After a miserable, springlike winter, the snow began to fall five days ago, and we were treated to perfect conditions for this race - lots of powdery snow and a chilly -10C plus windchill. Andre Turcotte the course designer had mentioned that he was trying to make this year's course design more creative and strategic. He wanted to reduce the opportunity for people to just follow the leader's footprints in the snow to the CP. He also saw that skate skiing teams had a huge advantage in last year's race, and he wanted to give classic skiing teams a chance this year. I think he succeeded.

The first half of the course was a Bike/Trek section. After a crowded, jostling bike race start on a narrow, snowy road, we all rode a few kilometers toward a large, irregular, hilly block of land, then split up a bit as teams used different strategies to get 6 CPs. Three CPs were along roads, and three CPs were inland. You could drop your bike at any CP and do the rest on foot, or you could ride around to different access points and go inland to get one or two CPs from each point. At the end of it all, there was a CP at the top of a large ski hill, so there was no way to avoid riding up a long, steep hill eventually.

Road biking in the snow is not my forte, but there were other aspects of the race course that I knew would work better for me. So I was mentally prepared to watch teams go by on the road and not let it bother me too much - especially because some inexperienced racers overdo it at the start of the race, and they can't keep up the pace. We didn't do too badly, mostly because Richard and Jamie were full of energy - towing me strongly in a several places on foot and bike. I got swept up in a crowd enroute to the first off-trail CP, and we ended up having to descend from one steep, snowy hilltop and run up the adjacent one, but otherwise the nav went smoothly today. During the entire Bike/Trek section, we saw a lot of other teams, and had the perception of doing OK, but not particularly well. I felt slow, and couldn't breathe through my nose, thanks to my cold. My water froze early on - which it has never done - so I carried 4.4 lb of unnecessary (but oh, so necessary!) weight for the entire race.

We had to walk our bikes on Airport Rd. on our way back to Mansfield to start the ski section of the race. I was running slowly while Jamie ran with both of our bikes. My first clue that we weren't doing so badly in the race was when Team LSN jogged past us. That inspired me to speed up, and when we hopped on our bikes for the final ride up the Mansfield driveway, we passed LSN to beat them to the transition area by a couple of seconds.

I was really surprised to see how few bikes were there. Since people used different strategies in the Bike/Trek section, it was impossible to know how we were doing. We had made a last-minute decision to switch to classic skis after seeing the race course design, which took us into ungroomed areas of Dufferin Forest. It was the most adventurous and exploratory skiing of any adventure race we've ever done. It was helpful that I'd orienteered in the area over the past year, although the orienteering map was displayed onscreen for everyone to make notes from, so our previous outing didn't give us a huge advantage. I guess the main advantage was that our experience in the area made us respect the importance of looking carefully at the O map before the race, since it is very easy to get lost in the massive trail network.

We did the entire regular ski section with LSN, with Richard breaking trail much of the time. Mansfield Ski Area had opted not to groom the skate trail today, and we had 20 cm of fluffy white stuff on the trail, which made it a challenge on any kind of ski - but I'm glad we were on classics. At the end of the regular ski section (two widely-spaced CPs), teams had the option of continuing to the advanced section, which consisted of two CPs that took us further afield in two different directions. We turned left to go to the farthest one from the lodge first, while LSN turned right to go to the closer one. Since we'd been skiing around the same speed, that meant it would probably come down to route choice.

We headed to the northwest corner of Dufferin Forest, breaking trail through deep snow for much of the way, including up and down one significant hill that I probably could have avoided, but I didn't want to get lost. Then we took off our skis and carried them (mandatory gear) up a steep slope to the advanced CP. We had made it there first, but Team Supplierpipeline arrived while we were there. Then we dashed back down (being careful to stay in the same footprints so we didn't make too many paths to the CP), and retraced our steps several kilometers to the spot where we had left LSN. Then we went to the other advanced CP, which involved a few kilometers on a snowmobile trail, so no trail breaking, but a few good hills. Richard towed me up a couple of hills on skis (which worked better than I expected, except that the tow rope was too short), but Jamie started getting fatigued around then. He and I had both been sharing Richard's limited water because our water systems had frozen. He had also worked very hard in the early stages of the race, and none of us had kept up as well as we should have with our nutrition, so Richard helped him to the finish. We skied to the edge of the escarpment and plunged down a steep gully to meet a flat 2 km trail to the finish line. Richard put Jamie on tow, and we crossed the finish line while Supplierpipeline was still standing there drinking their victory champagne.

To our surprise, the Tree Huggers were in 2nd place overall of 33 teams, coming in 5 minutes behind Supplierpipeline. Woo hoo!! LSN arrived in 3rd place 37 minutes later, then Milton Basement Racers (Tim, Sarah, Eddie) and Salomon/Suunto (Leanne, Pete, Sean) crossed the finish line within a couple of minutes after them. Kudos to our friends on all three of those teams for overcoming various forms of adversity in this race and still making it to the 5-team podium. It turns out that three of the top five teams used skate skis, including 2 members of the winning team, although Salomon/Suunto mostly carried them and ran!

Fun race on a sunny, snowy day. We enjoyed the innovative course design and loved the large amount of skiing, which has played a minor role in some past winter races. It was a great group of people, and it was nice to see so many friends on the podium. It was the best-ever Tree Hugger team finish in a FAR race.