Distinctly Montana Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.distinctlymontana.com/i/20776
on foot, like John Colter? A rolling boulder from a booby- trapped Temple of Doom? Swift enough to score well on a graph of human potential represented by 200 other carbo- loaded, endorphin-soaked. . . wood fairies? It’s true. No matter how we skiers love our own little mountain nooks in the west, we have to make our pilgrim- ages to West. What can you say? West Yellowstone may be nothing more than a couple of neon-lit strips lined with greasy food joints and packed by roaring snowmo- biles, cut out of the lodgepole forest between the Gallatin Mountains and the Yellowstone Plateau, but it has the best groomed nordic ski area in the Rockies. The course is buffed at dawn; there’s a good mix of hills, flats, and curves; and God waves his snowy hands over this corner of Montana with great regularity. Lee Lofgren, who aspired to the Olympic nordic skiing team in his twenties, has become a training guru, innkeep- er, and maitre d’ — cooking venison steaks for his friends, adjusting their aching backs, imparting waxing wisdom (“Start Green mixed with Swix Violet tomorrow”), and letting them roll out their sleeping bags in the freezing bedrooms of his digs. good-bye as if they’ll never see them again, peeing against trees, adjusting the wrist straps of their poles, inhaling deeply, storing Os. The sun hasn’t yet illuminated the course, and clouds of frost hang over the massed skiers, each clad in a one-piece Lycra suit: powder blue, silver, yel- low, ruby red, a few deep purples. I stoop to put on my skis about 250 meters behind the start banner. My watch reads 8:56. At that moment the cannon booms; a hearty and resonant cheer goes up from the crowd; and an anguished, desperate moan, followed by angry shouts, breaks from those of us who never expected the race to start four minutes early. Ripping off warm-up jackets, fumbling with skis, handing babies to husbands and wives, we frantically scramble to catch the fleeing few. And yet, struggling with my pole straps as I skate toward the banner, I think, Hey, amigo, this is perfect. No last queasiness in the gut, no numb hands at the starting gate, no falling over the eager ones who have taken a header in front of me. I have nothing but an empty track and distant behinds to chase. Within 500 meters, though, I’m passing skiers whose minds were too grandiose for their bodies. They got fRoM out of noWheRe the Man in Red and WoMan in Blue skate easily By. Lee’s windows overlook the spot on U.S. 20 where 18-wheelers shift down or up as they come in and out of town—about every 15 minutes—while a blinking neon sign flashes through the blinds. What can they possibly be doing out there at 2:30 in the morning? I wonder. At 4? At 6:30, I stand up and see my bib, number 357, lying on the sofa, and there are my waxed skis standing by the door, and there are those 500 kilometers I have skied in training since Christmas. Time to put on your Lycra. A few blocks from where the tall arch leads to the trails, early risers are already skiing back and forth. By 8:45, 15 minutes before race time, skiers are windmilling their arms, bending over to touch their toes, kissing children caught up in the boom of the big cannon, the roar of the crowd, the dazzling colors speeding away, and succumbed to that most heady and calamitous of race strategies: try- ing to follow the leader’s pace, forgetting that while they might be able to ski one kilometer in about two and a half minutes, their chances of skiing 50 kilometers at that pace are absolutely zero. Disaster, of course, has ensued. Now these unfortunates are inching along, red-faced and gasp- ing, trying to find a speed at which they can survive the next four or so hours. At the first hill they’re bunched up like rush-hour traffic. Those who are fast but got left behind by the early start try to weave their way through the bottleneck, skating 30 DISTINCTLY MONTANA • WINTER 2011