Ryan Stuart, explore's gear editor
Ryan Stuart's tell all blog spot on his gear addiction and life and times as explore magazine's gear editor
Snow to Surf: The best day of the year
Sunday was Snow to Surf day here in the Comox Valley. Snow to Surf is Canada’s oldest adventure race and like the name suggests teams of up to nine members race from Mount Washington to Comox Marina in eight legs: run up and ski down, cross country ski, two running legs, mountain biking, kayaking, road biking and a final two person canoe across Comox harbour.
I organize a team every year. This year it was a men’s team called Strathcona Park Lodge – the business of one of our team mates. We’re all competitive amateur athletes. We don’t hold illusions of grandeur, but we expect to do well, which we did. We placed sixth overall, third in our category, missing members. Just to be clear, missing members refers to our team having less than the usual nine team mates (we had eight) not to any admission of misplaced appendages.
I did the first leg – the run up ski down. I ran straight up a black diamond run for 400 metres, put on my skis and tucked all the way to the bottom of the ski hill. It hurt…a lot. I could taste blood at the finish line and my quads were so cramped I could barely walk. I’ll have some pictures to post up soon.
Now I’d like to put a challenge out to everyone out there: The Bonzai team have won Snow to Surf for the last 10 years straight. They need to be beaten. If you want to be on a kick butt team I have a friend putting one together. He’s looking for cyclists and paddlers. Let me know if you know someone.
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