was the third woman to finish, taking 23rd overall in 7:31:33.22.
Boulder’s Ryan Petry won Sunday’s mountain bike race in 3:57:10.66. Woody Creek’s Mike Sampson was second in 4:01:56.15 and Lakewood’s Thomas Herman, who won last month’s Power of Four mountain bike race for the second consecutive year, was third in 4:11:22.01.
Fairplay’s Marlee Dixon, who won the 2018 Power of Four alongside Herman, was the top woman Sunday, taking 10th overall in 5:16:27.18. Emilee Hazelden and Cornelia Hug, both from New York, finished side-by-side in 5:34:46.27 to finish second behind Dixon and 17th overall.
The Grand Traverse Triple Crown was awarded to the top finishers from all three GT races, which includes the winter’s ski mountaineering race, which goes from Crested Butte to Aspen.
Smith won the overall title with a three-race combined time of 17:59:08.6. King was second in 20:39:36.13, and Christopher Jones, also of Oregon, was third in 21:14:48.11.
The women’s Triple Crown title went to Katie Sodergren of Breckenridge. She was 10th overall with a three-race time of 26:12:31.07. Ridgeway’s B. Warren was second among women and Carbondale’s Molly Nickerson was third.