The Hardrock 100. A race run in Colorado’s San Juan mountain range over technical terrain involving 10,000m of ascent, with an average elevation of over 3,400m, over, as you might guess, a hundred miles. It’s not for the faint-hearted.
Imagine this route in the winter, covered in snow. Then imagine skiing it. This is exactly what Jason Schlarb, Scott Simons and Paul Hamilton did, along with filmmaker Noah Howell who captured it all on camera. This team completed the first ever winter crossing of the Hardrock 100 course. And it must have been pretty good training for Jason Schlarb as he won this year’s race jointly with Kilian Jornet.
Watch the film of their epic adventure.
Skiing the Hardrock 100 from Schlarb-Wolf Productions on Vimeo.
For this project the team needed to travel light and move as fast as possible, so they used SkiMo packs. SkiMo, or Ski Mountaineering, essentially involves red-lining your heart rate all the way up a mountain, then taking a wild ride back down to the bottom. Some mountain runners see it as a great way of keeping their fitness levels up over the winter. Read about Robbie Britton’s adventures in SkiMo
here.
To ski the Hardrock 100 Jason and the team used the Ultimate Direction Signature Series Ski Vest collection, to travel light and be able to move quickly. These packs go from 8 litres for super-light trips, up to 28 litre versions for expeditions and carry everything from water bottles, gels and bladders all the way up to skis, helmets, shovels and ice axes.
