A Celebration of Winter
A report by Jim Pugh on the Canadian Ski Marathon held February 10/11, 2007
Jim Pugh is a member of the Triangle Ski Club who lives in North Andover, Mass. and has a summer residence in the Brockville area.
2,100 of us had two lovely, if chilly, days of skiing this past Saturday and Sunday in Quebec. The trail was 44 miles each day – with checkpoints serving food and warm drinks an average of every 11 miles.
You could tell the category of each skier by bib number. #100-399 for skiers carrying a pack, skiing the whole course, and camping out overnight. #500-699 for those carrying a 12 lb pack the whole course but not sleeping out. #1000-1399 for those skiing the whole course. #2000 and above for tourers skiing one or more sections of the course each day.
The distance skiers (the “coureur de bois” categories) started at 6:30 am on Saturday and 6:00 am on Sunday. Many of these skiers wore headlamps the first half hour – and a few forgot to take them off during the day
The bibs with the gold around the number means the person has skied the whole thing and done the
overnight camping at least 10 times – and it is his/her permanent number. I was #217.
These photos don’t show the hours of sunshine we received on Sunday. What a glorious afternoon it
was – with a bright sun and 10 degrees. There were occasional gentle snow flurries. Sometimes a light wind.
At night, at the camp site, the sky was especially dark as there were no city lights on the
horizon. In my final month of training, I listened to an MP3 audio version of James Mitchener’s
“Space”, so the brilliance of the stars was apposite to the theme of the book. We saw no houses on the first 35 miles of the trail – and only three or four in the final section.
Photos above and below show the campsite where the gold coureurs de bois skiers slept out. Each skier received two bales of straw for bedding and seating. There were 40 fires in all (wood was provided), with several skiers huddled around each fire swapping stories and drying out clothes and boots. Most people got a good night’s sleep. Some tucked themselves into their sleeping bags at 6:00, and everyone was asleep by 8:00 pm.
When I had to get up at 2 am, it was a bracing -22
degrees Celsius. The photo here shows my little yellow tent on the left side of the picture, as well as the fire as shared with a man from Ottawa and a man from Ann Arbor. I must have been walking to the other end of the camp for hot water or on a trip to the privy when the photo was taken.
The Canadian Ski Marathon began in 1967 as a centennial event (for Canada’s 100th birthday). The course is normally 100 miles long, but had to be truncated a bit this year for snow conditions.
This was the 41st running of the event.
The CSM is not a race. Rather is it a celebration of an outdoor lifestyle and a beautiful land.
There is a great spirit of comradeship throughout. The logistical support and the number of
volunteers are remarkable.
Jim Pugh
