When it comes to snowshoe racing, call Golden’s David Kelble old school.
Daughter Katie Kelble, too. Even though she’s just in elementary school.
With the recent stretch of warm weather, snowshoeing has been teetering on its last leg of late in the Durango area. As a result, participants in Saturday’s Winter Warrior snowshoe race at the Durango Nordic Center were allowed to ditch the snowshoes and run in their boots – with Yaktrax and any other form of spikes or studs to get better traction in the icy conditions.
Most of the 29 participants did just that. But not the Kelbles. David may have been the only entrant of seven in the men’s 10-kilometer race to go the distance in snowshoes. (A few others started with snowshoes but shed them in favor of their less-cumbersome boots.)
That may have been in an effort to show support for his daughter: All Katie, 10, had to do was finish Saturday’s race to qualify for the under-14 division in the United States Snowshoe Association National Championships on Feb. 27-March 1 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
And do so in snowshoes.
Didn’t matter. Even if she wasn’t trying to qualify for nationals, given the choice between doing the course with snowshoes or without, she would have chosen the former most every day. She enjoys snowshoeing – and, after all, this was a snowshoe race.
But snowshoes brought challenges for Katie and the few others who went that route.
“It was tough. There were a lot of rocks,” said Katie, who has been snowshoeing “since I was little” and competitively for the last few years. “Yaktrax probably would have been better. It was really icy. It was tough with snowshoes.”
Still, the fourth-grader at Kyffin Elementary School in Golden finished smack-dab in the middle of the 11-person 5-kilometer women’s race – sixth in 50 minutes, 2 seconds. With Katie and Dewa Ilg, daughter of race director Steve Ilg, youth was well-represented in the division: Dewa, at age 7 the youngest participant in the event, finished second in the women’s 5K in 37:45. Kricket Lewis cruised to victory in 33:27.
David Kelble was sixth in the seven-man 10K race (84:31), won by Lee Rosenthal (50:23). Alister Ratcliff and David Preston tied for first in the men’s 5K (26:44).
While the race did serve as a qualifier for nationals, only Katie Kelble was here to qualify. The rest? The event also benefitted the youths of the Durango Nordic Ski Club. Entrants came from Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico to lend their support for the cause and to enjoy the balmy weather, even if it had taken its toll on the course.
“This was a good course. They did the best they could (under the conditions),” David Kelble said.
David Kelble, 57, mostly was along for the ride – and to cheer on his daughter – as he had qualified in the 55-59 age division for the national championships earlier this winter in Salt Lake City. He also still had a touch of food poisoning, he said, so his goal was pretty much just to finish – and to see his daughter qualify so they could do the national championships together for the second consecutive year. Last year, both competed in nationals in Bennington and Woodford, Vermont.
“Make sure she finishes,” David yelled to Steve Ilg as the elder Kelble completed the first lap of the two-lap 10K race.
Well behind her father, Katie was flip-flopping along, without a care in the world. After nonchalantly crossing the finish line, she quietly took off her snowshoes and waited for her dad to finish. They were staying in the area Saturday night, then it was on to Mesa Verde National Park near Mancos on Sunday and ice climbing near Ouray on Monday.
“She studied about (the people of Mesa Verde) in school,” David Kelble said of the stop. “She’s an outstanding rock climber, too. She made nationals in sport climbing, which is with a rope and harness, and in divisions, which is basically the western part of the country, in boulder climbing.
“She’s never ice-climbed, so looking forward to that.”
bpeterson@durangoherald.com
