12 Hours Of Snow Summit
By Keith "Keeps His Word" Eckstein
The
Daart Endurance Team competed in the 12 Hours of Snow Summit this past weekend
as a warm up for the 24 Hours race at Idyllwild on September 23.
I hadn't ridden at Snow Summit all summer, and it was great to be up in
the mountains again.
This was Daart's fourth 12-hour race, and we were looking to continue
our winning traditions.
(We've got a decent track record with two 1st place finishes and one
2nd place finish.)
Team
captain Byron Pettibone, Ron (Mr. Organic) Burian, Calvin (the Singlespeed
Creature and fellow Warrior's Society member) Mulder and yours truly made up
the team this year.
Byron decided to enter us in the open category of Vet Men.
There ended up being four other teams there.
Byron
started us off, and the dusty conditions were just that.
With everyone scrambling to get ahead of the eventual pileup at the start
of the single track, the cloud of dust rivaled Chernobyl.
The course went out Bristlecone Road, up Fern Trail, out onto 2N10, then
a right turn onto Pirates of the Caribbean, back onto 2N10, then down somehow
onto the Towne Trail, a short last grunt uphill through the Bone Yard and back
to the start/finish, about 9 miles and I don't know how much elevation.
Byron
and Ron turned in 49- to 50-minute laps all day.
Calvin on his geared bike did a 52-minute first lap, which was strange as
he is by far the strongest one on the team.
My first lap ended as a 48-minute deal.
This put us in 2nd place by about three or four minutes.
The team ahead of us extended their lead as the day wore on to about five
minutes.
We couldn't seem to break down the five-minute gap.
Then Nolan stopped by our encampment.
He was racing with some other friends of his. Nolan did a faster lap on
his single speed than Calvin did on his geared bike! Luckily for Daart, Calvin
brought his fully rigid, one-speed bike. Calvin's second and third laps he did
on that green monster.
Amazingly,
his second lap of the day was a lightning-fast 47 minutes! And his third lap was
the same. I was lucky enough to be Mr. Consistent and turned in three 48-minute
laps. After Calvin's astounding second lap, we had a strategy session and
switched the rotation around a bit, as Byron's asthma had not fared too well,
breathing in all that dust on the first lap. Calvin moved up a notch in the
rotation for his third lap.
As
I finished my third lap and handed the baton off to Calvin, we all sent him off
with yells and shouts of encouragement.
He ended up putting almost three full minutes on his competitor.
That gave Ron a nice cushion for the last lap of the day.
When Ron came in ahead of his competitor, we knew that we'd done it and
won the race.
It was a real team effort.
As
for all the other diversions at Snow Summit that day, the downhillers were
having their own race at the same time as we were. Those bikes are closer to
motorcycles than mountain bikes.
It's my belief that the two sports have diverged so much as to become
separate entities.
For 12 hours these guys rode up the chairlifts and bombed down their
course.
I don't even know how they kept track of times and how they tabulated
the race results.
Not
too many people were in attendance, but many of my acquaintances were there,
including co-Warrior's Society member James Hahn from San Diego.
James ran the race solo and completed 11 laps!
And he got 2nd place.
The 1st place finisher did 13 laps!
Our whole team did 14 laps.
James is truly an inspiration.
Marissa was there also, racing with three other women.
As I mentioned before, Nolan Ballard was racing his single speed with
three others on geared bikes.
Tam Pham, Ron Harnsberger, Jon Apostletes and his friend Ed (Jon and Ed
on their two-man team), and a bunch of guys from the Simply Fit team.
Gerrit stopped by to visit us; he was out for a social ride with the
folks from Switchback Cycles.
Orange and San Diego Counties were really well represented.
The whole day was challenging and fun, and a good vibe ran throughout all. The woman next to us was racing solo, and Katherine ended up getting 1st place in her category. A lot of good riders showed up for this one. The last time Daart Endurance raced at the 12 Hours of Snow Summit was almost three years ago, and I noticed that the level of competition has really risen since then. Next year I'd like to see some changes to the course, as the whole dang mountain is available to the promoter and, with the exception of the "Bone Yard," this year's course was identical to the last time we raced there. Also, I think I'll try the single speed next time. With Nolan's and Calvin's success, I'm interested to see how I'd do.
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