Mount Garfield and Lafayette

Garfield and Lafayette

Leaving Lafayette summit during a winter ascent

Dates Climbed: 4/17/05, 9/14/05, 1/14/07, 9/22/07, 10/13/07, 9/21/08, 5/30/09, 10/7/09

Presidential Range Relay Race 2009

MIT team wins 19-mile Relay
Crazy Alpine Beavers stay together without a Relay

The MIT Outing Club won the 4th annual intercollegiate Presidential Range Relay Race, a 19-mile race across New Hampshire’s rugged White Mountains last weekend.

Schools from across New England including Tufts, Brandeis, Olin, Northeastern, University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, and University of Connecticut, participated in the race organized by Tufts University. Over 100 racers participated on thirteen teams. Two MIT teams competed, the Crazy Alpine Beavers and the Lucky Alpine Beavers.

On the winning Crazy Alpine Beavers team, which finished in 4 hours and 32 minutes and beat the nearest competitor by over 30 minutes, were Eric Gilbertson G, Matthew Gilbertson G, and Philip Kreycik (Harvard ’06 and MITOC member). This was the second victory for Eric and Matthew, who were also on the winning team in the 2006 race. The Lucky Alpine Beavers came in fourth place with a time of 5 hours and 45 minutes and included team members Ian Tracy ’11, Rishi Gupta ’11, David Wentzlaff G, Tom Laakso (Harvard G), Stas Trufanov (MITOC member), Justin Butler G, and Scott Raymond G.

In previous years the race course went over the mountains of the presidential range, but due to the high likelihood of bad weather at this time of year in the presidentials the race has now been moved farther south to Franconia Ridge. This year the course started at Lincoln woods and climbed Mounts Flume, Liberty and Little Haystack to Mount Lincoln at halfway, then across Lafayette to Garfield and down, ascending a total of 6000 feet of elevation along the way. Temperatures were in the mid 40s with snow patches along the trail and there was pouring rain most of the day. 40mph winds on Franconia Ridge swept horizontal rain across the competitors.

Although all other teams chose to run the race as a three times six-mile relay race with three runners together on each leg and exchanges for relief runners near Mount Liberty and Mount Lafayette, the Crazy Alpine Beavers decided to complete the whole 19 miles without an exchange.

The Crazy Alpine Beavers started near the end of the wave start but passed all other teams before the first exchange. The team maintained its pace to widen its lead through the end of the race, even beating the event organizers to the finish line.

Team Crazy Alpine Beavers plans to compete again next year to try for a third title.