While it wasn’t quite as close a race as last year, Kris Swanson used his ability to fall with style downhill and pull ahead of second place runner Nathan Smith to win his twenty-second Emperor’s Challenge.
Swanson, who was ahead of Smith by less than a minute at the halfway point of the race crested the top and never looked back, to cross the finish line at 1:32:09, three minutes and 11 seconds ahead of the 37 year old Grande Prairie resident, who crossed at 1:35:20.
Rounding out the top three finishers was Brandon Wladyko. Wladyko, also 37, is from Edmonton. He crossed the line a scant ten seconds behind Smith, at 1:35:30.
Madison Twelvetree was the first female across the line, in a time of 1:53:37, and was the eleventh person overall to cross the finish line.
Twelvetree is 19 years old and out of Grande Prairie. She finished nearly ten minutes ahead of Female Masters runner Amy Kaempf, 42, from Dawson Creek, who finished in 2:03:07, and 33-year-old Jackie Benning of Grande Praire, who finshed with a time of 2:04:22.
Of the 803 people who registered for the race, 528 crossed the finish line in under five hours. Another dozen or so crossed the finish line. The rest either did not finish, or did not show up.
One participant—who was poised to finish in the top 20, looked up to discover he couldn’t see anyone around him. He kept following the road he was on, only to come face to face with a Conuma Employee. “You’re not supposed to be hiking here,” the Conuma employee says. “I know that,” said the participant (whose name is being withheld because I forgot to ask it), I seem to be lost.
He was given a ride down to the mine site, where, he says, he sat for about two hours before finally getting a ride back to the Core Lodge.
Outside of that, there were no major incidents, outside of the usual cramping, blisters and rolled ankles. Some of these proved too much, and elicited a ride off the mountain with TR Search and Rescue or the Grizzly Valley ATV club, or proved to be just another challenge to overcome.
Publisher’s note: most of the rest of this issue is given over to Emperor’s Challenge results, a tradition first begun with the Tumbler Ridge News. We will return with more news next issue.
For people looking for more Emperor’s Challenge, visit www.tumblerridgelines.com for the full photo gallery.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
