If you are allergic to inclines, this one is pretty darn solid for you.
The 1.5 lap is nearly identical to the Fat Camp! race that coincided with Suds’n’Snow in 2014. Perhaps the most notable change is the start/finish location is now just behind the Lodge and Banquet Hall, where ControversiALE and King Vasa went off early this year.
That will also open things up for the opening salvos of the race before riders tuck into a 100 yard section of singletrack. It’s a short jaunt before the riders take two hard lefts, the first onto the edge of the power line and the second heading back into Timber Ridge proper. The straightaway is the last chance to make a move before hitting the descent in front of the Suds’n’Snow crowds.
The new challenge on the course is the trans-seasonal “Walters’ Trench”, a 10 yard stretch of shoveled trail with exposed leaves. Too fast into the corner and you may find yourself in the lap of some unfortunate party-goer. The Trench comes just under a mile into the lap and gives racers an easy look back at who made the selection and who is in hot pursuit.
It’s only a hundred or so yards and a screaming descent to the foot of Mount VentPoo, the famous climb from last year’s race. The short wall hits 17% at it’s base and averages 9%. Though short, the climb wears out the legs circuit after circuit and was the site of some spectacular cracks in the chase group in 2014. It’ll be a tactical launching pad as well, with the final quarter of a mile of the lap coming almost perfectly from the top of the ascent and nearly all down hill, albeit it slightly, to the line.
The climb should take roughly one minute for the fast men, and the rest of the course barely registers a change in elevation. It’s almost perfectly tailored to powerful riders like Eric Grassa and Marc Brunette, and also tough to make selections aside from the single ascent.
Registration is closed, with day-of opening at the Banquet Hall of Timber Ridge at 10am. The race goes off at High Noon.