New Mexico Trail Racing Season

Fall trails in Nuevo Mexico are the realist

La Luz is on the calendar next weekend and so it begins. Was chatting about all of this earlier in the week with friends and trail companions, always exciting to prognosticate and gauge fitness. August/September/October are the golden months to be charging up and about the hills. 

Right, so my own fitness could use a lot of work which is why I turned instead to updating the site's race calendar in a bid to distract. Found several event items in the calendar worth noting:

Big Tesuque Trail Run is just ten weeks away and online registration is now live. Race date is Saturday October 3rd and it's gonna be another big year. I know all this because I assist Pete Fant (race director) with some of the setup. 31st year for this Santa Fe classic. Dustin Martin seeks to defend his three year reign at the top.

Dustin Martin floating the Big Tesuque descent

Oh shit, La Luz is next week! Always a mix of elation and physical horror at this thought. It will be the 50th running of this grand old race. A run-down (run up?) of this year's Santa Fe contingent ought to be up shortly. Several local runners in the mix this year.

Pajarito Trail Fest is a jewel of the Los Alamos racing scene though long overshadowed by ultras and triathlons and generally inaccessible to most of the Santa Fe running community as it shares its race weekend with Big T. Not this year. The race moves back two weeks to October 17th. Stoked to see this change, planning to race myself into a swifter me by about that time.

This June's FIBArk White Water Fest in Salida had a trio of running events. A hill-climb, a trail run, and a road race. Awards were given out for the triple crown as well. Been needing an excuse to make this event for several years now and now it's a done deal. Believe they raced MTB too. An earlier start will set me up a bit stronger for next year's La Luz and help lever-off the gravity of middle age for just a bit longer.


Other Area Events:
- Buffalo Thunder Half Marathon
- Taos Up-and-Over
- SF Waldorf Trail Run - Arroyo Hondo Trails

Los Alamos - How Physicists Once Cleared a Ski Hill

Niels Bohr out on the hill, January 1945

I've been reading an interesting book about life in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. There are several sections that talk about recreation and how the principal physicists and engineers would spend their time outside the labs and away from their calculations.

When the British contingent arrived in 1944 they brought with them most of the brightest minds who had fled the continent, included were nobel laureates Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi, as well as (future laureate) Hans Bethe who were all big skiers. Sort of a precursor to the 10th Mountain Division men, who would return from the war and build European inspired ski hills across the U.S. Bohr and Bethe would skin up the hills, then free-heel back down, and actually got a few other non-skiers interested in doing the same.

By the winter of 1945 there was a need for a greater variety of ski slopes. Someone felt that Sawyers Hill southwest of town was a decent location (just west of the present day intersection of NM-4 and Hwy 501). Trees had to be cleared though, so skier and demolition expert George Kistiakowsky took it upon himself to clear the hill. He brought in his explosives team, the team who would ultimately be responsible for designing the proper charge for the world's first fission reaction weapons, and together they rounded up some detonation cords and C-4, wrapped the trees marked for clearing, and with one blast, cut them all to the ground. Fittingly, this was Los Alamos' first purpose-built ski hill.

The now widely used image of Bohr (above), went unseen until the 1950's since it was strictly classified who was involved with the Project, or who might have been jaunting around the hills of the Pajarito Plateau on skis during the winter of 1945.

Related Posts:
  - Nordic Skiing Guaje Canyon
  - Frijoles Canyon and Bandelier National Monument
  - Lummis Canyon and Bandelier National Monument