2021 Catamount Winter Adventure Summary & Photos
GMARA was proud to host our second bite-sized adventure, returning to the Catamount Community Forest for a winter version of last summer’s event.
Our bite-sized approach to bringing outdoor adventure to families and friends lets teams participate in whatever way they preferred, on their own schedule. Nearly thirty teams donned skis and/or snowshoes to explore Catamounts beautiful trail network.
It sure didn’t hurt that we received a monster dump of snow right before the event opened. It didn’t stop there though – the snow kept coming through the week, and everyone had the opportunity to enjoy well groomed ski trails and some deep snowshoeing. You can see the photos teams shared, as well as their result sheets, in the photo gallery.
Teams received their instructions and two maps before the nine-day drop-in-whenever-you-like window began. The maps included the Catamount trail network and a topographical map with the checkpoints. There were ten on-trail points to get via skis and then ten off-trail to get via snowshoe. The first challenge was determining where on the trail network the checkpoints actually were! A bit of an additional challenge for the snowshoe leg was that you couldn’t travel along the ski trails.
It was fun to see the varied approaches, ranging from teams dropping by on multiple days to grab a few more points each time, to experienced teams pushing to do everything as quickly as they could in a single go. Several teams got on either skis or snowshoes for the first time for this event. One intrepid (crazy?) team started before 5:30am with -13°F temps!
We’re glad you all made the event your own!
While this was largely a non-competitive event, we’d be remiss to not share a pretty impressive time. Team Sterling Facts finished the full course in under two hours – 1:54 to be precise. An impressive feat of navigation, speed, and endurance!
Congratulations to everyone that participated. Keep your eyes out for another Bite Size adventure! For those curious for something bigger, the Bitter Pill is coming up later this summer. To everyone reading this, we hope you are finding time to have adventures, whatever size they may be!