Freezin' at Massanutten!

So we make the turn onto Crisman Hollow Road and pretty quickly get stopped behind a line of 5 or 6 cars stopped uphill on the icy road behind a car stuck in the ditch and partially blocking the road. To pass the car one would have to squeeze by on the right, on the icy road, at a hairpin turn to the left with a steep drop to the right. We were at the back of the line of cars, we went with the consensus to back track to the 211 parking lot and run from there. It did occur to me to wonder if others had gotten around the car and were at the start, but we had no way to know that, didn't have Bur or Quatro's numbers. I wondered if Caren and Mark Z. made it. Groupthink, we all went to 211.

Our crew of Megan, Sharlene, Amanda, Mark and I quickly decided to run the planned course counter-clockwise from 211 and hope for the best (i.e., north on MT, Scothorn Gap, Gap Creek, Jawbone, MT south on Kerns, down Waterfall Trail, back to 211 parking lot). We made the assumption we would be out there for 16 miles with no aid, then we could come back to 211 and meet Bill with aid. For one thing, I knew going clockwise would mean we'd have to run up Waterfall Trail, yuck, and it meant hitting aid 3 miles in from our start, which would do us no good. I figured no matter which way we went, no one would be at the start/finish area anymore by the time we went through, so we might as well run the course in the originally planned direction. There were probably 15 other people at the parking lot too, some ran toward where the runners would be coming from the start so they could run into them, tell them what happened to us, and then get in synch with those that started from the real start. Many of the rest of us went counter clockwise. We ended discussion quickly before we all froze to death in the parking lot!

It was beautiful and hard. Turns out I'm not completely recovered from a cold. I struggled on the climbs and didn't feel that much better on the flats or downhills. But it was absolutely gorgeous slogging up the Scothorn Gap Trail through the snow. As we gained in elevation, we met the sun coming over the mountains to the east, that somehow seemed to warm us for a few degrees. Amanda and I stopped for a few minutes to help Challen try to unfreeze her camelbak tube. I took off my jacket and gloves to get my pocket knife so she could cut off the insulating cover off her tube, she felt it was keeping the tube frozen and not allowing her body heat to melt the ice. In those few minutes my hands went numb, I quickly put my jacket on and then couldn't zip it. Amanda had to zip my jacket, Challen finished cutting, handed me my knife, and said we'd better all keep moving. Boy was she right, I didn't realize how fast you could get cold. Amanda and I were so cold our hands hurt. She told me about when she got frostbite as a kid. We ran hard to try to warm up.

Sharlene and Megan had passed us when we were helping Challen. We eventually caught them on the Gap Creek Trail shortly before we entered the official start/finish area on Crisman Hollow Road. And what a sight to see! There was Mike Bur with a big, warm, FIRE and a tent with food and fluids. Challen arrived right after us, she had just gotten her tube unfrozen, she'd been without water for the first 2 hours of the run. We didn't linger long. Megan found out from Mike that he had earlier met some of our clockwise runners and found out what happened to all of us. They had like 20 no-shows at the start and wondered what the heck happened to everyone. Turns out that the car had been abandoned since the day before and many had just driven around it or come in from the north on Crisman Hollow. So in theory we could have made it to the start. Oh well. Driving around the car looked pretty scary to me and our run turned out just fine!

Megan slightly shortened the run by going up Crisman Hollow to Waterfall. Sharlene, Amanda and I sucked it up and climbed Jawbone. It was worth it, the views from Kerns were amazing. We survived the descent of Waterfall and then started running into the Crisman Hollow starters heading toward the finish. Chatted briefly with Michele Harmon and others. And then we arrived at the 211 parking lot to find Mark, Megan and Bill in really warm cars. Boy were we happy. We had all decided the heck with Bird Knob, 16 miles was enough. I can say that for me those 16 miles felt like 26 so I'll take it. It took us 5 hours and 37 minutes, tough day. Here are a few pics from the day.