{"id":2442354,"date":"2019-03-30T21:04:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T03:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/smith-kelly-win-22nd-annual-grand-traverse-skimo-race\/"},"modified":"2019-04-01T07:58:48","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T13:58:48","slug":"smith-kelly-win-22nd-annual-grand-traverse-skimo-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/smith-kelly-win-22nd-annual-grand-traverse-skimo-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Smith, Kelly win 22nd annual Grand Traverse skimo race"},"content":{"rendered":"
At exactly midnight Friday, participants in the Grand Traverse ski race between Crested Butte and Aspen start the 40-mile long race across the West Elk Mountains.<\/strong>
Dean Krakel\/courtesy photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Only a couple weeks ago, Cam Smith and Rory Kelly were representing the United States at the ski mountaineering world championships in Switzerland. As incredible as that may have been, getting to come home and compete in one\u2019s own mountains is equally as fulfilling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s different in a lot of ways, for sure,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt\u2019s more of a community event and a celebration of spring, instead of people racing for their careers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Racing together for the first time, the two partnered to win Saturday\u2019s 22nd annual Grand Traverse ski mountaineering race with a time of 7 hours, 22 minutes, 30.8 seconds. The roughly 40-mile race began at midnight in Crested Butte and ended later Saturday at the base of Aspen Mountain.<\/p>\n

It was only the third time in six years the race \u2014 organized by Crested Butte Nordic \u2014 actually finished in Aspen because of conditions. In 2014, 2016 and 2018, the race was a \u201creverse,\u201d where it began and ended in Crested Butte. Prior to 2014, the Grand Traverse had only been a reverse once, way back in 1999, its second year of existence.<\/p>\n

Smith, who lives in Crested Butte, won last year\u2019s reverse alongside Carbondale\u2019s Sean Van Horn. While the reverse option provides him with some convenient luxuries, having the chance to win the race in its true and complete form was nice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is logistically easier just to stay at home, because I can just go back into my bed in the afternoon,\u201d Smith joked of the reverse. \u201cBut it\u2019s a lot more fun to finish in Aspen because that\u2019s what we\u2019re all here for. What makes the Grand Traverse cool is it\u2019s a unique traverse. It\u2019s not necessarily the coolest course or the coolest race and you can\u2019t even see it because it\u2019s all in the dark, but what makes it really unique is you get to go from one mountain town to the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith had originally planned to compete alongside noted runner and ski mountaineer Mike Foote of Montana but only a few days prior to the race had to bring in a backup in Kelly after Foote was forced to pull out because of injury. While Kelly currently calls Boulder home, he grew up in the Roaring Fork Valley and still has family in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny. I was a snowboarder growing up, so it wasn\u2019t really on my radar,\u201d Kelly said of the Grand Traverse. \u201cBoth of us were talking about it earlier \u2014 it\u2019s a race that got both us into skimo. It\u2019s the classic you hear about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair won Saturday\u2019s race by about 10 minutes over Crested Butte\u2019s Billy Laird and Jon Brown. Laird, alongside Brian Smith, won the 2017 Audi Power of Four skimo race, while Brown also was a member of the U.S. national team this season. Finishing third in 7:36:03.2 was Aspen\u2019s Eric Sullivan and Jack Linehan. Linehan was on the national team this winter as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never really feel super comfortable,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cYou always have that fear that someone is about to sneak up on you. After maybe the first hour, there were still a bunch of us together. It took a while to get that separation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Absent from this year\u2019s race were Aspen\u2019s John Gaston and Max Taam, who set the Crested Butte to Aspen course record back in 2017 (6:37:38.6). Both are veteran members of the U.S. national team and won Aspen Skiing Co.\u2019s Power of Four skimo race, a race they\u2019ve long dominated, earlier in March.<\/p>\n

Winning the women\u2019s side of things Saturday at the Grand Traverse were Breckenridge\u2019s Nikki LaRochelle and Kate Zander, who, yes, are members of the U.S. national team. LaRochelle won the Power of Four earlier this month alongside Aspen\u2019s Jessie Young.<\/p>\n

LaRochelle and Zander finished in 8:24:14.3, nearly an hour in front of second-place finishers Lyndsay Meyer of Aspen and Montana\u2019s Michela Adrian. In third among women were Crested Butte\u2019s Hannah Smith and Emma Lohr.<\/p>\n

Ross Herr and Jill Seager won the co-ed race by about 45 minutes over Crested Butte\u2019s Stevie Kremer and Dan Loftus. Denver\u2019s Ben Corwin and Laura Stamp were third.<\/p>\n

acolbert@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At exactly midnight Friday, participants in the Grand Traverse ski race between Crested Butte and Aspen start the 40-mile long race across the West Elk Mountains.Dean Krakel\/courtesy photo Only a couple weeks ago, Cam Smith and Rory Kelly were representing the United States at the ski mountaineering world championships in Switzerland. As incredible as that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2442354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 01:19:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2442354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2442354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2442354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2442354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}