The Race Is Finished!

Start of the White Mountains 100 - Photo: Bob Bolton

The inaugural running of the White Mountains 100 is complete.  50 participants started, 49 finished and only 1 scratched after running (yeah running) 60 miles of the course.

The following is from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article.

… Indeed, the first annual White Mountains 100, the brainchild of Fairbanks skier Ed Plumb, went off without a hitch. The trails were set up perfectly for the most part, the weather couldn’t have been much better and all but one of the 50 competitors who started the race finished. 

“By and large, everything went really well,” he said.

Cyclists took the top six spots in the race, including Oatley’s wife, Heather Best, in third place. Best finished just 1 hour, 11 minutes behind her husband. She beat out fellow Fairbanksan Kevin Breitenbach by two minutes and Ethan Kopacz of Anchorage was fifth in 14 hours, 11 minutes.

Best surprised herself and her husband by finishing third.

“I was thinking more like 15 to 20 hours,” Best said. “I felt good and trail conditions were great.”

She also had Janice Tower of Anchorage, a multiple winner of the Susitna 100 in Southcentral, breathing down her neck. Tower placed sixth overall, less than two hours behind Best.

Said Oatley of his wife’s performance, “She was flying.”

Mike Kramer of Fairbanks was the first skier to finish, placing seventh overall in 16 hours, 10 minutes to beat Brad Marden of Anchorage by 36 minutes and finish eighth overall. Fairbanks’ Max Kaufman was third in the ski division and ninth overall in 18 hours, 11 minutes.

“Those guys were a lot faster than I thought they could ski it,” Oatley said.

Kramer skate skied the entire course, though in some places it took creative technique.

“The trail was so narrow in some places it’s hard to skate,” he said.

“I did a lot of double poling and modified skate strokes that would keep your ski tips out of the willows. Whatever the terrain would give you is what I took advantage of.”

… Plumb, the race organizer who also finished 43rd with a time of 34 hours despite not getting any sleep the night before the race while dealing with last-minute problems, was thankful everything worked out as well as it did.

Judging from the feedback he’s received from competitors, the event was a success, he said.

“People are saying it was the best race ever; the most organized race they’ve ever been in; the best course they’ve ever been on,” Plumb said.

Plumb said he plans on putting the race on again next year, assuming BLM goes along with it.

Collin Cogley, an outdoor recreation planner with the Bureau of Land Management who handled the permit application for the race, was on the trail as an observer to make sure BLM’s stipulations were followed. For the most part, Cogley liked what he saw.

“I think it went really well,” Cogley said. “Things worked well at the trailhead for parking. There weren’t big clumps of folks on the trail. The folks that ran the checkpoints were on the ball.”

Race organizers did everything BLM asked and more in some cases, Cogley said.

You can see all the pictures I took out on the course under Adventures in the header navigation at the top of the page.  Or you can follow this link.