Though they do most of their best work out of doors, the Tumwater Shadies didn’t take their name from a nice spot for a nap on a sunny day. This long-running (and skiing and canoeing) South Sound adventure relay squad wanted a slightly darker edge when they named the team back in 1994.
“That’s ‘Shadies’ as in, ‘shady characters’,” said a chuckling Gregor Myhr, one of the team’s founding members and its de facto captain.
Maybe they were a little shadier back when they started out as a bunch of high-energy Western Washington University students looking to take their love of the outdoors to the next level. But now, nearly 20 years later with careers and families, the Shadies probably aren’t as underground as they once were. But they still love hanging out together and getting outside.
They’ll renew their acquaintance with the roads, rivers and trails of the Whatcom County area on May 29 when they line up for the Ski to Sea Race, a near 100-mile ramble that takes participants from the slopes of Mount Baker to the shore of Bellingham Bay.
With roots dating back to 1911, The Ski to Sea Race has a long history of challenging outdoors enthusiasts in the Pacific Northwest. It began as the brainchild of the then-nascent Mount Baker Club, a conservation group which wanted to bring attention to the region’s stunning geography. In 1911, they held the first “Mount Baker Marathon” where competitors would have to find their way to the base of the mountain by any means necessary before taking on a grueling charge to the top.
In that form, the race only lasted three years and ended after one of the racers slipped into a crevasse during the 1913 running and barely escaped with his life. And though the club persisted, the race stayed dormant until 1973 when it was reborn in its present form as a relay.
“The Ski to Sea has its roots way back — that’s one of the cool things about it,” Myhr said.
Nowadays, competitors start the race halfway up the mountain and instead of charging to the top, they roll downhill toward the sea. There are seven different legs of the relay with each leg representing a different sport. The race begins with cross-country skiing and Myhr is quite familiar with the looping four-mile course.
“I think I’m one of the only (Shadies) that’s done it every year and not only that, every time I’ve done it it’s cross-country ski day,” he said. “Every Memorial day, I’m the guy on the starting line at 5,000 feet on Mount Baker.”
The cross-country skier gives way to the downhill skier who must also endure an uphill hike toting gear and wearing ski boots sandwiched between a pair of high-speed downhill runs. The race then leaves the slopes and hits the road with a knee-punishing 8-mile run where the competitor surrenders 2,200 feet of elevation before handing off to the next leg. Sticking to the pavement, next up is cycling with a rider in the saddle along nearly 40 miles of rolling mountain roads.
The race moves onto the water next and a pair of paddlers must cover 18 miles of the fast-flowing Nooksack River in maybe the course’s wildest and most technical leg. Thought the start and endpoints are the same each year, the river changes from season to season and even from day to day. Differing water levels and conditions create a new course each trip down the river.
“It’s so different every year,” said paddler Steve Strong, another of the Shadies who has been with the team since its first year. “Like years where the river is running low, say, there’s lots of obstacles and lots of rollers. I’ve seen flipped boats, I’ve seen boats wrapped around logs and even people standing on log jams waiting for a helicopter rescue.”
After the canoe leg, the course gives way once again to the two-wheeled traveler with a complex, twisting 14-mile mountain bike course that mostly covers gravel and dirt roads but also hits the trail and crosses open country. Sea kayakers then take over for the anchor leg, starting off in Squalicum Harbor for a five-mile paddle around buoys in Bellingham Bay before crossing the finish line on the beach in Marine Park.
For the Shadies, the race consists of equal parts challenge, vacation and friendship. The team’s lineup has changed a little over the years but seven of the eight members make their homes in the Olympia area. Along with Myhr and Strong are Gregor’s wife Hollie Myhr (runner) and brother Ryan Myhr (downhill ski). Adam Stocks is Strong’s paddling partner in the canoe. Jamie Poelker handles the mountain bike leg, Dan Jones is the road cyclist and Greg Rabourn takes care of the anchor leg in the sea kayak.
They’re not necessarily in it to win it — the popular race attracts elite athletes from all over North America. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there to compete.
“Everybody’s competitive within their own leg,” Strong said. “We watch our times and we’ve done consistently better. All of us are athletes, but none of us are hard-core athletes. Everybody’s very outdoorsy — we know how to ride; we know how to paddle.”
Even if a good time in the open air is the chief goal, it’s always more fun to pass another racer than to get passed.
“We’re just trying to take down as many teams as we can,” Gregor Myhr said. “We’re mostly there for good times — it’s a good social event. But we’re out to compete, too.”
Many of the crew are Tumwater Thunderbirds grads and have been friends since even before high school. Working together to finish a race like the Ski to Sea only helps cement those longstanding bonds.
“It’s fun for us,” Strong said. “Everybody has families now and we rent a house and all stay up there. It becomes a three-day weekend vacation with the race being what we do on Sunday. It’s more than just the event.”
And there’s nothing at all shady about that.
Links of interest
http://www.themountainrunners.com/Home.html
http://www.mountbakerclub.org/
