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From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Tag: C2C

Win #3 for Duncan Douglas, Hannah Rieders Top Woman at Wide-Open Climb to the Castle

Duncan Douglas (74) leads biathletes Russell Currier (in red) and Paul Schommer (back right) in Sunday’s Climb to the Castle rollerski race up Whiteface Mountain, while Clarkson’s Jenevieve Broadwell (22) looks on. Douglas held off Currier by eight seconds for his third victory in four times racing the Climb and Schommer finished third. (Photo: NYSEF/Flickr)

(Note: This article has been updated to include comments from third-place finisher Paul Schommer and NYSEF’s cross-country head coach Margaret Maher.)

WILMINGTON, N.Y. — Four appearances and three wins is an enviable record. On Sunday, 50-year-old Robert Duncan Douglas, the “Jacked Up Old Man” from Honeoye Falls, N.Y., won his third Climb to the Castle (C2C) rollerski race, a five-mile freestyle hill climb up the Whiteface Memorial Highway.

Douglas previously won the race in 2007 and 2008, with a personal-best time of 34 minutes, 56.6 seconds in 2007 (he was 2 1/2 minutes faster on a shortened course in 2008, when racers were unable to reach the summit because of snow).

St. Lawrence’s Jackie Garso (5) leads Stratton’s Anna Lehmann (3), and CSU’s Hannah Rieders (7), Gabby Vandendries (4) and Madeline Rieders (in back) during the women’s Climb to the Castle rollerski race up Whiteface Mountain on Sunday in Wilmington, N.Y. (Photo: NYSEF/Flickr)

Hannah Rieders, a 17-year-old Cambridge Sports Union (CSU) skier whose initial goal was an age-group podium, won her first C2C, on the race’s 10th anniversary.

Finishing in 37:15.6 this year, Douglas was 8.3 seconds ahead of runner-up Russell Currier, a biathlete who trains with the Outdoor Sports Institute in Maine. Paul Schommer, a senior member of US Biathlon’s National Development Group, placed third overall, 3:02.6 minutes behind Douglas.

Rieders, a high-school senior from Wellesley, Mass., was the first woman across the line in 55:03.1. She beat Anna Lehmann, a ninth grader representing the Stratton Mountain School (SMS), by 15.7 seconds, and Rieders’s twin, Madeline (also of CSU), finished 1:23.3 minutes back in third.

“I kind of thought maybe Anna would beat me,” Hannah Rieders said in a post-race interview. “At the start, I just wanted to pace it well. I stayed behind other people for the first three miles.”

Overnight rain left the road damp. At the toll-booth start in Wilmington, temperatures hovered around 65 degrees under cloudy skies, with sultry humidity. Low clouds at the start turned dense up high near the summit. Unless you were really close to skiers in front of you, it was hard to gauge how far up the road they were, and how much energy one should expend to attack.

(Story continues below)

With the U.S. Ski Team wrapping up its New Zealand training camp in New Zealand, and thin representation from elite biathletes, the race was wide open.

Margaret Maher, head coach of the New York Ski Educational Foundation (NYSEF) cross-country program, explained in an email that she learned in April that the U.S. Ski Team would not be comping to Lake Placid for its usual dryland camp this year. To accommodate the US Biathlon team, she originally scheduled this year’s Climb for next weekend, Sept. 25, but that date conflicted with other races NYSEF’s skiers planned on competing in.

Maher had to move the race up one week in order for her athletes to attend. Regardless, 85 athletes registered this year, which was on par with the “73-108 athletes” that the race has previously attracted.

Of the top-five female finishers on Sunday, four were under the age of 18, and Lehmann is a U16. With Jackie Garso (St. Lawrence University) placing fourth and Gabby Vandendries (CSU) finishing fifth, CSU had three in the top five.

“First time [at C2C] for all three girls,” CSU coach Rob Bradlee wrote in an email. “All three also ran Mt. Washington for the first time in June. Tough kids! I don’t have them do any special prep for this race. Their regular six-days-per-week training clearly is enough to get them ready. All three are very hard workers and have been training hard all summer. I think their results show that.”

Hannah Rieders explained that five women formed the lead pack. Around mile three, the eventual top three broke away. They skied together until mile four, “then I went ahead,” Rieders said.

The women’s podium at the 10th Climb to the Castle rollerski race up Whiteface Mountain’s Memorial Highway on Sunday in Wilmington, N.Y. With all of the top five under 18, Hannah Rieders (CSU) placed first, Anna Lehmann (SMS) was second, and Madeleine Rieders (CSU) was third. (Photo: NYSEF/Flickr)

Madeline Rieders said she skied in the pack until mile three, then pulled away with Hannah and Lehmann. While she lost contact with them on the road, which has an average grade of 8 percent, she maintained a steady gap to the finish and held off fourth place by 50 seconds.

For the men, it was down to three from the start, according to Currier.

“Paul, Duncan and I all took turns leading,” he wrote in an email.

“I’m in better shape this year, but not rollerski shape,” Douglas said.

For most of the summer, Douglas focused on bike racing, winning his 50-59 age group and placing 25th overall at the Leadville Trail 100 mountain-bike race. He said he just started rollerskiing two weeks before the Climb.

Douglas, a two-time Olympian who will be 51 in November, had a simple race plan. “Go out, ski hard, have fun,” he reflected.

For most of the race, Douglas skied with Currier. He dropped Currier once, but the 29-year-old former national-team biathlete regained contact. Douglas said that at the Lake Placid corner – a hard left where the grade eases and one can transition to V2 strides – he broke away to the finish.

“Once the flat section towards the end started, I wasn’t able to match Duncan’s speed,” Currier wrote. “He was never very far out but enough to make a difference at that point in the race.”

Of his race, Currier described it as “a solid effort. I really tried to use good technique. For a race that’s nothing but uphill, there’s not much else you can do.”

In an email, Schommer explained this was his first Climb to the Castle.

“I went into it with an open mind, knowing that if I killed myself in the first half the second half would be a death march,” the 24-year-old Wisconsin native wrote. “I would say it went decent for me as I was able to stay pretty strong most of the way, despite losing Russell and Duncan about 1.5 miles into the race.”

The men’s podium at the 10th Climb to the Castle rollerski race up Whiteface Mountain’s Memorial Highway on Sunday in Wilmington, N.Y. Duncan Douglas (c) won, Russell Currier of the Outdoor Sports Institute (r) placed second and US Biathlon development skier Paul Schommer (l) was third. (Photo: Peter Minde)

Is the Climb to the Castle a data point for winter fitness?

“It’s a good, effective workout, really good training,” Currier explained, adding that he didn’t think it was a good indicator of fitness in December or February.

“I was really happy with how it turned out,” said Adam Glueck, a Ford Sayre U18 skier who finished seventh (+7:52.4) in his first C2C. “I didn’t want to go too hard out of the start. I followed some friends and threw in some double pole to rest my legs.”

Glueck skied in a small group he eventually lost contact with about halfway through.

“I managed to catch them on the V2 straight [the Lake Placid corner]. After that, my friend Henry McGrew [eighth overall] was right behind me,” he said. “I had to push hard through the headwind [the last 500 meters] to beat him. I was basically in agony for the last three or four minutes.”

Agony and clouds: good metaphors for the Climb to the Castle. When athletes returned to the base, the sun was breaking out.

Results: Men | Women

Photo gallery

September 19, 2016
New to the Climb to Castle Winners’ Circle: Caldwell and Rose Top Whiteface Race

Paddy Caldwell (black shirt, yellow helmet) of the U.S. Ski Team D-team and SMST2 Team chases Rogan Brown (l) around mile four of five in Sunday’s Climb to the Castle up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. Caldwell won the race, followed by biathletes Russell Currier and Tim Burke in second and third, respectively. Brown (SVSEF) placed fourth and Kyle Bratrud (CXC) was fifth. (Photo: Tim Cowan)

Note: Two photo captions have been corrected to reflect the leader of the men’s race around mile four in the 2015 Climb to the Castle. Rogan Brown of Sun Valley led the pack at the time.

For years, U.S. Nordic Ski Team athletes and their coaches trucked themselves up to the start of the Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway, clicked into their rollerskis and allowed an ample amount of time for warming up before ascending New York’s fifth highest peak.

Before it became an official race nine years ago, it was a workout: a five-mile grind to the summit of Whiteface Mountain, 4,867 feet above sea level in Wilmington, N.Y.

Now, for many top-level skiers, especially those based on the East Coast, the annual Climb to the Castle an offseason staple. And if you win, you get a T-shirt and a medal for your efforts.

Mary Rose (SVSEF) leads US Biathlon’s Annelies Cook up the Whiteface Mountain toll road during the annual Climb to the Castle. Rose won and Cook finished second, 32 seconds later. (Photo: Tim Cowan)

“Climb to the Castle was a blast this year!” wrote women’s winner Mary Rose of Idaho’s Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team. “My goal going into this race was to have good energy the whole time, focus on technique and hopefully put together a good effort.”

She reached the top on Sunday in 45:15.1 and topped her competition — the closest of which was US Biathlon’s Annelies Cook — by 32.6 seconds.

“It was a fun, tough effort,” men’s winner Patrick Caldwell of the U.S. Ski Team D-team and Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team said in an interview after the finish.

The 21-year-old Caldwell outlasted biathletes Russell Currier and Tim Burke by 5 and 11.5 seconds, respectively. Caldwell won in 37:05.2, Currier was second and Burke was third.

“Right from the start, we stayed pretty much together against a decent headwind,” Burke said after the finish. “I think a lot of us were fatigued at the end of a big camp, so I didn’t really want to push like crazy.”

The US Biathlon and U.S. Nordic teams spent at least the last week training in Lake Placid, N.Y., with biathletes like Burke logging five race efforts in nine days preceding the Climb.

“I decided today instead of going for time, I wanted to go for the win,” said Burke, a defending multiple-time Climb to the Castle (C2C) champion. “So I decided to sit in and push that last half mile.”

Rogan Brown (l) of Sun Valley leads Tim Burke (second from l) and Paddy Caldwell (third from l) and Russell Currier and Kyle Bratrud around mile four in Sunday’s Climb to the Castle up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. (Photo: Tim Cowan)

He said he “did a lot of pulling and got some help towards the end.” Rogan Brown (SVSEF) led around mile four, and Burke explained that five men battled in the lead pack for the last two miles.

“I broke my pole in the last couple hundred meters, that kind of took me out of it,” he explained.

Caldwell took the blame what he called an “unfortunate incident” in the final 200 meters. “I broke Tim Burke’s pole,” he said. He did so when Burke made his final attack toward the finish.

“Aside from that, it was a good, solid race,” Caldwell said.

“It’s a good way to end it,” Burke said after 10 days of hard training.

Currier, who placed second, called it an “entertaining race” with five men contending throughout.

“For a rare change I was able to be on the better side of tactics and consistently stay in the back of the pack,” Currier wrote in an email. “On the other hand, the final 100 meters came up a lot earlier than I expected and didn’t give much time to react. The pace picked up and Tim Burke lost a pole tip. The next thing I knew there was an opening for the lead. I’m not much of a sprinter and didn’t do much to challenge Patrick, but was I was still pleased to break out of the back of the pack just in time for the podium.”

A former US Biathlon (USBA) B-team member, Currier, who trains with the Maine Winter Sports Center, was not renamed to the team this spring and is working towards making the cut via a series of trials ending in October.

“The status for the National team is still very unclear,” he wrote. “… All I can do is make the best of every training session and go for better results. The second round of trials is coming up in October. A couple of good enough results there should help my cause for the coming race season.”

Brown placed fourth in the men’s race, 4.3 seconds from the podium and 15.8 seconds after Caldwell. Brown edged Kyle Bratrud of Central Cross Country (CXC) by 0.3 seconds, and behind them, another CXC skier Duncan Douglas placed sixth.

USBA’s Sean Doherty and Lowell Bailey finished seventh and eighth, respectively, Miles Havlick (SVSEF) was ninth and developing biathlete Max Durtschi finished 10th of 61 men.

The start of the women’s race at the 2015 Climb to the Castle up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. (Photo: Peter Minde)

In the women’s race, Rose and Cook pushed each other to the top. Rose recalled it being just the two of them shortly after the start. A perennial contender, USBA’s Susan Dunklee had some pole issues at the very beginning, Rose explained in an email.

“I knew I needed to break away about 1/2 mile to the finish because I can’t beat [Cook] in a sprint,” Rose wrote. “I fought pretty hard through the ‘wind tunnel’ and I think that is where I broke away.”

Overnight rain left the toll road wet, and wind dried out its lower sections. From about the halfway point to the finish, skiers pushed through mist on wet pavement and faced a steady wind blowing 10 to 20 miles per hour throughout the race. After starting in temperatures around 47 degrees Fahrenheit, they met temperatures in the mid-30’s at the top.

“It sounds weird to say it aloud, but I actually had fun doing the climb to the castle,” Cook wrote in an email. “Mary and I skied together the entire time and switched leads back and forth. I usually get bored doing the climb and lose focus and switching back and forth with her kept me in the game mentally.

“She got me at the last turn right before the finish when I suddenly flooded with lactic acid and had no chance,” she added. “But I don’t really think of myself as a climber and so it was fun to be the two people leading the race. That doesn’t happen too often! Of course, the usual suspects were not there and that obviously made it difference.”

With the exception of Paddy Caldwell, the U.S. Ski Team (USST) skipped the Climb this year for the first time in years.

“As hard as it is to miss it because it is a fantastic event, it just didn’t play well athletically for the needs of the group,” USST Head Coach Chris Grover said on the phone last week. “We wanted to do more sprint-specific training and short intensity as opposed to giving up a whole workout or two to do the Climb to the Castle.”

The USST camp was also only a week long, compared to the two weeks the team usually spends in Lake Placid this time of year. On the other hand, the largely Lake-Placid-based US Biathlon team did either time trials or Level 5 (race-pace) workouts for last 10 days.

“I had my personal best by quite a lot and I felt strong skiing,” Cook said of the Climb. “It felt good to end a really tough ten days on a good note. … I think we are all pretty glad to be done.”

The Climb marked the end of a two-week training block for Rose and her Sun Valley teammates, who were in Stratton, Vt., with the SMST2 team for the first week.

“We had some super hard intensity sessions over the past two weeks and all were very productive,” Rose wrote.

USBA’s Hannah Dreissigacker, who placed third, 2:05.9 after Rose, explained in an email that the women’s race broke up quickly.

“Mary and Annelies started off a little faster than I really wanted to be going, and I tried to hold on for a bit but then gave up pretty quickly and lost contact,” Dreissigacker wrote. “My goal in the Climb to the Castle is always to not start too fast and then blow up. Then I skied with Susan for a mile or so and then slowly inched ahead of her a bit. Eventually we skied into a cloud and I lost sight of Annelies and Mary and just skied the whole second half by myself.”

She finished 1:10.9 ahead of Dunklee, who placed fourth, while wearing a figure-skating tutu she wore the first time she did the race.

“The lacy elbows really allowed for added breathability and the rhinestones gave me some extra motivation on those long hard stretches when I was all alone,” Dreissigacker wrote.

Another biathlete, Clare Egan finished fifth, Paige Schember (SVSEF) was sixth, Erin Perryman (St. Lawrence University) was seventh, Jackie Garso of the local New York Ski Education Foundation (NYSEF) was eighth, St. Michael’s assistant coach Silke Hynes was ninth, and Stratton U16 skier Anna Lehmann was 10th of 25 women.

Results: Men | Women

September 21, 2015
NYSEF Whiteface Climb to the Castle Rollerski Race on Sept. 20

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Climb to the top of Whiteface, New York’s 5th highest peak for a 360-degree panoramic view of the Adirondacks, New England and Canada

WILMINGTON, N.Y. — The New York Ski Educational Foundation and the Olympic Regional Development Authority invite athletes to the 9th annual NYSEF Whiteface Climb to the Castle Rollerski Race on Sunday, September 20 at 8 AM. The course starts at the Whiteface Toll Booth, climbing for 5 miles with an average 8% grade up the Whiteface Memorial Highway to the castle on the summit of Whiteface Mountain, New York’s 5th highest peak with an elevation of 4,867 ft. The race is freestyle technique and athletes will be greeted at the finish with a 360-degree panoramic view of the Adirondacks, New England and Canada. Athletes will have excellent road conditions with all new pavement to the summit.

NEW this year is a team event! Fastest 3 times will be added together to name a Women’s Team Champions and Men’s Team Champions

Link to race details: 2015 Climb to the Castle

Link to race registration: AlpineReg

Online registration closes Friday, September 18 at 9 AM

Looking to help out at the awesome C2C race? sign up to volunteer here

Questions? Email Margaret Maher margm@nysef.org

Countdown to race day has started…watch the preview video here

Awards by Mt. Borah

September 17, 2015
Whiteface Road Work Could Impact Climb to Castle

The Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, where NYSEF’s Climb to the Castle has been held for the past seven years in Wilmington, N.Y., as seen in 2011. The toll road is undergoing construction this summer and fall.

There’s a race each year scheduled in line with the end of the U.S. Ski Team’s fall camp in Lake Placid, N.Y. You might have heard of it: the Climb to the Castle. Hosted by the New York Ski Education Foundation (NYSEF), the freestyle rollerski race starts at the entrance to a paved toll road, the Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, and stretches five miles up with an average 8-percent grade. The finish is marked by the castle at the top of New York’s fifth-highest peak at 4,867 feet above sea level.

Try to rollerski up there now, however, and you’ll likely run into some heavy machinery.

Construction has already begun on the eight-mile highway as part of a larger project to completely resurface the road over the next several months. The Adirondack Daily News reported Thursday that the upper, toll portion of the road — where the Climb to the Castle (C2C) takes place — will be closed weekdays during May, June and September, but open on weekends. It will be open on weekends and two holiday Mondays during these months: Memorial Day, May 26, and Labor Day, Sept. 1. Throughout July and August, the road is scheduled to be open during daytime hours, with work taking place at night.

US Biathlon’s Tim Burke (l), and U.S. Ski Team members Kris Freeman (c) and Noah Hoffman (r) lead the 2011 Climb to the Castle race in Wilmington, N.Y.

According to Chris Grover, the U.S. Ski Team will hold its Lake Placid training camp from Aug. 25-Sept. 8. So while there’s a chance construction could impact it, there’s a better chance the toll road will be open on Saturday, Sept. 6, when NYSEF scheduled the race.

Margaret Maher, NYSEF’s head nordic coach and C2C organizer, wrote in an email to FasterSkier last week that they were “trying to figure out how the road work will influence the race. Hoping we can still have C2C!”

In all, the highway is expected to be closed 54 days from this week until the end of the season, and open 88 days over the same period, according to the Enterprise.

While the toll road has been patched periodically since it was opened in the 1930s, it has never been completely resurfaced. Whether rollerskiing, cycling, or running to the summit, it’s riven with frost heaves and cracked pavement. Regardless of what state the road is in this year, its sure to be a superior surface for rollerskiing next summer.

Rifenburg Construction, based out of Albany, N.Y., will resurface the entire eight-mile length of the road, from the four-way intersection in the center of Wilmington to the summit. They’ll also rehabilitate rock walls and make repairs to the castle.

The men’s start of the 2009 Climb to the Castle.

Rifenburg earned the project with a $11.2-million bid, and the company expects to complete the work by the end of 2015.

Project manager Russell Huta said that the goal is to have a base layer of new pavement from the tollgate to the castle by the end of this fall. In 2015, the toll section will be finished, and all work on the section from Wilmington town center to the tollgate will be completed.

“Each project has its own set of unique challenges,” Huta told FasterSkier, when asked about the difficulty of working in the narrow confines of the toll road. When road work is in motion, the toll road will be closed to traffic.

In September, Huta said, his company will have “full access” to the toll road Monday through Friday – except for Labor Day. “By the end of the day Friday, there will be a paved surface for [use by] cars, buses, pedestrian traffic” until Monday morning. “On Monday morning, it’s ours again.”

If for some reason, the C2C isn’t possible this year, Grover wrote in an email that it won’t be the end-all of camp.

“We typically run a sprint or team sprint time trial along with the Climb to the Castle,” he explained. “If the Climb is not ready this season, we will employ other alternatives.”

Before the C2C, a time trial was previously held up Gillespie Drive, now a warmup for athletes. The event is entering its eighth year. USST veteran Liz Stephen won the women’s race the last three years, setting a new course record last year in 42 minutes and 4 seconds. US Biathlon’s Tim Burke won the 2013 men’s race in 37:13.

May 16, 2014