Schweitzer 24 Hour Ski Race - An Amazing Sandpoint Event

I am recovering from participating in the '24 Hour for Hank' Ski Race at Schweitzer Mountain Resort, which took place Friday morning into Saturday. The turnout, the generous sponsors, the comraderie, and the community support for this first ever event served as yet another reminder of how good we have it here in Sandpoint, Idaho.

This 24 hour Ski Race was held to raise money for the Cystinosis Foundation. A local toddler here in Sandpoint, Hank Sturgis, has a terrible disease called Cystinosis which affects only 2000 people nationally. Every single dollar that was spent for registration, sponsorship, raffle tickets, or the final night auction went directly to this Foundation at the request of Hank's parents. I have not heard the final dollar amount raised, but it sure appears to have been hugely successul!

We learned of this race fairly last minute and were able to put together a four-man team with two of my fellow Sothebys agents, Kyler Wolf and Bobbi G., along with my brother Randy Evans (who was added literally the night before). We showed up at Schweitzer Friday morning expecting to have a good time, get some fun turns in, and party it up a bit. My impression is that as a team we would be taking turns skiing, probably getting in 40 laps or so a piece.

Then we learned that we would all ski as much as possible, and add all our laps in for our team score. So I wasn't going to be sitting out 75% of the time after all!

All 125 racers lined up in the Village at 10a Friday and raced to Chair 4 for 7 1/2 hours of Quicksilver. As we got further and further into this, Randy and I realized that a heck of a lot of people were actually trying hard to win this crazy race.

Being fairly (OK, extremely) competitive, my bro and I started pushing ourselves more and more as the race went by. We took a nice 30 minute lunch break during the first portion of the race. Then by the time the race course switched to Basin Express chair at 5:30pm it was on! We would ski the next 7 1/2 hours in a full tuck down the Nastar course from Basin Express, doing 61 laps until this lift closed at 1:15am. I think we went fairly crazy by the end of this, doing the same exact run in 75 mile an hour winds, frozen to the core, even with 7 layers of clothing.

The race course then switched to Schweitzer's 'bunny hill', Musical Chairs, from 1:15a until 730a. Until the sun came up I had truly planned to stop and take a nap on the sleeping bag sitting in our designated room in the Lakeview Lodge. Then I would get off the chair and decide to do just one more, fall half asleep on the way up, then do it all over again. We would hold a tight tuck all the way down, race onto the double chair (which was sped up at twice its normal speed), fight to stay awake on the chair, think about quitting, then do it all over again. I was so delirious that I once skied past the chair, wiped out, and 'yard saled' getting onto Musical Chairs!

Somehow all four of us were still out skiing as the sun started creeping up over Lake Pend Oreille to the east. In my sleep-deprived stupor, I was so struck by the beauty that tears came to my eyes. We would all keep up our craziness through the Musical Chairs session, then to the final 3 hours back on Chair 4 and Quicksilver.

10am finally came (the last 2 hours seemed like 2 days) and all the racers stopped at the base of Quicksilver and skied back triumphantly to the Village, hooting and hollering all the way.

(Incidentally, I then had about 3 hours to recover enough to show property to a client at Schweitzer). Fortunately these folks were great and we had fun laughing about the event and the bags under my eyes.

There was a fantastic awards banquet thrown that evening, where my brother and I brought our families. To our great surprise, we learned then that our team took 2nd place overall! Randy got the best of all of us with 153 runs and 139,272 vertical feet! I had one extra bathroom break (no water at all next time) and came in with 151 runs and 137,792 vertical feet. Kyler got in 109 runs (and a bit of sleep at the same time ;} , and Bobby cruised in with 131 laps. All together something like 7 million vertical feet were skied at the race in honor of Hank Sturgis and the Cystinosis Foundation.

I should also point out that the food, organization, and everything about this event were handled beautifully. Schweitzer Mountain really came through as well and was extremely generous in their support of this great event. All the lifties, food vendors, patrol, etc were tons of fun and a great contribution. I believe this will take place again next year and be twice as big. I also think that this crazy idea of skiing for 24 straight hours just might take off here in Sandpoint Idaho and Schweitzer Mountain!

Time for me to get some sleep! (Sorry no pictures on this post- we were too busy skiing. But I hope to get some from the mountain and will post them on my site next time).

Check back at http://www.sandpointresortrealty.com/schweitzer.html. For more photos and posts about Schweitzer Ski Resort visit http://www.sandpointresortrealty.com/blog.html or my Flickr photo album at http://www.flickr.com/photos/29620933@N02/sets/72157607163359611/